From an Appendix of Lesser-Known Saints
Lucinda became a saint because she knew God wanted her
to claw out her own eyes and gorge on grass until she 
fainted rather than marry a protestant man, who, 
by the way, smelled of worms and never brushed his teeth. 
Her miracles after she lost her sight were minor: 
a levitation, bells ringing all at once on a Monday morning, 
giving her patient father a migraine, and the healing of 
goldfish in several pails.  She ate the fine sharp grass 
until she was too heavy to walk and when the roots were 
nibbled into the ground, she asked her brothers to roll 
her in a wheelbarrow to the next pasture.  As she grew 
bigger she flattened and spread out, like pale lava oozing
 
to form a new island.  The townspeople took to wearing 
handkerchiefs over their noses when they passed her end
 
of the field, the effulgence from her bowels was so foul 
and rich.  The horses crowded against the far fence,
  
crows gasped in the trees and the indigo swallows that 
appeared in the south every spring fell dead in soft
 
speckled rain about her thighs. Eventually, as Lucinda 
had long hoped, the grass diet killed her.  She
 
ascended directly to heaven; her massive calves and 
cheeks now light as spun sugar candy.  
Her father still sees her in his dreams. She rides a cow, 
modestly sitting sideways. She’s slim again but her eyes
 
are green this time and she says nothing, just smiles
like she’s happy, but a little bored.
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Any place I need to cut the "fat"?
 
 
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