FRANCIS’S PARTY

by Jo Ann S. Hoffman

God slept in the day after Francis arrived

matter of fact I couldn’t reach a soul up there

 

finally managed to snag Mary about noon

(she always has her cell)

sorry it’s so late, she says

but we partied hard last night

sang and danced 

ate and drank till all hours

everyone is dragging today

 

she adds 

the Trifecta was pleased with Francis

good man   strong voice      soft touch

I hear the smile in her words

anything on your mind dear?

 

I look down at my long written list

of wishes and (mostly) complaints 

not really, I say, just checking in to say hi

 

Well, good   do that every day if you can

I’m off to take a nap

a little laugh and she was gone

Jo Ann S. Hoffman’s publications include a children’s book, short fiction and numerous poems in literary journals, including The Merton Seasonal, Flying South, Pinesong, Persimmon Tree, Red Clay Review, Broad River Review and The North Carolina Literary Review, among others. A Pushcart nominee, she has received awards from The Palm Beach Poetry Festival and several other contests.    Her non-fiction narrative, Angels Wear Black, recounts the only technology executive kidnapping to occur in California’s Silicon Valley. 

A CHURCH ON UKRAINE’S EASTERN FRONT

by Suzanne Morris

Fighters from Ukraine’s Karpatska Sich Battalion in a church on Dec. 25 that was destroyed by shelling and reportedly looted by Russian forces during their occupation, in the Lyman district in the Donetsk region. Credit: Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

The Church is torn from

limb to limb

daylight flooding through

gaping holes in hallowed walls

Russian spies posing as

monks and priests and nuns 

and at least one Ukrainian abbot 

convicted of espionage.

So I wonder about

the soldier in combat gear

entering through

an arched door

wrested from its hinges,

glass blown out

his heavy boots crunching

on the pulverized pieces

littering a floor

thickly layered with shell dust

below a magisterial portrait of

Jesus praying in the

Garden of Gethsemane,

looking heavenward

as if to beseech God for

an explanation for this

violent schism between two branches

that grew from the same root,

for the shell holes that

pock the background of the

star-speckled sky

above his haloed head

and the rock he kneels against

to pray.

Jewel-toned paraments

embroidered in gold

are strewn about the floor

and flung against

the high upholstered back of a

filigreed chair

while the Virgin Mary

enfolded in deep blue and rose

ponders in her heart

from high above:

For this, my son died on the cross?

Nearby, the wooden altar

with elaborate detail

is deeply scarred, panels missing

its top piece knocked awry

and all around, sections of

towering, frescoed walls blown out,

the portraits adorning them ripped,

iconography broken and dangling.

The soldier’s head is bowed

as though he has escaped

for a few moments of prayer

within this tattered sanctuary.

Or, perhaps he has come to

search for evidence of treason:

lists of people to be killed,

wads of illicit cash,

pamphlets of Russian propaganda

to be traced

so that justice

can be served.

And all the while the

raging war

hurtles into its second year... 

Suzanne Morris is a novelist and a poet. Her poems have appeared in online poetry journals including The New Verse News, The Texas Poetry Assignment, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Pinecone Review, and Emblazoned Soul Review.