Mary Ford Neal
I. Day One
She goes straight from the balcony to the Curia offices and dismisses all the men. She calls in the decorators and gives them carte blanche – they paint the Sistine ceiling in vivid stripes, and she says it’s ADORABLE. She sells the Pièta and the rest of the treasures to a tech billionaire and wires the money to her favourite politician’s re-election campaign. She dashes off a scandalous encyclical – only half a page long and lacking any reference to authority – and posts it on X (formerly Twitter), where it receives 202.4K likes. There’s no real work to be done – everyone has renounced the faith in disgust – so she spends the rest of the day playing in the fountain and binge-watching Succession.
II. Day Two
She wakes in a perfect Roman morning, still Supreme Pontiff. There were no earthquakes or firestorms overnight, as predicted on some talk radio shows and Twitter feeds. During a morning stroll in the gardens, she thinks she hears distant chanting. Nobody knows how to address her, and the people who would normally convene meetings about such things have all been dismissed. A bishop on US TV says the gates of Hell have opened and demands worldwide prayers. The stone saints wear untroubled expressions. There’s no real work to be done, because everyone has renounced the faith in disgust, so she spends the day disturbing the crypts and throwing bones from the Cupola.
III. Day Three
By midday, a crowd is assembling in the Square. This crowd contains no nuns, and no-one is waving flags or pointing cameras. Some of them appear to be armed. The multicoloured guards were the first to leave, and she begins to think about how many ways in there are, and how flimsy some of them must be. She thinks there must be a gun or a pike around here somewhere, but she wouldn’t have a clue where to begin looking. She wanders the Basilica, looking for metal objects that might be repurposed. There’s no real work to be done, now that everyone has renounced the faith in disgust, so she spends the day pushing large objects against the doors and sharpening small objects into points.
Mary Ford Neal is a writer and academic from the West of Scotland. She is the author of two recent poetry collections: ‘Dawning’ (2021, Indigo Dreams) and ‘Relativism’ (2022, Taproot Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a range of online/print magazines, including The London Magazine, Orange Blossom Review, One Hand Clapping, Bad Lilies, The Shore, One Art, The Interpreter’s House, Anthropocene, Long Poem Magazine, and others.
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