Catechism Lesson We learned the catechism In the first and second grades That is, we memorised the words And could repeat them As a class, in unison Although its meaning was As comprehensible as Household chores The questions and the answers Had a cadence And the sound of all our voices All at once Could feel a little bit like song Which made it bearable And even, on occasion, fun Because the nuns Would cancel out The Palmer Method If we didn’t get it right And I was overjoyed The Lord was more important Than a course in penmanship, A subject I had nearly failed By the time we knew it all By rote, though not by heart, Which would have been impossible, And passed the test We could and did forget the lot For good Long after it was out of mind A sixth grade substitute With lipstick and a skirt above the knee Which made it hard to concentrate On what she taught Decided she would stop arithmetic And quiz us on the catechism One by one We had to improvise And she grew even angrier Finally, when Michael Palmieri said that God made us because He wanted to She grabbed him by the ear And marched him to the blackboard, Turned him round to face her audience And asked again He wasn’t bashful but He bowed his head Mainly, I think, to keep from cracking up, And this time simply said “Because” Miss Whoever must have seen The smile because She pulled his hair And yanked so hard A patch of scalp came out And Mike began to bleed It if had been a nun It might have been okay But this seemed pretty weird That night I looked the answer up – If anything Palmieri got the gist – And later even an apology The sacrifice was worth it For the story, Which he told a million times, The clown, and always made us laugh By ending with the question “Why did teacher do it?” And our loud two-syllable response ________________________________________________________________________ Emanuel E. García, Wandering Bark, 2013 |