Tag: church

Two Poems by Ann Kammerer

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Little Veils

When we were little,
me and Janie
wore veils to mass—
white ones,
lacy ones,
triangular ones
that Mom
pinned in place
with thin metal clips
so they’d stay put
and wouldn’t slip
from our fine yellow hair.

We wore percale dresses, too—
the same one every Sunday,
matching ones from Sears
with tiny white flowers,
a Peter Pan collar,
and a deep blue sash
with a fake satin sheen.

Mom said to hurry
so I helped Janie dress.
She said Dad got mad
when we dawdled
and made him late
to church.
When we were done—
our sashes bow-tied
and our white Mary Janes
all buckled and shined—
we went to find Mom
as she smoked
in the bathroom,
a hairbrush, bobby pins,
and veils on the sink.

“About time.”
She took a last puff
and tossed her Viceroy
into the toilet,
making it singe.
“Janie first.”

Janie backed away.
Mom grabbed her arm
and pushed her down
on the edge of the tub.

“Good little girls
do what they’re told
Hold still.”

Mom laid the veil
over a knot of snarls,
wedging bobby pins
over and under
each side.

“There,” she said.
“All done.”

Janie sobbed.
I wiped her face
with toilet paper.
Mom stood behind me,
pinning down my veil,
poking my scalp,
telling me to be quiet
when I said it hurt.

“There,” she said.
“You’re done, too.”

She touched my cheek,
then Janie’s,
saying it was OK now.
Fiddling with a loose button
on her faded rose dress,
she draped a black veil
over her wavy brown hair,
smoothing the lacy ends
over her shoulders.

“See,” she said.
“I have to wear one, too,
just like you.”

Mom put on lipstick
and feathered on rouge.
She dabbed tan make-up
on the deep gray circles
beneath her eyes,
then over the
green-purple bruises
on her wrists—
the ones she got when Dad
slammed down his drink
and grabbed her,
pushing her
against the wall.

“We were just
dancing,” she had said later
when she tucked us in bed,
her hair falling over her eyes
as she kissed us goodnight.
“He does that sometimes.
With me. After he has
a bad day at work.”

*

Communion

We always sat
in the same order
in the same pew
at the same mass
at St. Lucy’s.

Dad slid in first,
Mom second,
holding Janie’s hand.
I got in next,
my bare legs sticking
to the unvarnished pew.
My big brother Freddie
sat beside me and
my other brother Charlie
sat at the end,
his head swiveling
as he looked for Theresa,
the Italian girl whose dad
owned Armando’s,
Dad’s favorite bar.

“Quit fidgeting.”
Mom poked me
as I fiddled with my veil
and clicked the beaded latch
on my vinyl purse.
Janie wiggled, too,
kicking the back of the pew.
Dad winced and bent over,
one hand on his stomach,
the other pressed
to his forehead.

“He doesn’t
feel good,” Mom sighed.
“I don’t either.”

Her breath smelled
fruity and sour,
just like it had last night
when she tucked
me and Janie in bed.

“We should’ve skipped
mass,” she said.
“Your dad.
He’s in no condition.”

Mom rubbed her eyes
and licked her dry lips.
The pipe organ echoed
as a boy in a white robe
carried a jeweled crucifix
down the center aisle.
Two boys followed
clutching lit candles.
A third swung
an ornate brass bowl
on a chain,
spewing spicy smoke.
The priest came last,
draped in brilliant sateen,
his hands clasped
atop the copper filagree
embroidered on his robe.

Sun poured through
the stained-glass windows
as the boys reached the altar
and placed the cross
and candles beside
a small, pearled tabernacle
with a golden dome.
The priest stepped up
and raised his arms.
We all stood
in prayer.

“Stand up.”
Mom kicked Dad
in the shin,
but he didn’t move,
mumbling we’d all
be sitting back down
anyway.

“See.”
He muttered prayers
as we all sat and stood
then sat again,
just like he said.
Opening our hymnals,
we sang and prayed
to a father and son
and holy ghost,
then knelt
to bow our heads.

