Half Like Them
By Poetry Issue 68
Over many years, I have dreamed away my color and turned inside out, like the wet machinery of an orange. I’m all yard; the sycamores are my likeness.
Read MoreSecond Line and the Art of Witness: Steve Prince’s Katrina Suite
By Essay Issue 78
Going through the experience of Hurricane Katrina taught me to submit to and praise God. The message I got is that we are hopeless, but we still thanked God in the midst of it. Some people can’t fathom how to sing and praise him in the midst of Katrina. That is where I pulled all…
Read MoreYou Who Seek Grace from a Distracted God
By Poetry Issue 82
You, who seek grace from a distracted God, you, who parse the rhetoric of empire, who know in your guts what it is but don’t know what to call it, you, good son of a race of shadows— your great fortune is to have a job, never ate government cheese, federal peanut butter— you, jerked…
Read MoreAbout Angels: Cahors, France, 2007
By Poetry Issue 84
The angel has always been a strong metaphor to me, raising questions about life, death, and our timeless vulnerability. —Marcel Marceau I am a Jew. My father died at Auschwitz. By 1938, the sorrows had begun. My name, Mangel, put me at risk. So I applied Marceau like blanching agent that stung at first,…
Read MoreThe Avant-Garde and Sacred Discontent: Contemporary Performance Artists Meet Ancient Jewish Prophets
By Essay Issue 83
I RECALL A SUNDAY MORNING when the church lectionary readings included a passage from the prophet Isaiah. The lay reader that morning was a thoughtful, older man dressed in a tasteful gray suit. Standing at the lectern, he opened the Bible and read: At that time Yahweh had spoken through Isaiah son of Amoz. He…
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