Feasts/Week 10

st phocas of antioch

a slow day for saints:
how few survive the serpentine
pokes of conversion


st fridolin

holy novelty!
some say you’ve seen into souls,
our skin blurred toward sin


st perpetua & felicity

some gods bed w/beast
others feature them in tales
knocked up w/meaning


st john of God

sloshed w/the Spirit
it’s not rare to confuse words
w/what’s heard heart-wise


st frances of rome

day widowed again:
you resist at the window
still kissed-warm w/light


st kessog

out there you can hear
rain contemplating the hail,
cross dressers stepping


st eulogius of cordoba

you worked w/your hands
unscrewing the head you would
switch w/your Master’s












Mark DeCarteret’s work has appeared in the anthologies American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press), Places of Passage: Contemporary Catholic Poetry (Story Line Press), Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 (Black Sparrow Press) and Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press) which he also co-edited. A chapbook (If This Is the) New World was released last year from March Street Press.






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