Hymn to Saint No One
an opera for one voice
Mark DuCharme
The typographer miscounted
My poems, but not their weight or
Speed. Whenever ecstasy’s invited,
Sing along. I love how you can get
Lost in that book
If you care to live. Are you also cuttingly
On edge? Deadly showmen;
Unique, sanctimonious underliars;
Someone else’s variegated reflection.
You, who live in doom, remake
Horn trouble from afar.
Indolent expense greatness.
Complete unknown somebodies
Who almost look the same. I think I knew
You once, in scenes
Geographically inconsistent with field mice
& Cold summer rain
Like only the loveliest
Who also pass by—
Mayeresque cartographers entirely too picturesque
Enhanced by trombone payloads
All born laughing
At the same lone temple
Where you don’t even want to be cured.
Mark DuCharme’s newest book is Complicated Grief, from C22 Open Editions. Other recent books include Thousands Blink Outside, also from C22; Here, Which Is Also a Place from Unlikely Books; Scorpion Letters from Ethel; and his work of poet’s theater, We, the Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film, from The Operating System. His poetry has appeared widely in such venues as BlazeVOX, Caliban Online, Chant de la Sirène, Colorado Review, E·ratio, First Intensity, Gas, Indefinite Space, New American Writing, Noon, Otoliths, Shiny, Spinozablue, Talisman, Trilobite, Typo, Unlikely Stories, Utriculi, Word/ for Word, The Writing Disorder, and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.