A FEW THOUGHTS AFTER THE PASSING OF POPE FRANCIS

by Terri Kirby Erickson

My maternal grandmother, widowed for years, 
was a small, quiet woman who drank a cup 
of Sanka in the late afternoons and took naps. 
I cannot picture her feeling comfortable in her
parents’ primitive Baptist church what with all 
the shouting and dire warnings of damnation.
She rebelled against it at some point, became
a Presbyterian whose members know how to sit
silently in their pews and listen to the preacher 
talk about estate planning and heavenly rewards. 
My mother, also a Presbyterian, and my father, 
a Lutheran, settled on a Methodist compromise. 
But after my brother died, Mom said her prayers 
to Mother Mary more than God, often holding 
one of the many rosaries Catholic charities sent 
her in return for contributions. Not a Catholic, 
she didn’t know what to do with them, but liked 
the feel of the beads in her hands, the weight 
of the cross. I have my mother’s rosaries now 
and some of my own, one of which was blessed 
by the pope. His image is everywhere since his 
death, front and center on the news. But the clip 
that moved me was of Pope Francis and a boy 
who wanted to ask him a question yet was too
afraid to speak. Then the pope said whisper it 
into my ear, his expression so tender, so full of 
goodness and mercy, it unclenched a fist in my 
chest that I did not know was there. This must 
be how my grandmother felt when hell was no 
longer mentioned, and why my mother prayed 
to Mary, who knew the pain of losing a son.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, including Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53), which was a finalist for (general) poetry in the International Book Awards and the Best Book Awards. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, JAMA, ONE ART, Poetry Foundation, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many more. Among her numerous awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina.

THE NUN WAS TORTURED

by Karol Nielsen

The nun founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC).

The American nun, who was gang raped and tortured in Guatemala, died of cancer in Washington, DC. She had been helping indigenous Guatemalans when she was captured. The government suspected the indigenous of left wing subversion, with the United States backing the Guatemalan military in its civil war. The nun was burned by cigarettes, exposed to dead bodies and rats, and forced to mutilate another captive with a machete. She jumped out of a car as the man with accented Spanish drove her to a new location. She fled to the United States and struggled to remember her life there. She sued a Guatemalan general who was studying at Harvard. A judge ordered him to pay millions but he escaped to Guatemala. She told a reporter that even though she was Catholic she struggled to forgive.

Karol Nielsen is the author of two memoirs and two poetry chapbooks. Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. 

ON PRESIDENT DUTERTE'S PROMISE TO CEASE CURSING

by Jim Bartruff

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has made a solemn promise: no more swearing. Duterte, who famously cursed the pope and used a slang term that translates as “son of a whore" while denouncing President Obama, said he was flying back from Japan late Thursday, looking at a vast expanse of sky, listening to his colleagues snore, when he heard a voice say, ‘If you don’t stop epithets, I will bring this plane down now.’ “And I said, ‘Who is this?’ So, of course, ‘it’s God,’” he told Filipino journalists late Thursday. “So, I promise God,” he continued, “Not [to] express slang, cuss words and everything. So you guys hear me right always because [a] promise to God is a promise to the Filipino people.” . . .  Asked if he would really stop cursing out his allies and opponents alike, the president demurred. 'There's always a time for everything, a time to be foul-mouthed,” he said. —Washington Post, October 28, 2016

He descended as Manila's infested
laundry lines and drug dens began to shadow
the landing strip beneath our Tokyo flight,
and I was made to hearken, certain The Lord
had personal messages for my ears only.
The vernacular obscenities
I speak as easily as I lift the safety
and assassinate a sewer village,
these little slips creating images
of untouchable dictatorship,
were not for me, according to Our Father.
Once one accepts the crown, what one projects
profanely through the Age of Distractions reflects
a crudeness on our Catholic island states,
diminishes the purity of our trials,
our power, to the circumspect worldly.
I had for far too long allowed flechettes
too petty to be seen to enter my body
and combine into a hammered metal
like the Roman spear that ended Christ,
and in the pain cried out, "Ecce homo,"
in the language of a prostitute
whose john had used her hole and refused to pay.
The jet's tires hung suspended above the tarmac
when His words extracted my soul and tore it,
so that every rent in the fabric mouthed
my idiocies and insults as we screamed
to touchdown or to death. He said to me,
"Thou shalt not curse again. This promise Me,
or I will scatter you in hellfire fuel
across the landscape of your coming home."
What can one do when God himself instructs
but obey? When the imminence
of His threat is so Old Testament
and by the balls but yield and moan, "Yes, Lord."
                         
Of course, our tires scorched down the dotted lines,
and flagmen led our armored Humvee to where
the palace porticos, the Doric columns,
the air-conditioning, cigars and desks
recovered us from such a holy squalor.
In those few seconds, when He spoke to me,
and I agreed to terms, I uttered nothing
untoward to any stewardess
or bodyguard. I truly kept my words,
He His. Now that is done, and lifted is
the interdiction and collar at my throat,
with conscience cleared of any bargain, I say
what must be said about that American bitch
senator who blocked the sale of weapons
needed to protect our innocents—
"You son of a whore, how dare you interfere,
how can we cleanse our country of the crude
without those thousands of assault rifles
rusting on a freighter in fucking Newark?"

Jim Bartruff's work has appeared in Gambling the Aisle, Fat City Review, TheNewVerse.News, Two Hawks Quarterly,  American Tanka, JAMA, Canto, Barney, and many others. He is a past winner of the William Carlos Williams prize while attending the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and Academy of American Poets prize as UCLA undergraduate. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

WHO AM I TO JUDGE?

by James M. Croteau





I guess it's better,
your tone and all,
but get back to me
when you're ready
to end your claims
to nature's law,
and calls to chastity.
Rescind your stance
on who's "intrinsically disordered"
and I'm all ears.
I think your conscience
needs closer examination--
you have to know
that catechism words
like "grave depravity"
are the nails
in the coffins
of too many Catholic boys.


James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 28 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the southern United States and loved his mother very much. He has had poems published in Hoot: a Postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose, New Verse News, and Right Hand Pointing.