Saint Lucy by Nancy Holmes

April 20, 2022

POEM TITLE: Saint Lucy (who carries her eyes in a dish) POET NAME: Nancy Holmes POEM: May I offer you an eye? A young woman’s orb freshly plucked. The lens a clear lozenge not yellowed with age. Inside, a layer of chocolatey retina and a filling of gel, not even a lump or a floater. A ball uncataracted, cleansed of lid and lash. Its blue iris anise-flavoured, I speculate, to accompany the gush of ocular salt on the tongue. END OF POEM. CREDITS AND BIO: Copyright © Nancy Holmes Previously published in Arborphobia (University of Alberta Press, 2022). Nancy Holmes has published six collections of poetry, mostly recently Arborophobia (University of Alberta Press, 2022). Nancy’s poems and short stories have been published in Canada, the UK, and Ireland. She is the editor of Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems and she teaches Creative Writing at The University of British Columbia in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada where she lives. She also collaborates with communities and other artists on eco art projects both locally and internationally. Nancy won the 2017 Malahat Review’s Creative Non-Fiction award.