Mother Mary Under I-90


  What is miraculous is that a natural event like a stain from leaking water and a supernatural event like seeing Mary converge.
     -Chicago Tribune April 19th, 2005

 
 
Moonlight filters through streetlight
and the whir of concrete under
part-time alcoholics and late-night
employees performs a kind of music.
 
Around Her the smell of population
is replaced by pine incense and wilting
flowers. The gifts of desperate prayer
hover around Her salt-stained image
 
thick enough to eat. Below Her, peacefully
kicking in his sleep, a man draped
in blankets starts to dream
that his children still dream of him.
 
           It is not our place to ask why She
           reaches out her hand to comfort him.


Michael VanCalbergh
Michael VanCalbergh received his MFA in Poetry from Rutgers-Newark where he taught for six years before moving to Normal, IL. When not catching his daughter before she jumps off the couch headfirst, he is one-half of the comedy etymology podcast Words for Dinner. His has appeared, or is forthcoming from, Gingerbread House, The Collagist, Naugatuck River Review, and others.