Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr. has published poems in Rattle, Shanghai Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, SingPoWriMo, and other journals and anthologies. He has received prizes from the Palanca Awards, Kokoy Guevara Poetry Competition, and British Council, among others. He is the author of two chapbooks, Requiem and Hymnal, and his first full-length collection, Aria and Trumpet Flourish, is forthcoming from Math Paper Press in Singapore. “In the Church” is part of a series that riffs on Jose Rizal’s novel Noli me Tangere, which satirizes and criticizes many of the Catholic Church’s practices.