The priest chanted.
The altar boys rang bells.
People rose
from their pews
to walk single file
and kneel at a railing
by the altar.
Folding their hands
they closed their eyes
and opened their mouths,
the priest placing wafers
on their tongues
before they got up
and filed back
to their seats.

“It’s our turn now, right?”
Freddie nudged Charlie.

“Yeah, yeah,” Charlie said.

They stumbled out,
webbing their hands
beneath their chins.

“Wait for me,” I said.
“I want a cookie, too.”

When I started to scooch,
Mom grabbed my sash,
tugging me back.

“No,” she said.
“You can’t go.”

She said I was
too little,
that Janie was
too little, too,
that the boys
were the only ones
who could go
to communion
since she and Dad
had been bad
and missed confession.

“We’ll go next Sunday,” she said,
“after we say a few
Hail Marys and Our Fathers
to get rid of our sins.”

*

Ann Kammerer lives near Chicago, and is from Michigan. Her short fiction and poetry is typically set in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, and examines the tensions and ideals of people living in the rustbelt. She has published fiction and poetry in literary magazines and anthologies, and has five poetry collections through independent small presses. You can find her recent or upcoming work in Fictive Dream, ONE ART, Chiron Review, The Broken Spine, 10 by 10 Flash, Open Arts Forum, Cold Caller Magazine, Cajun Mutt Press, and at annkammerer.com

Two Poems by Elizabeth S. Wolf

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Shattered

Coming home from college,
crouched down on the kitchen floor,
she wouldn’t couldn’t look me in the eye
she wouldn’t couldn’t tell me why
her blanket was a tangled bundle stained with vomit
but I knew, a woman knows, a mother doesn’t want to
so I asked, did someone try to hurt you and then
said what I really meant, did someone try to rape you
and she nodded, head averted looking down
         he was choking me
                  but it stopped when I threw up
and she whispered no one believed and Andi
blamed me for ruining her goodbye party and I
guess I had it coming since I was just starting to
feel kind of good about myself and I felt pretty
and I was having fun and I guess I went too far
and a mother’s heart sinks
bile rising up your throat
because this shouldn’t still be happening
and I know that late-teen type of cocky
that heady joy of looking good
that tastes almost like tossing back
a shot of pure verve— that rush
of coming into your own self—
a righteous confidence that
never comes back the same
once the spell is broken.

* 

At Seventeen

I borrowed my mother’s car, a cherry red Buick Skylark
circa 1971. It was the first anniversary of my father’s death
but instead of demurely lighting a Yahrzeit candle I took off
to see a boy, a hot boy, a rad boy, a bit-of-a-dangerous
bad boy, who was staying with friends; we had all scattered
when the halfway house for troubled teens suddenly totally
closed. We met up and headed out into a steamy summer night.
He broke into a stacked rack of mailboxes, looking for checks;
broke into a holy Catholic church, seeking silver and gold;
broke into me, brusque with lust; recklessly ran a red light
and smashed the car, high-style bumper and driver-side doors
dented and scratched, stolid white upholstery stained by
splotches of blood. I waited for sunrise to return the keys;
my mother rolled over in her empty bed and asked me to
leave. Later the doctor stitching me up would laugh:
Tell your boyfriend to be more careful next time.
For years after I lit a commemorative candle, a tall taper
stuck in the graceful green neck of an empty bottle, dripping
wax melting and merging, colors converging, layers emerging
year after year like the rings of a tree, latewood circling
spring growth, rising high above riddles of sealing or healing.

