Adriana Beltrano
Tony Soprano Dreams of Girl Saints
In a cramped cupboard of a classroom,
my teacher, barely out of school,
raises a cutout cardboard communion
to us like Father does every Sunday.
Dimmed yellow grins, each rod
of fluorescence casts pale on the wafer
as teacher tells us about the girl, only seven,
who wanted to eat Christ so bad
but wasn’t old enough. One day,
the wafer floated to her.
Entered her mouth. Ecstatic,
she died. Just like that. Overcome
with met desire.
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Image by P. Martinez from Pexels
Adriana Beltrano is a Floridian poet pursuing her MFA in poetry at Johns Hopkins University, where she is a managing editor of The Hopkins Review. She is a 2026 Poetry Society of America Summer Fellow, and she was selected by Diane Seuss as an honorable mention for the 2025 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in Hayden's Ferry Review, Passages North, and Puerto del Sol.
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