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WHY I DON’T GO TO CHURCH by Monica Rico

November 18, 2021 at 2:45 pm
The priest          talks of gardens
but doesn’t grow fruit.

Oh, the mess     song

birds make. Someday

they will go to seed,
sprout,               and shoot.

A white lab mouse
released into the woods
doesn’t have the sense to run.
           Instinct

bred out,

it slips,               head first

like the priest into           collar and gold

embroidery with almond
nails, my grandmother   calls
lazy. The film of incense

           a tiny fire.               all of it

preserved prayer

           in the pellet            of the owl.

 

Monica Rico is a Mexican American CantoMundo Fellow, Macondista, and Hopwood Graduate Poetry Award winner who grew up in Saginaw, Michigan. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan’s HZWP and works for the Bear River Writers’ Conference. Her manuscript PINION is the winner of the 2021 Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry selected by Kaveh Akbar.
Monica Rico

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