My name is Padraig Otuma, and for a long time I thought I was going to become a priest. I never did,

but with reflection years later, I now realize that possibly one of the things I wanted more than

becoming a priest was to be a priest who left. I have such a relationship attention with religion

that I can't imagine I'd have lasted more than a few years.

I think I'd like the work,

but I have a disproportionate dislike of certain forms of authority.

Hidden in one desire is often another desire.

And often my complex relationship with a structure

can manifest itself in ways that are sometimes self-destructive

and that ask me to go much deeper.

Poems can help you do that by digging through

and looking at all the layers that can be present in a single desire.

Another poem about God, but really it's about me, by Dianelli Antigua.

You would have made a lousy nun, the woman on the a train says to the person on the other end of the phone. I laughed to no one and imagine what a lousy nun would do, maybe sneak a lover into her room on Ash Wednesday,

or take off her wedding ring from God, let the sun touch the unveiled skin. I was never a nun, but I was called

sister, and brothers were not allowed to do more than shake my hand. I was called daughter when the

pastor kissed my cheek, when I was worth more than rubies. I was a good sister for a decade. I was good.

After I left, I still prayed to all the fathers who weren't mine. I opened my mouth

to their wisdom and in my tongue was the law of kindness.

I became there Mary Magdalene, holy by day, whore by night, perfuming the feet of every man named Jesus.

After I left, I stayed devout, devout to recklessness, devout to taking out my virgin.

I don't remember craving anything so much as my own destruction.

...