Tongue Is the Pen
By Poetry Issue 86
Isaiah 43 I am making all things new! Or am trying to, being so surprised to be one of those guys who may be dying early. This is yet one more earthen declaration, uttered through a better prophet’s more durable mouth, with heart astir. It’s not oath-taking that I’m concerned with here, for what that’s…
Read MoreMixed Company
By Poetry Issue 86
Mark 2 Meaning, not the fey name of a coffee shop cheekily named, but me and the sinners (not “mixed” as in unlike things commingling, but rather the “meh” of our behaviors or consistent confusions, contradictions like breaking news ongoing, over and over with little new to report…) as I was saying, me and sinners…
Read MoreDevotion: For Our Bodies
By Poetry Issue 64
Yes love, I must confess I’m at it again, struggling in vain with my Greek declensions. I know it’s common, but I want to show you what I found in Praxeis Apostolon, chapter one, verse twenty-four: this exquisite epithet, kardiognosta. Forget briefly its context, that the eleven, genuflecting, implore the Lord to give wisdom. Between…
Read MorePetition: California Avenue
By Poetry Issue 64
Taped to a red “College/Career Info” catalog box near this block’s crowded sidewalk bistro, one business envelope. Please pray for my husband Cliff for his health. He is very, very ill. God loves you, Dedra. Maybe hung just that day, ten minutes since. Looks more like a week, open but not torn, faded script &…
Read MoreLate Easter, Spring Come Lately
By Poetry Issue 73
She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. In one of John Donne’s under-read hymns, on his sickness, he claims one place held Paradise and Calvary—Adam’s disgrace, too: over whose tree we choose…
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