St. Agatha Waits for Peter

The National Gallery, Edinburgh, 2015

It’s true. I did not need 

them, the mounds of flesh 

where my children should have 

fed, their milkteeth nibbling 

cracked skin, suckling little drops of 

blood with every gulp of milk. 

Still, as I lie bleeding, 

my breasts carried away in a bowl 

(perhaps given to a hungry dog)

I want them back. I send a prayer 

like a stumbling child to heaven. 

I wait in the blooming red.

           ©️  Ellie White, 2016

(First published by |tap| magazine, 2016)

The martyrdom of St. Agatha
by a follower of C. Welcome
from Wikimedia Commons

Rain

When I rain

I rain on plastic tents

stretched over heating vents

where the homeless sleep on cold nights

in the cold, cold cities.

In southern towns

I pound tin roofs—

slanting shanty roofs

across the railroad tracks.

There I drum a slum song

to children asleep in one bed.

Under the bridge,

an old man in a dirty sleeping bag

slips into a drunken doze.

He dreams of better days

when he was a young buck,

dancing like rain

on top of the world.

© Peg Latham,  1993

Rain in Kolkata
Photo by Monster eagle
from Wikimedia Commons