[audioplayer file=”https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BriggsTotal.mp3″]
A TOTAL NON-APOLOGY
Don’t ask my view of humankind, of God.
We’re eddies in the ocean mind of God.
I grin from yearbook pages, bright as pins
and primed to prick the fat behind of God.
O Holy Father, how can I revere you?
You suck the pulp and spit the rind of God.
Spices, rhinos, coffee-coloured bodies:
all dust beneath the awful grind of God.
I won!
Then she jujitsu-spun my head
and locked me in the double-bind of God.
It breaks my brickwork, howls through my walls,
the incoherent undefined of God.
Who scaled the spire of the abandoned church,
spray-painted All Is God, and signed off
—God?
—from Rattle #50, Winter 2015
__________
Rachael Briggs: “I grew up Roman Catholic in an interfaith marriage between a Catholic and a Jew, and now I think I’ll be an atheist forever. I know a lot of really wonderful Catholic people, like my dad, who is the kind of human being I’d like to be someday when I grow up. But the Catholic Church is a bad social institution: sexist, homophobic, covering up the abuse of little kids. I’m not always sure how to make my opinion of the institution and my opinion of the people add up to a coherent whole. (That also goes for a lot of institutions outside religion, including academia.)”