Saturday 23 November 2013

Portrait 11

           skylight white
                            bleach corridor

She conducts mute themes
               coming from photographed faces
           of people who are dead

       Come evening, a small whiskey fuming

                            Our Lady of Lourdes

                    her Irishness

            a golden brooch
                 her hands hold
                          closed

2 comments:

  1. Bleach, Irish and Whiskey go together like Love, Marriage and Homicide.

    Bernadette of Lourdes was force-fed in the urban Irish catholic ape troop from which I issued.

    Orson Welles declared Jennifer Jones to be absolutely devoid of acting talent, and the clip bears this out. Though the interaction with the schoolmates (who seem to come from the Nebraska section of Lourdes) is amusing in a way, and there is the suspicion of a hint of a UFO sighting in the way the Virgin appears in that grotto.

    In my mother's intimate social circle, Lourdes was regarded, along with Rome and South Bend, Indiana, as one of the three rotating centers of the universe.

    When one of these women got cancer, inevitably there were two possible destinations. The Mayo Clinic and Lourdes.

    Cancerous women came back from Lourdes with the habit of saying the rosary over and over, the beads strung between painfully outstretched upreached arms.

    Death and white skylights go together like Lourdes and Aliens.

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  2. It must be said, there's little that's life giving about the light coming down from the ceiling.

    I do get that desire for a place on the map where you could locate hope. Maybe miracles do happen.

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