This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Laura Reece Hogan.
(photo: Céline Martin / Office Central de Lisieux)
Holy Card – St. Thérèse of Lisieux
She made a holy card of herself
dressed as Joan of Arc, warrior,
at her feet a sword, steely
eyes burning beyond border. Joan not
yet canonized, she played Joan,
her holy card. Touch
the retouched flash of aster, the blurred
edge of two fights. Notice
her flare in these words:
here I frame liminal space,
trace faux chain mail of the saint,
pray to grip the steel—
this snapshot an intercession
for flame to kindle beyond
this expression to arc
beyond Joan beyond Thérèse beyond
this little fiery paper passed to you—
Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press, 2020), which won the Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and the nonfiction spiritual theology book I Live, No Longer I (Wipf and Stock, 2017). I Live, No Longer I and O Garden-Dweller were awarded Catholic Press Association Book Awards. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she is one of ten poets featured in the anthology In a Strange Land (Cascade Books, 2019). Her poems have appeared in America Magazine, U.S. Catholic, First Things, The Christian Century, Dappled Things, Whale Road Review, The Cresset, Anglican Theological Review, Relief, Cumberland River Review, Trinity House Review, EcoTheo Review and other publications. She earned a B.A. from Rice University in Houston, Texas, a J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and an M.A. in theology from St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California. She is a professed Third Order Carmelite and lives in Southern California with her family. She can be found online at www.laurareecehogan.com.
