Five Saints by Ann Pedone

[A strange girl.

She wanted to be a pilgrim

and so ate salt for three days.

Now she knows how to be vast

and compassionate. And yet she too

will be drowned in the sea.]

[At the burning of offerings

inside the room we appease the ghost.

Lift up our arms

and watch the women around us

turn into birds.]

[Who are you to talk of a woman’s breasts]

[I have been left in warm sand.

Yet I can feel him still

locked behind my bright lips.]

[What body of water is it

re-electrifies

and becomes

a saint.]

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Ann is the author of The Medea Notebooks (spring, 2023 Etruscan Press), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (2022, Press 53), as well as numerous chapbooks. Her work has recently appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Chicago Quarterly Review, 2River, The Dialogist, Barrow Street, and New York Quarterly. She has been nominated for Best of the Net, and has appeared as Best American Poetry’s “Pick of the Week”. Ann graduated from Bard College and has a Master’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Berkeley.