*

Elizabeth S. Wolf has published 5 books of poetry, most recently I Am From: Voices from the Mako House in Ghana (2023). Her chapbook Did You Know? was a Rattle prizewinner. Rattle Summer 2022 featured her project with Prisoner Express. In 2023 Elizabeth taped readings at the White House, Supreme Court, and US Capitol with The Scheherazade Project. In 2024 her work landed on the moon with the Lunar Codex. Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/author/esw

Five Poems by Ron Riekki

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The Kid Who Drank Himself to Death During the War

lived in the barracks right across from mine.
His face was all brilliant with light, like
the sun hitting the ocean. And they hit us
in boot camp, the revelation of that, how
the recruiters don’t mention this little fact,

or they did—unsure if they still do it now,
but my suspicion is yes, the fists all bone
and temple, the church of war. I remember
my mind before the explosions, how it used
to think properly, or maybe it didn’t, the river

near my home owned by the mines now,
oranged. I walked to it yesterday, stared
down into the deranged red, so close to
the color of blood. I pulled up my hood
and walked home. I can walk though.

*

I Worked in Prison

My jobs have all been fist fights for cash.
When I was a boxer, I started getting tremors,
the doctor telling me to stop or they’d become
permanent. I stopped. They stayed. I thought
about how I’d been a boxer my whole life,
even before I was boxing, how the military
takes your skull and kills it. Sure, you can
still live, but it’s a bit like your body is
a house that’s been built, but abandoned,
foreclosed, possessed, a sort of Satanism
to corporation, a sort of corpse-creation,
that reminds me so much of prison, how
there were all these sons in there, no sun,
the paleness of their skin, everyone, no
matter your race, how it looked like they
were all fading, their psyches, their souls,
the violence where if they ever got out
I knew they’d be changed, how violence
stays in your veins, how a bloody life
stays in your blood, how we really,
honestly, could do anything else other
than what we’re doing and it’d be
better, but we’re promised to this cash.

*

(lucky) I Work in Medical

Which means medical works
me, because medical doesn’t
work, because of this equation:
politics + medicine = politics,
and the nursing homes aren’t
homes and there isn’t nursing
there, because the CNAs and
the med techs and the EMTs
are all making minimum wage,
which means my partner fell
asleep driving the ambulance,
turning it upside-down, just
like his life, trying to make

the torment of rent, how it
tore into us, you, me, every-
one when even the EMTs
don’t have health insurance,
and we know that the word
minus ends with US, because
it’s all about erasers, melting
pots where the kids come in
overdosing on marijuana and
one of them says, But you can’t
overdose on pot and I tell him
Well, you are right now and
it’s beautiful—hyperemesis,

how it is, this existence where
the overdoses are normalized,
where my uncle, his heroin
addiction in a hick town, how
I call him and he answers,
voice in slow motion, the ice
outside his window so loud
that I can hear it, the blizzards
of poverty (the anti-poetry),
A Cell of One’s Own and
we’re owned and I’m ranting
about the renting because I
am worried as hell about home-

lessness because the word virus
ends with US and this won’t
get published unless the editor
has been to the pub and is OK
with saying f- censorship—too
afraid to write the word, too
afraid to talk about how when
they play the sexual harassment
training videos at work, everyone
does a play-by-play commentary
like Misery Science Theater 2021,
how we’re all Orwelled and all it
takes is one hospital bill to end a life.

*

In This Poem, I Am Happy and Blessed

but it’s a short poem. It’s a poem where God
gives me a bird, walking, at my feet, how I
almost didn’t see it, the thing rainbowed as
all hell. Who makes something that beautiful?

I snuff out my clove, hurry inside to my cubicle.

*

I Can’t Stop Winking

It’s a defective muscle. My trauma-head
all butchered. But people misread it, think
I’m flirty. Or that I’m sharing some sort
of secret with them. They look directly
in my eyes with a look like yes, I under-
stand too or yes, I saw it as well. Saw
what? The occasional frown, sometimes
a wink back, sexy. But I’m twice
their age. I want to apologize, say
that my eye is owned by history, but
they just move on, their bodies so
perfect, able to control everything.
How do they do that? How?

*

Ron Riekki’s books include My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Apprentice House Press), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press). Riekki co-edited Undocumented (Michigan State University Press) and The Many Lives of The Evil Dead (McFarland), and edited The Many Lives of It (McFarland), And Here (MSU Press), Here (MSU Press, Independent Publisher Book Award), and The Way North (Wayne State University Press, Michigan Notable Book).