More on: relics

Everyone in the family insists / the bones are ours. Nurses fuss and refuse at first, / / until we threaten a lawyer.

In Siena’s basilica, Saint Catherine’s head, freed from its reliquary, now stands in its ownskin, incorrupt on the silver altar, the teeth still visiblein that open air.

  Weird magic, it seems now, a spell to believe in the candles crossed like swords across your neck for the feast of Saint Blaise— God preserve you, the priest intoned again and again. We stood in line, the whole school, as the white tapers were pressed against each neck to ward off sore throats,…

1 The cloak of the saint was filled with roses The cloak of the saint rose above the city The cloak of the saint was thrown over the back of a chair it slowly filled with a human form it was filled with the sound of wind It floated down the mountainside sheep it passed…

When I board the Manhattan-bound A train in Brooklyn, it is already crowded with commuters on their way home, faces bearing traces of the day—the downward lines of weariness, mostly, the sour pinch of frustration, sometimes the surprise of a smile or the clear signs of content: cheeks at peace, eyes that gaze with interest…