SAINTS AND SINNERS
It’s Halloween and Angela relishes the thought of being someone else – someone not so Angela. Pondering her situation, she absent-mindedly reaches into the rear pocket of her Calvin Klein jeans. Hi-ho! her favorite lipstick and eyeliner pencil are there ready for instant touch-ups. Of course she’ll wear lots of make-up on Halloween. But, who will she be?
Yesterday, Professor Horus showed slides of ancient Egypt in art history class. Angela often fantasized that she was a royal personage in ancient times. It suddenly dawned on her — who was exotic, sexy, and powerful? Nefertiti! She ran across the quad to her dorm, scooted up the stairs and slammed the door on the shared co-ed bathroom. Angela was a virtuoso when it came to make-up. All the girls on her floor lined up on pre-date Friday nights for tutorials and beer. Now, Angela applied deep black kohl lining her eyes and brows to perfection, enlarged her lips with scarlet red, added cosmic swishes of shimmering turquoise eye shadow and topped it off with a fake beauty mark above her lip.
Professor Horus said that Nefertiti changed the religion of Egypt so that her subjects only worshiped the sun god, Aten. Nefertiti also had a spirit animal, a cat, who accompanied her into the Afterlife. Angela had her own spirit animal, a sleek bobcat who visited her mother’s backyard at dusk. She even named her Diana, after the great huntress.
As she was donning her blue and gold headdress, Angela thought about her own on and off again religion. She remembered (guiltily) that Halloween was followed by not one, but two holy days, All Saints and All Souls days. The nuns had warned her that some of the dead were in purgatory because they died with the guilt of lesser sins on their souls. Angela half believed that those poor souls might haunt her on November 2nd.
What are those lesser sins (Angela is sure she has many) and will they follow her into the Afterlife? Can you be both a saint and a sinner?
Bio:
Elisa Lanzi is a multimedia artist and writer working at the intersection of printmaking and book art. She is a member of the Main Street Writers in Amherst, MA and her first published poem, “Legion of Mary” is included in Ovunque Siamo [Spring 2025]. A residency at the Vermont Studio Center rekindled her desire to write alongside her visual art. Her artists’ books and prints are exhibited frequently in both juried and invitational settings and are represented in public and private collections. Elisa had an earlier career in libraries and museums, fueling her deep engagement with books and art. Elisa grew up in an Italian-American family in Rochester, NY and lives in Western Massachusetts. www.elisalanzi.com.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 