THE LAYING ON OF HANDS

by Kathie Giorgio

Trigger Warning: The following poem narrates scenes of the sexual abuse of a child by an adult.

I was always told that

God is Love.

From the church I no longer attend

From the catechism I’ve forgotten

From Buddhists, reiki masters, Wiccans,

psychics, evangelists, all whose words

have blended together into a quagmire.

But… God is Love, I was told.

My ninth grade science teacher wore a

pin on the lapel of his suit jacket.

Every day. In a public school.

It said, “PTL Anyway!”

I asked him what it meant, in a quiet moment

during study hall.

He said, “Praise The Lord Anyway!” and laughed.

Then he asked me if I was saved.

I was anything but.

He told me to follow him and we weaved through

the classroom of students and desks. Right in

front of them. They turned and watched us go.

He held my hand.

He took me to the storeroom at the back. We went

inside. He shut the door. Locked it. Turned off

the Light.

Then he folded my hands between his and he prayed.

For me. He prayed hard. His hands grew warm around mine.

I thought I felt the Holy Spirit.

And then

Well, and then

he put my hands on himself.

and then his hands on me.

He lifted me onto a table and laid me back.

As he pressed into me, he said,

“Always remember I love you. Always remember.”

God is Love. PTL Anyway!

And I so wanted Love, I didn’t fight back.

I was fourteen years old.

I have always remembered his declaration.

And I’ve always wondered about Right and Wrong.

And now

Well, and now

I think of all the stories I was told. All the stories I read

as I devoured the bible front to back, side to side, old and new.

Looking for God. Looking for Love.

The Good Samaritan, who helped the beaten man on the side of

the road, passed over by others.

The rich man who boasted of his wealth, giving to the church,

but only from his surplus

while a poor woman gave all she had.

Two pennies.

Let the little children come unto me.

Jesus wept.

And I shudder as I think of those who call themselves Christians

electing a man they say is of God, who would push the Samaritan

out of his way

and kick the beaten man over the border.

The man of God, who held up an upside-down bible with one hand

while grabbing women “by the pussy,” he said, with the other.

The man of God, who would save bits of tissue

tissue with no heart, no brain, no body,

no thoughts, no wants, no cares

and ignore the cries of children who are hungry.

Who are cold.

Who have no homes.

Who are looking for Love.

Who become pregnant by a man who wears a pin.

PTL Anyway!

And I hear again now, God is Love.

I think back to that ninth grade science teacher

who made me feel like I might be Loved

Whose PTL Anyway button pressed into my bare breast

as he pressed into me.

And I gasped with the hope of it.

I cried with the pain of it.

And then spent years, wondering about Right and Wrong.

PTL Anyway

But I feel the last nail driven in,

not the Holy Spirit.

I see who they call a man of God

and what they believe God’s Love would do.

There are no hands to deliver my spirit into.

I believe in Nietzsche.

God is Dead.

Kathie Giorgio is the author of eight novels, two story collections, an essay collection, and four poetry collections. A new poetry collection Let Me Tell You; Let Me Sing will be released in 2026. She’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry and awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, the Silver Pen Award for Literary Excellence, the Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence, and the Eric Hoffer Award In Fiction. She is the director/founder of AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop LLC.

PILGRIMAGE TO EMILY DICKINSON'S HOUSE ON NINETY-TWO DEGREE SUMMER DAY

by Laura Rodley

What would Emily say? The driveway to her brother Edward’s home

is gated, the property surrounded with orange crisscrossed plastic

fencing, plastic not yet invented in her time, nor the cure for her kidney

ailments. Today her condition would have been aggravated by the chlorine

and other astringent agents the town uses to clean the water pumped

to the homes. She would have drunk water from an artesian well

in her Victorian home, writing poems at two a.m., loving someone

she could not have, not from the future, but from her own time period.

Was she ever pregnant as some suggest? Was she virginal as her white

dresses? Did she actually suffer from hypertension? Was she able

to see the future? Her poems crossed realms of time and space.

Would she have cut the crisscrossed orange fence, crushed it down,

or felt more secure to be enclosed, secure in her hermitage

peopled with family, cooks, and Irish workmen, six of whom carried

her casket to her grave in West Cemetery, where she walked in the evenings.

She was nourished by a garden that is no longer open to the public

due to Covid. A garden that fed her, kept her poetry

alive, already passed through the gates into other’s hands through letters.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Latest books: Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and As You Write It Lucky Lucky 7, a collection of 11 writers' work.

