Audio: Read by the author.
Silver, shaped
_____ like a heart but now
empty, holding only some air,
_____ a lungful of sour breath
from someone who last breathed
_____ before the metal hinge
clicked shut. Or this, in the shape
_____ of a saint’s forearm—
fashioned from gilded silver, niello,
_____ and gems, with a wood core—
how lifelike it looks: creased where the fingers
_____ fold, the half-moon of each
fingernail slightly raised…
_____ In procession, the lacquered
arm was raised high so that
_____ the crowds could see—
having waited in whirls of dust
_____ on the road, families straining
for a glimpse of what luck
_____ was promised to them.
Sometimes, small windows
_____ worked into the design—
miniature hinges and faux panes—
_____ opened
to show the bones inside:
_____ femur, forearm, shard
of clavicle and hip, knobs
_____ of knees and ankles,
rolling knucklebones:
_____ a piece
could make a township famous.
_____ But most precious
were the skulls, for which they
_____ also built likenesses,
hollowed busts elaborately
_____ painted, preserving lip
and eye color, the particular
_____ slope of a nose,
blond braids coiled like rope
_____ dipped in gold.
In Siena’s basilica, Saint
_____ Catherine’s head,
freed from its reliquary,
_____ now stands in its own
skin, incorrupt on the silver
_____ altar, the teeth still visible
in that open air. To get the head,
_____ the Sienese had to sever
it from the body and smuggle
_____ it out of Rome—
a pious mutilation ordained
_____ by the papacy.
Hatchet, saw, and blade
_____ sharpened for this work,
then the heft that leaned
_____ into the neck
to break the spinal cord.
_____ Catherine, patron
saint of safety
_____ from fire—
Once, smugglers
_____ hid the severed head
in a sack and, when the guards
_____ approached, prayed
for a miracle: their sack
_____ lightened, filled now
with rose petals—the color of
_____ a heart still burning.