St. Veronica's Trials, and: The Home Arts, and: Elegy

ST. VERONICA'S TRIALSMwn Townsend *How she refused allfood With piteous smells hissing from her person she drove the sisters from her cell. The potions of devils they said when she refused their aid in the form of an egg threw it out and would take no water. So she descended to absolute thinness, clamped her mouth against bread, chewed the whole day on five orange seeds in praise of her Master's five wounds. Thereupon in contemplation of the oil of citrus she lightheaded heard Him call her name. *How she wrote her autobiography under duress The law for saints contains its own internal contradictions so she penned The Missouri Review · 157 her story five times as proof of sanity though the ink dwelt on her teeth and she disliked writing it took her away from pondering her winter bruises and in any case she altered the stories each time so who knew their truth except for Him who provided bread never any more or less than needed. *How she dreamt of the torments of the body Prayerful hours, marked by chimes, count her sleep in her cell, count the dreams as they keep taunting her with tidings sent from hell, sent from the picture book of saints' laments, she has them all: the fanged writhers, stones flung about to wake her, voices ripe and murmuring words until she doubts her heart, the knives and sticks that pierce, the buzzing hives 158 · The Missouri Review Ann Townsend and worst, the devils unspooling flesh from bone, and bone, that white reminder, that dead zone. *How the devil took herform in order to eat She took to the kitchen her appetite. She took the food laid by in casks. She rode an apparition wreathed in robes that were not hers. She was a manifestation, breaking fast, eating in the corner of the room She took off in flight when caught. She could not be caught. Her appetite made her quick. Go to the others and tell this miracle. Inscribe it in the register of names. *How she was tested by her confessor In her cell the walls were speaking. She kept licking the view. Ann Townsend The Missouri Review · 159 On her tongue were hundreds of abrasions. All the taste buds were bowls of blood. The mortar pressed its palm into her mouth. Her confessor stood behind her. You have done me a great favor she cried. I have found the spiders and they were good. She licked the corners and their webs. They said penance hand in hand. 160 · The Missouri Review Ann Townsend THE HOME ARTS/Ann Townsend I hold your face in my hands. I can taste the cookie you fed me. Do you know superfine sugar combusts into the butter as it melts? So bakeries produce a superior product the home cook cannot aspire to. I am thinking your nipple is very like a currant, though not in its response to the tongue. Many loves hover at the ceiling as we smooth the one skin between us. Then you remind me with your charming teeth of the cascade of feeling that taste brings alive: pain, sweetness, a little tearing of the skin. I let my eyes go soft-focus until you blur, until you burn off— it's my only wish, to make age pass away—like liquor in the pan of plum sauce set aflame. The Missouri Review · 161 ELEGY/Ann Townsend His hands, specked and freckled like an Irish trout, I wish I could draw them. The nape of his neck, hairless, mild. Whatever his smell, that's gone now, too. Better perhaps to name all the plates of eggs and toast he ate at the New Orleans Riverbend— that restaurant now defunct. The waitress knew he did not favor grits. She brought them anyway, in their own ceramic bowl, with a pat of butter wetly yellowing at the top. What kind of love can only remember the menu? It was years he pushed that bowl away. Ann Townsend's poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Nation, The Paris Review and The Georgia Review. Her first collection of poems, Dime Store Erotica...