Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Amy Gerstler

Amy Gerstler: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch] - The Best American  Poetry

Saints

Miracle mongers. Bedwetters. Hair-shirted wonder workers. Shirkers of the
soggy soggy earth. A bit touched, or wholly untouched living among us?
They shrug their bodies off and waft with clouds of celestial perfume. No
smooching for this crew, except for hems, and pictures of their mothers…
their lips trespass only the very edges of succor. Swarms of pious bees precede
her. One young girl wakes up with a ring on her finger and a hole in her
throat. Another bled milk when her white thigh was punctured. All over the
world, a few humans are born each decade with a great talent for suffering.
They have gifts that enable them to sleep through their mistreatment: the
sleep of the uncomplaining just, the sleep of the incomplete. Our
relationship to them is the same as our relationship to the trees: what they
exhale, we breathe.

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