RACHEL MILLIGAN

June 19—ST. JULIANA FALCONIERI

Let it be known in life I loved the body
The body feathery japanese maple

The body buzzing by errant sugarstain
The body flush with dirt flickering

water over stones packed tight as scales
The body spiderstrung leashedunleashed by wind

The body that failed me the body
that failed the body that failed me

When they cut me open they’ll find everything

May 1—STS. PHILIP and JAMES, Apostles

Don’t let anyone call you
incorruptible plant

a tangelo tree & see
what bones you find

God wants you
to make yourself hard

as the camelop’s hoof
AKA long dead

AKA decorticate in
the Walmart parking lot

God wants you
to make yourself soft

as the glance
through a doorcrack

at your parents
drinking wine

God wants you
to make yourself enough

So make yourself enough

April 26—STS. CLETUS and MARCELLINUS, Popes, Martyrs

Cadent cantered the protorohippus
Body slinging slughung upstream

toward the gaseous reservoir
No one asked him to wander here

No one asked the water to collect
I have walked much farther than

intended. I have been told a doorway
waits for me: thronged with thorny

weeds swathed in vibratious
dustmites aghast at the prospect

of my arrival. Well good news
you will wait a long time

You never asked if
I wanted to enter

April 24—ST. FIDELIS OF SIGMARINGEN

For my fervor I took a train
And in the sleeping car

I made a space a triangle
My left arm to catch my

slumberhead and when
I dipped my ear into the

interior I heard the echo
of the air hissing

In every dagger a sunbeam
Like a creek in dead heat

Thick light treacling through
loam and joe-pye weed

So was the blood from my side
In every martyr a scorpion

I did not come here
to embrace error

I came to go

June 22—ST. PAULINUS OF NOLA

I will love you until my own death
I will love you until my own death
and then I will stop loving you

Carried like a twig along a creek
Sprung up like broadleaf
I will love you until my own death

Sloughed like fruit from the stem
Cleft as a loaf of bread
I will stop loving you

and I will stretch out
I will spread myself with a knife
I will love you until my own death

and death will walk me out
Death will see me to my car
and I will stop loving you

I will put the key in the ignition
I will drive into the night
I will love you until my own death
and then I will stop loving you

Rachel Milligan is from Philadelphia. She is the author of a chapbook, Queen Carrion (BOAAT, 2016). Her work can also be found in the tiny, Sixth Finch, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.