This week’s poem, Jeri Theriault’s “Patrons,” is a vivid portrait of a mother by way of her favorite saints. I love this poem’s marvelously intimate voice and angled line-breaks, and the incredible final image of an indelible woman.

Theriault won the 2023 Maine Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, the 2023 Monson Arts Fellowship, the 2022 NORward Prize and a 2019 Maine Literary Award. Her poems and reviews have appeared widely. She is the author of “Self-Portrait as Homestead” and “Radost, my red” and the editor of “Wait: Poems from the Pandemic.” She lives in South Portland.

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

Patrons
By Jeri Theriault

My mother’s saints—the quiet ones—have grown used
to their oblivion. Like most things my mother left

they don’t fit my life without her. I claim them anyway—
Joseph of real estate and Matthew of accounting.

Oh, she believed in Jude (desperate) and Anthony (lost)
but loved the lesser saints for their specific merits

their pinpoint map of woes and wishes. Genevieve
of disasters and Paris      Edward of difficult marriages

and Theresa     her name saint     patron of headache sufferers.
Mom worked in bookkeeping     divorced my father     and sold

our old house. Maybe she dreamed in French. I imagine her
in a raccoon coat and red heels     stubbing out a Winston

as she slipped her pleas into the side door of Sacred Heart
a wild stab     slightly snide     hedging her bets.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Patrons,” copyright 2023 by Jeri Theriault, is reprinted from Self-Portrait as Homestead (Deerbrook Editions). It appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.

Copy the Story Link