USA

e__5@hotmail.com 

One Day In A Catholic Girls' School--Circa 1968

girls...
brood bitches...
strung out in clots
along the schoolyard
like beads in
an obscene rosary
snickers, guffaws, and shrieks
crest to tsunami
smashing against
my stone face...

I Am Not Silenced

Upon the everflowing waters
Of my love for my children
I have cast my presents and letters 

Today they washed ashore in my mailbox

With an epistle from the social worker

“..the Department is not trying to prevent the children from contacting you
…the children still refuse communication with you..”

Go ahead keep trying some friends have said 
Others ask why bother

For the same reason that people leave offerings at a gravesite
Or letters at the Vietnam Memorial 
Or messages in bottles

They want to forge a link with their dead even if no response is possible
My dead are still alive and deign to give no answer

but

I AM NOT SILENCED!

I will continue to send the gifts and missives 
Knowing that they will boomerang 

Because some day

Edwin and Alisa may come to me and ask Mom how hard did you try

And I will point to the driftwood as my answer

The Blank Check

When she found the lump
She decided to cast the burden upon the Savior and the Blessed Virgin
After all, what’s a good traditional Catholic to do?

She wove this prayer into her daily rosary:
“In the matter of this illness, I give you a blank check.
Do what you will with me.”

The Jesus and Mary chain 
took her at her word
And went to the bank

Through every barrage of chemotherapy
Every episode of vomiting
She thought of her mother’s words:

“If you sign a blank check
you are allowing someone 
to wipe out your savings.”

She was able to laugh at herself
For having the temerity to give a blank check
Without expecting a run for her money

However

No matter what happened
The “promise to pay” was never returned to her
Stamped “insufficient funds” 

Then her daughter had copious nosebleeds
And mysterious bruises
Her mother cried, “Oh Lord, please, not her!”

“My daughter’s name 
was not on that blank check!
Why must she suffer?

God answered her 
By not answering

The agnostics shrugged
your god is a cosmic shapeshifter
a devious trickster

this is what happens
when you give him
a blank check 

The fundamentalists cried
Abandon your religion of superstition
And the whore of Babylon
And God will answer your prayers

She ignored them all
Shrugging her shoulders
To better adjust the cross
On her back

And resist the temptation
To rescind the blank check

Dawn Spring

Night’s fist

encloses the earth

her fingers uncurl

awaiting rebirth

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