AN OPEN LETTER EXPLAINING ELEMENTS OF OUR NEW, IMPROVED, AND DECIDEDLY UNWOKE CURRICULUM

by Dick Westheimer

Dear Parent,

 

We believe in children. We believe 

in padded playgrounds and unscuffed knees 

and helmets and a bubble wrapped curriculum 

lined with velvet and free from troubled ideas.

 

We believe our teachers should teach

that enslaved Africans got vocational skills

like painting and planting for their personal benefit,

that residents of Auschwitz knew the trick of how 

to lose weight and look so fit, that members 

of the Five Tribes, removed for their own good, 

got to “pursue happiness in their own way.”

 

We believe those seeking refuge (whose boats 

overturn) might learn to swim, that those 

with black-lung get to sit in front of their TVs

in their BarcaLoungers with their very own 

government issued oxygen tanks, that Catholic 

boys get personal tutoring in anatomy from 

respected men in their white collared shirts, 

that trafficked girls get to travel the world 

and meet new friends.

 

We believe children should learn nothing

about those pre-teens head-bent in sweatshops

sewing their shoes, or two-year-olds toddling 

in electronics junk yards recycling their PCs

or tweens armed and taught to harm their kin. 

 

We do this for you, dear parent 

because, we are committed to protect 

you from Judgement Day when 

Johnny or Susie asks what 

you could have done and why, 

dear parent, you didn’t. 

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have recently appeared in Whale Road Review, Innisfree Journal, Gyroscope Review, Banyan Review, Rattle, Ritual Well, One Art, and Cutthroat. His chapbook A Sword in Both Hands: Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine is published by SheilaNaGig.

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.

GIRLS SAY YES

Poem for Veterans Day

by Sandra Anfang

Pictured L to R: Joan Baez, Pauline Baez Marden, Mimi Farina in this 1968 poster, from a Jim Marshall photograph, promoting draft resistance during the Vietnam War. Source: National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

to boys who say no.

The words ring hollow

in my ears like a looped refrain

from a scratched LP

a not-so-distant memory.

 

Aligned with the movement

I nodded and signed on. I never

gave my body—much less

heart—to a man in uniform, unless he worked

in the service of people, animals, or trees.

 

But what about the other war

the one that ogled us

from leering unshaved faces

from portraits on greenbacks

from slave ships and pedophile priests?

 

Blissfully unaware of the battle

that raged behind clenched teeth

we sailed along, soothed by the

waters of our beliefs, decades

before our lips would shape the words me too.

Sandra Anfang is the author of three poetry collections and her work has been published in numerous journals. She's also a visual artist, editor, poetry teacher in the schools, and host of a long-running poetry series. She lives in Northern California, where she looks for good trouble every day.

PROFESSIONS DURING OUR WORLD'S CORONAVIRUS CRISIS

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Coalition for the Homeless

                there are thousands of gaping holes now
                and there will be too many more
                spaces once filled with art music love
                such a long list of griefs
                a census list too long
                doctors
                nurses
                parents
                friends
                priests
                                     sisters
                          as well as the other invisible
                                     hospital cleanup crews
                sanitation workers
                                     truckers
                stock boys
                cashiers of every stripe
                then there is the government’s own:
                the workers of neither rain or shine
                delivering our mail
                                     those who served
                                     the never counted away invisible
                the homeless addicts prisoners . . .
                each and every empty space
                a sterling silver invitation
                a call  a challenge
                to those who will come after
                                     to fill these gaping holes
                with the sacred earth of their lives

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S. is a certified spiritual director whose poems and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and journals as well as four anthologies. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless (Press 53) was published in 2015.

THREE EPIGRAMS ON THE EVE OF A CONFERENCE

by Julie Steiner

“With the Vatican resisting change, it will have to come from outside the Catholic world.”—“Catholic Church ‘nowhere close’ to confronting global ‘epidemic’ of child sex abuse by priests,” The Telegraph, 19 February 2019

1. A Concise Translation of the Vatican’s 1962 Crimen Sollicitationis Instruction 

Sadly,

some priests behave badly.

Give all who know it—even children—hell

if they tell.

2. The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37)

The priest and Levite couldn’t pause.

They scuttled past the victim.

To keep their cold religious laws,

the priest and Levite couldn’t pause.

The heretic could help, because

such rules did not restrict him.

The priest and Levite couldn’t. [Pause.]

They scuttled. Passed the victim.

3. The Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3-7)

The Shepherd leaves the ninety-nine

to save the one who’s in perdition.

The flock stay put, convinced they’re fine;

the Shepherd leaves. The ninety-nine

lose sight of him when they decline

to join him on his rescue mission.

The Shepherd leaves the ninety-nine

to save the one. Who’s in perdition?

Julie Steiner lives and writes in San Diego. Besides the TheNewVerse.News, the venues in which her poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, American Arts Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Rattle, and the Rat's Ass Review.

THE PRIEST BELIEVES

by Joan Colby

Pope Francis with Cardinal McCarrick. File photo by Jonathan Newton-Pool/Getty Images.

“I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the church charged with responsibility for their protection and education,” [Pope] Francis said. “The failure of ecclesiastical authorities – bishops, religious superiors, priests and others – adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share those sentiments.” —The Guardian, August 25, 2018

The host in the ciborium is transfigured

By words into Christ’s body,

The wine to blood.

He drinks ceremonially,

Offers the communicants

The chalice of redemption.

He believes in vocation,

In the holy calling

Of the spirit. He reads

His breviary, recites the

Apostles' Creed.

The sacristy where he dons

The vestments. The boys in lace

Surplices, their voices

Not yet deep as echoing wells.

Christ forgives all sins, even these.

He thinks of the thieves on the crosses.

The promise of paradise.

Of John the beloved disciple

And Leonardo who knew so well

How to paint that yearning.

“Suffer the little children,” Jesus said.

All who repent will be absolved

The priest thinks of Augustine

Who grappled with midnight angels

And prayed “Lord make me chaste,

But not yet.”

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

ALTAR BOY

by Catherine Chandler




how I would shake
confessing venial sin

in that dark space
behind that sliding door

to Father
Father Son and Holy Ghost—

an apple pilfered
from the cellar bin

a cuss word slip-up
a neglected chore

a schoolyard scuffle or a lie 
a boast—

while he who consecrated
water   wine

who baptized babies
visited the sick

was fucking me           though they
would reassign

him      allegations never seemed
to stick

because whose word was sacred
his or mine

my lexicon too simple             tongue
and dick

the bishop kicked the reverend
upstairs

before he died            but sent
his thoughts and prayers

Catherine Chandler is the author of four collections of poetry, including Lines of Flight, shortlisted for the Poets' Prize, and The Frangible Hour, winner of the Richard Wilbur Award. Currently living in Saint-Lazare-de-Vaudreuil, Quebec, she was reared in Wilkes-Barre, PA, in the Diocese of Scranton.

A BISHOP RESIGNS

by Jack Belck

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” by Michael D’Antuono

Priests’ upward gazes to God
go also downward to where
wild male animals loiter,
battling to escape,
to do what God orders.

But those battles seen or unseen,
become mere memories for those,
confessed to but not confessing,
elevated to the bishopric.

Their own wild animals’ flights
are proven when bishops
replace pants with gowns.
So too cardinals and popes,
secure, satisfied neuters
ignoring young priests
battling anew
and children sacrificed
on celibacy’s stained altar.


Jack Belck is a retired university publications editor.