Hesychasterion
By Poetry Issue 77
I am hollowing a dwelling in the granite of my heart. I am thinking then to torch its walls, and sweep out all debris with a green, a heavy branch of rosemary. I mean to chip a niche inside therein to rest a…
Read MoreAnd Yet another Page and Yet
By Poetry Issue 77
1. One’s waking of itself obtains _____a rising and—one might say—a dazed, __________surprising glee at having met within sleep’s netherworld one’s own _____dim shadowed psyche, and survived. One’s walking soon thereafter well _____into the morning’s modest glare __________proves—if all goes swimmingly—yet further evidence of being _____obliquely well attended, proves discreetly provident of one’s _____invisible surround…
Read MoreOrdinary Ghosts
By Short Story Issue 77
YOU YOURSELF are a holy mother,” Father Canevin was saying. He was speaking to Miss Dunn’s mother. He sat back in a leather chair that gave a short cough and squeak each time he moved, like an old, brittle bellows. Toom-beeph. Toom-beeph. Miss Dunn listened intensely to such sounds. They were like voices from a…
Read MoreEx Cathedra
By Short Story Issue 77
Je me suis aperçu alors qu’il n’était pas si facile qu’on le croyait d’être pape…. —Albert Camus I found then that it was not so easy as one might imagine to be pope…. BOB BERGERON had been looking for the Pantheon when, having somehow wandered off the Via del Gesù, which he had been assured…
Read MoreSlow Culture
By Essay Issue 77
IT HAPPENED FOR ME in seventh-grade English class. My teacher, Mr. Taussig, was an older gentleman. He had driven a tank in the Battle of the Bulge, which feat of courage helped to offset the fact that he looked like Mr. Magoo. For many months he dragged us line by line through Shakespeare’s Romeo and…
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