For a writer, self-promotion is a mug’s game. Last year, I made a hobby of haunting Fr. Jim Martin’s Facebook page, posting clever things in the hope that the great man would feel moved to take me up as a literary protege. “America Magazine is teeming with wonks, Max,” I imagined him PM-ing me. “What we need is a wit.” And with that, my fortune in Catholic letters would have been made.
For better or worse, things worked out rather differently. But in that hopeful time, I came up with one concept that, it strikes me now, deserves to be salvaged and expanded upon. That is the practice of writing haiku to various saints. Unlike many devotional practices — I’m thinking here of the rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet — it can’t be undertaken by rote; the act of composing forces a person to reflect on each saint’s unique qualities. Since haiku are short and needn’t rhyme, writing them keeps the brain in trim without blowing it out completely, the way writing, say, a sestina might do.
But well of that! From the files of Percy Dovetonsils Lindenman:
To my patron, Francis de Sales
Of all Saints Francis,
You’re by far the most obscure.
Does that piss you off?
To Therese of Lisieux:
A consumptive nun
And a chain-smoking layman:
Can’t it work, mignonne?
To Ven. Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdanez:
Oye, Monsenor:
My army friends assure me:
Benning ain’t all bad.
To Padre Pio of Pietrelcina:
I know you’re a saint,
But you really weird me out.
Can I see your hands?
To Clare of Assisi:
Barefoot trust-fund doll –
Kelly Bundy blonde to boot.
What a waste! (I kid.)
To John the Evangelist:
Bother art critics!
You’re no woman, sir, not you —
Just markedly glam.
To Blessed Pope John XXIII:
Squat and quotable:
The Yogi Berra of popes.
The Council: home run!
Now you try.
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