We are telling stories to ourselves, telling stories to other people, stories that aren't ours but we project our own identity into these stories, onto these stories, as if we'd lived them, deeply, deeper than any single experience in our own lives.
Heave the hagiography out
the stained glass thermometer
from St. Staphylococcus General.
The discharge leaks through his bandages
and where he stepped poisonous lilies
and crocuses grew, livid yellow or
shrunken green, poxy orange suppurating
along the gravel road—if “get-back-to nature”
is what you had in mind, then this treatment
is not going to be for you
More saints die of complications from stigmata
than the print media affiliated with
the Papal See has allowed to get out.
