Marian Images
Lourdes, 1858. Three girls gather drift-
wood, sprays of leaves. Jeanne wraps an
arm around Marie’s neck. Bernadette wades
through mill streams in muddied stockings.
Her mother douses her in holy
water, speaks of wickedness,
white stones, purgatorial ghosts.
*
You pass rosary beads through
your lips, whisper ash and salt,
the language of the grotto, of
field mice and garden wrens:
witnesses reflected in a single,
cloudy eye.
You recognize the shadows
of optic nerves in polished
sunglass lenses.
*
Mexico City, 1986. Gloria’s apron stained
with pine soot and carmine droplets from
pricked fingers, cactus water. A
white weave blooming with images:
tumbles of blue-green veil, a necklace
of red pearls or prayer beads, the hint
of brown skin that smells of sandalwood.
*
You see your mother everywhere, the
crescent of her teeth burned into the
toast, her cameo a humidity
stain on the subway wall.
How my older sister lost her virginity
Sometimes she says it happened
in a lighthouse. Other times, behind
the living room drapes, or under a tent
in the backyard: filtering midday light,
wasps crawling across the canvas
making shadows on the backs
of hands. Then she’s back in the
lighthouse, long past darkening, the two
of them curled leopards in the top room,
the light pulsating like a white
dwarf sun. She moves her story into
kitchens with dusty milkbottles, through off-
kilter backdoors and out onto rocks.
The calls of pelicans, hermit crabs, spotted
owls with mice in their curved claws.
She’s Arachne, her tongue a tapestry
needle weaving fingertips, parted
thighs. She tells her story, stirring
the batter for a lemon pound cake,
pouring in the details between
the strokes of a wooden spoon.
the patron saint of pregnant women and nursing mothers
or
who was swallowed by the devil
margaret knows the serpent’s mouth, teeth
like stalactites; the breathing
cave holds no woman
captive. the dragon’s belly,
an alchemical oven baking
flesh like corncakes—
gritty, palm-pressed. women
dressed in scales, eelskin;
their dark nipples the
eyes of doves. tiny
mouths, batwings, chained
spines, painted horns; the
decks of cards, hand-
painted, to pass
along from mothers
to girls with budding
bodies—moonstung—
with plum-clots and
dimpled knees—
the swelling of a
brine-soaked book.
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