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left naked overnight in a frozen pond
and boiled to death the next morning
set the standard of martyrdom
for centuries to come.
You had to be beheaded, like
St. Denis, who then walked
several miles through the plagued
streets of Paris while the head
he held in his hands gave a sermon
on the topic of forgiveness, or stabbed
fourteen times as Maria Goretti was
at the age of twelve by her rapist
Alessandro Serenelli, a nineteen year
old farmhand who later in prison had
a vision of Maria in a garden of lilies,
transforming each at her touch
from a flower into a still white flame.
Her body, which would not decay,
was rubbed with camphor oil and
wax, her ears stuffed with angelica
and meadowsweet, her mouth with
elecampane, juniper, and six cloves of garlic.
You had to have your breasts cut off
like St. Agatha, who later carried them
on a silver platter, her two loaves of bread.

© 2008 Brandon Mazur