Saint Haiku

st julian the hospitaler

befuddled jester:
after disposing w/folks
fall from grace fiddled

st modomnoc

CEO of bee’s
keeps me sworn to more drudgery
amongst His blurred ranks

st valentine

more dime-store martyrs:
whose heart hasn’t been trampled
like some vulture’s perch!

st sigfrid

your nephews’ bodies
often taken to be bread:
death’s metaphor enough

st juliana

we’ve all been swept up
by the tossed cape & sequins:
that “beelzebub drub”

st forkernus of trim

give me heaven’s bell:
its melody rust-deadened,
over hell’s chain-strain

st theotonius

gulped sunshine & wind
your countenance splurged w/pulp:
it’s both feast, absence

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Mark DeCarteret’s work has appeared in two hundred different publications including AGNI, Atlanta Review, Caliban, Chicago Review, Cream City Review, Conduit, Hotel Amerika, Mangrove, Phoebe, Poetry East, Quick Fiction, Salt Hill, and 3rd bed, as well as the anthologies American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press), Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 (Black Sparrow Press) and Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press) which he also co-edited.