video in the mail

(dearest Flannery O’Connor: One Heart now)

dad once wrote in, gave them my address,

requesting one of those  ‘calling you

back home’ videos. I wasn’t interested.

like a dog, I was chasing girls, not church

dogma. But I held unto it anyway.

some years later, I did come back to

church, strong. Though it turns out dad had turned

away, didn’t like the ‘new’ Mass, wanted

things like they used to be, and just stopped

going to Sunday services. My eldest

brother felt the same way, wound himself

so tightly to anti-Pope Internet

people, he ended up leaving it

all together, making his announcement

right about when my dad laid down to die.

my younger brother had also gotten

out completely, a good while back,

a born-again evangelical now

or something like that. funny, how

all three of us were altar boys growing

up, going to Mass every Sunday

like ‘good Catholic’ people do.

I don’t know what happened to us but

only it’s a suffering I now offer up.

I phoned for a priest who visited

my dad, watched him receive Viaticum and

what would be his last Holy Communion.

Gary Edward Geraci