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[46] LOVE POEM WITH SKULL AND CANDY VALENTINES And everich of hem did his besy cure Benygnely to chese or for to take, By hir acord, his formel or his make. —Geoffrey Chaucer, “Parlement of Foules” Cosmedin, Rome: in the Chiesa di Santa Maria, a flower-wreathed skull sits preserved in a shrine more ornate than any foil-covered box of candy— that’s Saint Valentine himself, as the hand-lettered strip of bandage across his brow proclaims. “Protector of love,” martyr of Terni, he got couples hitched at a time when—would you believe— it was illegal to marry. The stories say he was beaten with clubs and stoned; and when that failed to kill him, he was beheaded outside the Porta del Popolo. Poor Val, his aquiline nose may have been broken. But he seems to have kept most of his teeth, which rest (some gaps between, though they say that can be sexy) just inside the edge of the reliquary frame. His gold box resembles a 1930s RCA TV, or the consoles in the Doctor Who episode where an alien disguised as a woman is trying to take over the world. Even here, the theme is love and monsters; or love and sex, lust, appetite, desire– everything you want but can’t actually have, so naturally you want it even more. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia, young Roman boys and girls wrote their names on slips of paper and put them into jars; then they held a grand old raffle to find out who they’d walk hand in hand with the next day, share a honeyed sweetmeat with, maybe spoon a little, golden in the olive grove. Did the trees make noise under the cloudless sky, touching in ways we rarely do? Everyone loves a little sugar every now and then; why not them too? Cushioned in red and gold, the saint would understand the meanings of excess: candygrams and chalky [47] conversation hearts (Sweet Dreams, URDGR8ST, Be Mine, Big Hugs), little mounds of milk chocolate goopy in their maraschino centers, cardboard boxes lettered with their swirly tic-tac-toe of x’s and O’s; lacy thong, slinky sarong, velvet codpiece. Welt of pepper and spice, ascetic stripe of sea-salt on the hungry tongue. ...

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