Poems for the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene

Today is the feast day of Mary Magdalene.  If you came here hoping for a historical and theological and feminist type blog post, I wrote that type of blog post for my theology blog, which you can read here.

This morning, I'm thinking of Mary Magdalene and the way she has appeared in poetry.  My favorite is Marie Howe's Magdalene is my favorite, both the book and the individual poem, "Magdalene--The Seven Devils" (the poem is here).

And a sidenote before continuing with this post:  I do realize all the ways that talking about demon possession is problematic, and I do think that characterizing Mary Magdalene as a prostitute possessed by demons was a way that the early Church tried to discredit her.  Back to poetry.

Howe's poem is so fabulous that I hesitate to post mine here; I'm fairly sure that I had not read her poem when I wrote the two poems below.  I wrote one and then a few years later, decided to revisit the idea in the poem that I thought had more potential.  It's an interesting insight into the ways that poems can influence each other, talk to each other, and lead to different poems.

Here's the first one, which I wrote after reading the passage in Acts where the slave girl has her demons cast out, which makes her valueless, since she can no longer forecast the future.

Demon Dwellings



Mary Magdalene misses
the sixth demon the most,
the one who was her best self,
the one who knew what to say,
how to dress,
how to make the best cocktail,
the one who slept
peacefully through the night.

The slave girl misses
all her demons—
no one else would talk
to her when she was possessed.
No one talks to her now.

I eat dinner with homeless men,
and I remember my mother explaining
demon possession as an ancient
way to explain mental illness.
The homeless man rants in a language
not quite human, and I ponder
those demons and their destiny.

Here's the poem I wrote a few years later, when I was continuing to think about Mary Magdalene and what healing from demon possession might be like, especially after Jesus was gone.

The Fifth Demon



You moderns read about my demon
possession, and you think of The Exorcist:
gravel voices out of the mouths of schoolgirls,
mouths that spew gobs of green goo.


I tell you, it wasn’t like that. Each demon
had a unique personality, a tone
that only I could recognize. In the night,
the hiss of their suggestions soothed
me into sleep. By day, their constant
criticisms and complaints proved motivation.

And then I met Jesus. His voice
filled my head and crowded out the demons.
His stories left me slightly dizzy,
like I had spent weeks sleeping
on a sailing ship and returned to land.

I miss the fifth demon most.
I lost them, and then I lost
him, and now I have only the tomb
of my empty mind.