I found a photograph of meturning ten, a rough ropetied around my waist, a reminderof the sins I kept and counted:stolen chocolates and playcigarettes. Behind me, friendsfastened tails to the tattered assof a paper donkey. Those werethe lip gloss years, seriousand uncomely. I had a callingto be a nun. My forehead wasthat criminal. For heaven,I’d grind my knees intopavement until they’d bleed,stare unblinking at the sun.Pain’s blaze simplified me,gave me a bone to break.It was hard workto be holy.Like a mule, I labored.
Unholy
Amy Thatcher
Feature Date
Series
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Copyright © 2025 by Amy Thatcher.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Amy Thatcher is a native of Philadelphia, where she works as a public librarian. Her poems have been published in Copper Nickel, Salt Hill, Denver Quarterly, Cherry Tree, Tahoma Literary Review and others. Her debut collection, Weird Girl, won the 2025 The Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize, and will be published by The Ohio State University Press in February 2027.
54
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse University
Editors-in-Chief
Dylan Hoffman
Lily Holloway
Managing Editor
Jo Clark
Salt Hill is a biannual literary journal publishing outstanding new fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and art by people at various stages in their literary and artistic careers. We publish new and emerging writers alongside those with long, illustrious careers in the literary arts.
We are interested in work that represents a broad spectrum of experience. We believe it is critical to lift up the voices of writers and artists who have been traditionally underrepresented in the literary arts. As such, we feel an urgency to read and consider work by people of color, women, queer people, non-binary folks, and anyone else who has been marginalized by the institutions which have, for so long, dominated the publishing scene.
Salt Hill is produced by writers in and affiliated with the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University and is funded in part by the College of Arts & Sciences and the Graduate Student Organization of Syracuse University.
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
