WEBVTT

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Title of this poem
is "Prayer Meeting."

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I was a pious boy, growing up
in a Roman Catholic household.

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"Hankies and sheets,
hopeless routine longing,

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my mother and I, in the
cellar twice each week,

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her Sunbeam coasting
under screws of steam,

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me on my knees by the ironing
board to call Hail Mary's.

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Our bodies vapored
into immaculate words.

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Shirt tails talked back.

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I wanted more than
what I prayed for.

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Her music-box antiphons
mumbled us around the decades.

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Neither of us knew why
or what we implored.

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God jerked alive in repetitions.

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I reeled Him in.

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She must have been appeasing
me because she feared

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offending Him, deity
of hurt and rue,

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of affliction and splintered
rafters weeping wan work

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dungarees, school
uniforms, all together

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in our separate voices.

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The God of iron,
unsatisfied, hissed back."

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