Sanctity
The Congregation for the Causes
of the Saints travels to the far
corners of the earth
searching out miracles. The girl
chews gum and fixes hair
and cries out to the sky
as the battle for evil continues
in the back, hands, feet ,
the iridescent green of her
ring without intaglio. A stone
rolls away from a grave, and
the Magdalen sees empty
space and testifies. Two
thousand years later on a
corner a baby cries, a dove
flies over a gargoyles as
the rain washes gutters clean.
Karen Bingham Pape is a teacher and writer. Her poems have appeared in small press publications such as Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and Maverick Press and in on-line journals such as Words-Myth and Perigee. She has read her work at conferences such as Southwestern ACA/PCA Pop Culture, ASU Annual Writers Conferences in Honor of Elmer Kelton, and Fort Concho Literary Festival.