Name and Nature
By Poetry Issue 82
Your name, Jesus, is childhood in the body, at times a single malt upon the tongue, Vivaldi to the ears; your name, Christ, forgiveness to the heart, acceptance to the flesh, a troubled joy across the soul; at ever my very best I will plead to you, closest to me, for kindness. Perhaps the silence…
Read MoreThe Grackles
By Poetry Issue 82
Down the block, our new neighbors, not unlike the old, could be named the Grackles, given the way everything they have is loud: cars, children, stereos, parties. It all spills out into the street—broken bikes, pizza boxes, a nasty looking dog with nothing to restrain it but the owner’s curse. Giving the mutt wide berth,…
Read MoreMaking Dinner I Think about Poverty—
By Poetry Issue 82
I mean the kind saints praise and scripture calls blessed, the kind that inherits heaven where maybe what’s left of us will be more like a clear broth, than the vegetables and meat we chop here, as the radio blasts war, soup kitchen fills, and down the block a crowd gathers around two men yelling…
Read MoreFurther Notes on the Martyrs
By Poetry Issue 82
Our speaker has a tongue screw with him, though it is a replica. He speaks of spectacle, witness, dying well. One group’s criminals…. Stories are not preserved by accident. Heroes are made necessary by the nature of memory. Life is stronger than death, and that is why we must praise. I think. Identity depends on…
Read MoreBeing the Song
By Poetry Issue 82
And I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song. —Rilke So I could be a song. But a great song? Or a bluegrass tune with a decent chorus and a shift to the minor to savor every time, and a break I can almost…
Read MoreEmerson Mourns the Death of His Son
By Poetry Issue 82
I have love And a child, A banjo And shadows. It was the light, always the light. First, that absent early hour when he woke to find the world made strange, knocked awry, as if creation had suddenly undone itself, the landscape dishonored by this loss. The dawn moved haltingly toward day. He would have…
Read MoreMeditation on the Evangelista
By Poetry Issue 82
He does not shampoo your carpet or show you how to brush it clean. He does not shower you with roses for Sunday’s wedding or funeral. He does not put his hand in your hair or ask if your spouse is at home. He only opens a book of words in two columns, one in…
Read MoreGrace in Action or Murphy’s Law in Reverse
By Poetry Issue 82
Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. It is what the law says. However, the summer of our prayers was one of grace in action. An outage from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon never occurred despite all the signs. I witnessed utility men working in the street as well…
Read MoreThe Sea Here, Teaching Me
By Poetry Issue 82
the sea saying, This is how you pray to your rock of a god, your massive cliff of a god, sheer drop into the bay, immovable, not-going-anywhere kind of god. Look at photos from a hundred years ago. Your god’s not moved. Glacial remains of a god. Impenetrable. Can’t-wear-it- down god. Rock face of a…
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…
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