Mary stands solemnly in my mother's garden
Perfectly white from head to toe
Dipped in holy paint and pulled out By her hands
Raised to bless

But the white's begun to flick away
She has veins now
Cracked through to the pewter stone she is carved from
The blessed mother bleeds gray, it seems

Well-intentioned, my mother made her pretty
Draped the cheap, pale, plastic rosary around her neck
The ones they give to kids on Palm Sunday
That they put blasphemously around their own

She stands too close to the porch
Her ascension seemed near one fatal winter
When an icicle from the gutter struck her holy head
Shattering a clean skull cap

My mom buried St. Joseph nearby
Upside-down in the ground so the legend goes
For good luck, when we moved into our new house
Within a week, all frantic

And I have no guts to tell my Irish-Catholic mother
I don't believe her superstitions
The stubborn way she mutters about
The mysteries of God in response to disappointment

It makes sense in the bare bones of it all
Virgins giving birth like a horror movie
Drinking water, turned into bitter wine, or blood
And Mary's shattered skull