More on: Poetry

You must not say I saw the sunrise. In bed past the time of the rippling light, lying in piles of sheets, dreaming what was dearest, the charm of a word waking me with a grid that’s never as occupied as worry and hours. What if undone my mind is resting the burdens of need?…

The church sustains its tired lean sconces. I sit on the left by a partition. It is Sunday. Infinite rest. A slow-footed man with suspenders maneuvers his frame to the scratched pew in front of me. His patience to crease into it. Pauses. I watch the back of his husked body. Wheat-hued paper is stuck…

It’s hard not to love the bad boys, the blood-bathed throwers of tantrums who fill the rum skies with crows and newborn angels. What are metaphors for besides the mad ache to cover up? They live for a reason: bang- plowed ecstasy, wide open fields of what’s left when the dogs are through. Shiva me…

No second chances, because we just don’t listen. Malachi had the right idea: burn us all, root and branch. A wineglass moans, in sympathy to some fustian screed in the far-flung skies and the best we can do is pour it full with weeping and disdain. That’s the sound of vexed, my friends, pas de…

Simone Weil What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.  Luke 13:18–19   ———————–(Solesmes)…

The slashed body Hanging from a branch, A harness of blood Streaming over the shoulders…. From a gash on one leg A gemmed rosary of a rivulet Slides down his calf and over his foot To drip between his toes. The miracle is that it stops mid-air And swings lightly in the breeze. Then the…

On this triptych we have three saints, ———————–on this one three stories. Sometimes they knew each other, ———————–but usually not. In what order do we view them? The paint that was once wet changed almost immediately to a color different from itself. It has been chipping for seven centuries as if it, also, is dissatisfied…

Painting by Phyllis Kriegel Stepping from the blackness and blood-red hollow of the tree —–she juggles—not one, but five ———————————-round apples. Beside her, Adam —–whirls clumsily in mid-air— ————————————-hips over head, arms and legs —–askew—as if he, too, had been tossed up into the blurring spiral. —————————–He tries to steady himself with a foot- like…

In Bossche’s The Martyrdom of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, we’re tied to a tree and worked with our own tools. They don’t know how a body works, but have heard people talk about pain. It hasn’t been autumn for a while. The trees are empty. The power lines hum. Others mill about, wait for something…

I want to be like a church, but I’m my father’s barn. Emptying my mind to the August lawn storm windows, burnt and mothen things, baling wire I found the pump organ I disassembled and left under a plastic tablecloth like someone I’d opened up only to abandon mid-surgery. She tried to teach me to…