The Lord is with you every time you open your mouth-
With every “dubious” word that you dare utter
All the fingers point at you,
Damning you
Because you have the audacity
To believe in a God,
To slather ashes on your forehead,
To place your tongue on a flat piece of bread and call it Jesus
How could you?
How could you brazenly display the Virgen on a mantle,
Forcing your evil propaganda on all who see it?
Like a martyr
You thrust your body onto busy train tracks with just the mere mention of
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Poor little Catholic School girl
With your knee highs pulled taught around your calves
And a crucifix looped on a chain,
You didn’t know
You didn’t know that one day beautiful America
Land of the free
Would take a needle and jab it through your upper lip
And make scrupulous stitches,
Slicing the clatter of a church bell tower
You naïve Catholic School girl
And your plaid monkey suit,
You didn’t know that even after hearing lesson after lesson
Sitting in a rose scented classroom
And reading at the table with Mama
Those dainty rosary beads
Would be mercilessly stomped on
Breaking every last shard of your
Damn Hail Mary

Sudden,
Like the Immaculate Conception
Little Catholic School girls have to grow up
They enter the terrifying hell of public school
Where every sweet boy is only sweet until you kiss them
And teachers spit in your face
Laughing at your ignorance
Laughing at you because you’re wrong .
You will be wrong till the day you die, little one.
Wrong until the day you
Take off your clothes for a carnivorous boy
Because if you wait until marriage
Who knows the extent of your
Sexual dysfunction?
You’ll be wrong until the day you curse the Messiah
For saying marriage should be between a man and a woman
Because it’s obvious,
You think homosexuals are going to hell.
Honey, you’ll be wrong wherever you go
They’ll call you a radical
A freak
A fanatic
The product of religious indoctrination- you can’t think for yourself
They’ll call you
Stupid, pompous, naïve, prejudiced, confused, irrational

“Happy Holidays,” they’ll say.
Slowly you’ll begin to bury your Virgen
Under a pile of sexy clothes.
Gradually you’ll forget the words to
The hymns you sung in the children’s choir.
Before you know it,
Little Catholic School Girl,
You’ll be lying in bed with a man layered
In musk
With the hotel room so cold and the night so frigid
With the florescent light in the hall flickering
tick tick tick
And a whisper curling down your tongue
Chomping on a sound that nailed you to the cross-

Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee