Poem-A-Week
Penitence
Leonora Simonovis
Sister Dolores asks me
to put dirt on my face,
a mouth full of it.
He will punish us
girls if we wear
our skirts too short
and let the boys see.
But she also lets us
eat His body in tiny
pieces, broken like our
futures will be if we let
anyone touch us.
Sister Dolores talks
about three people
within Him. I ask her
if he has a disorder.
He will strike you if you
question His word.
So I challenge Him
to strike me down
for lying and cursing
and flirting with boys.
But I’m still here.
A bad girl unlike
Belén, who played
Mary in our living
nativity, blessed the fruit
of her tiny womb, blond
haired and blue eyed,
named after the city
where He was born.
Pray for your sins
Sister Dolores says.
I fall asleep listening
to the sound of my own voice.
Leonora Simonovis (she/her/ella) is a Latinx writer and educator who grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and currently lives in San Diego, CA. She teaches literature and creative writing in Spanish at the University of San Diego, has an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles, and is a contributing editor for Drizzle Review. Her poetry manuscript Study of the Raft was the winner of the 2021 Colorado Prize for Poetry and her work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, Diode Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, Arkansas International, Inverted Syntax, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Kenyon Review blog, among others.