MEDICAL ADVICE TO WOMEN OF CHILDBEARING AGE

by Joan Mazza

El Salvador wants women to avoid getting pregnant until 2018, out of concern for the Zika virus rampaging through Latin America. Zika virus can cause serious birth defects, a fact that has led several Latin American countries to ask local women to hold off on getting pregnant until the outbreak is under control. El Salvador, however, is the first to announce a two-year ban on baby-making. “We’d like to suggest to all the women of fertile age that they take steps to plan their pregnancies, and avoid getting pregnant between this year and next,” El Salvador’s Deputy Health Minister Eduardo Espinoza told Reuters. Here’s the problem: Abortions are illegal in El Salvador, and birth control is hard to come by. The irony, which seems lost on El Salvador, is that the same government that denies women control over their reproductive health is now asking those same women to control their reproductive health until 2018. —Vocativ, Jan. 26, 2016.  Photo: AP

The women of El Salvador are told to not get pregnant,
to postpone starting a family. Poor women without
access to reliable birth control, single women,
girls who are raped are being told to delay families,
delay their planned pregnancies. The Zika virus

causes birth defects. More than four thousand
babies have already been born with tiny heads,
impaired cognitive functions, plus other yet-to-be-
diagnosed disabilities. Mosquitoes are carriers.
Tell them to cover up to avoid being bitten

by mosquitoes, to dress in the equivalent
of a burka. Tell them not to tempt the men who
rape them because of their skimpy clothes,
long legs, pouty lips, absence of power.

Already-pregnant women hold their bellies,
wonder what they carry, what life they
will have. How will they work and care
for these children? Abortion is illegal.
Spray poison, spray standing water, drain

swimming pools. Tell them to slather
their bodies in DEET. Tell women not to travel
to infected countries if they are pregnant
or plan to be. Aedes aegypti is an aggressive biter.

You might as well tell them not to buy yachts
or furs or SUVs or private jets. These luxuries
harm habitats, hurt the planet. Consider those
whose heads are so small they can’t see straight.
Consider the many with impaired cognition.


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Kestrel, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.

YOUR HANDS WILL BE PREGNANT IN THE AFTERLIFE

by Luisa A. Igloria

After claiming that a man would meet his masturbating hand “pregnant in the afterlife” and “asking for its rights,” a Muslim televangelist has set Turkish social media aflame. Self-styled televangelist Mücahid Cihad Han . . . claimed that Islam strictly prohibits masturbation as a “haram” (forbidden) act. “Moreover, one hadith states that those who have sexual intercourse with their hands will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife, complaining against them to God over its rights,” he said, referring to what he claimed to be a saying of Prophet Muhammad. . . . “Istimna,” the Arabic term for masturbation that Han also referred to, is a controversial issue in Islam, as there have been varying opinions on its permissibility throughout history. The Quran has no clear reference to masturbation and the authenticity of many hadiths is questionable. —Hurriyet Daily News (Turkey), May 25, 2015. Image source: MemeCenter

Your hands will be pregnant in the afterlife,
warns the televangelist to men who masturbate,
which makes me put my coffee cup down in alarm and stare hard

at my own hands. What about women? What happens to women's hands?
I mean, not necessarily from masturbating, but from all the things
our hands ​so frequently and ​lovingly do? I know a carver who couldn't stop

touching​ ​any surface of wood he happened across: flotsam on the beach,
the rails​ ​along a ship's boarding ramp on which his fingers could have lingered
for hours if not for the porter's brusque Come on, hurry it up will ya?​ 

I know a weaver who'll smooth and finger each tensile fiber on ​her loom,​ ​
each shuttle's pass setting off ​hundreds of indistinct vibrations that give
​the resulting garment its patterns of flushed color and shade.

If indeed hands could get pregnant in this or in ​the afterlife,
would that provide relief for women who have up to now borne
the brunt of each sexual​ ​aftermath, ​9 months housing a growing body

until it's really time​ ​to ​count out the rent? Think of ​the ​revisions
we'd have to make​ ​in the histories of our science and art, ​including
fashion---​ ​buttoned elbow-length gloves back in style, the idiom peek-

a-boo once more in circulation; artists commissioned to paint
fig leaves like giant Band-Aids over the hands of both Adam and Eve​,
in a garden cordoned off with signs saying Absolutely do not touch.


Luisa A. Igloria’s most recent publication credits include Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014) and Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014).

A HOPE IN PERILOUS TIMES

by Buff Whitman-Bradley







"Woman With Child & Calla Lilies" (oil) 24" by 30" by Renee Thompson.





On my way to the grocery store
Brooding about famine and endless war
Environmental catastrophe and economic collapse
I notice a young pregnant woman
Her head held high
Striding up the block like the whole brass band
Following her big beautiful drum majorette of a belly
Toward a future that I hope will be there
To embrace her child

Buff Whitman-Bradley is the author of four books of poetry, b. eagle, poet; The Honey Philosophies; Realpolitik; and When Compasses Grow Old; and the chapbook, Everything Wakes Up! His poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. He is also co-editor, with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley and Sarah Lazare, of the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War.  He has co-produced/directed two documentary films, the award-winning Outside In (with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley) and Por Que Venimos (with the MIRC Film Collective).  He lives in northern California.