That We May Live and Not Die: A Deep-Time Report on Climate Refugees
By Essay Issue 114
Over their caravan, a banner emblazoned with the words of their father: That we may live and not die.
Read MoreLapsang Souchong
By Poetry Issue 103
The kettle begins to sing
the one note of its one song.
The day becomes itself beyond
the glass of the kitchen window.
Behemoth
By Poetry Issue 103
When photos of a million horrors
made the papers, a million eyes stopped
and stared, the way a glass of water stares,
and the railcar around it coming to rest.
Tentatively, Religion
By Poetry Issue 91
What! Did the Hand then of the Potter shake? —Rubaiyat The kick wheel turns against the spondees of her feet —clop-clop—upon the floor: amorphous clay shines like a seal’s skin. We are uncarved blocks, says the Tao. Hum-hum, says the wheel. And I am Yahweh at dust, she says, her hands tucked and carving…
Read MoreResurrection at Cookham
By Poetry Issue 91
Stanley Spencer, 1924–27 Cascading white roses! Their throne arbored shade’s —-“curious scent” Spencer recalled while painting. Those Seven Sisters perfume ——-my heart. God the Father’s broad: solid ————–as a Giotto Madonna, his curve-plane’s not ours. His hand’s in his son’s hair. Christ, free, in his white gown, cradles three babies, one naked, in folds of…
Read MoreImagineer of Variety
By Poetry Issue 90
Maker of heaven and earth ——-of time and season Thinker-upper of soil —— of autumn decay, and rot and roots drawing nutrients ——-whatever they are that feed and sustain —— the beauty of the lilies, and the violets Imagineer of variety Puller-offer of the impossible breaking our hearts ——-every spring day ——-with greater magnolia blossom ————–finer,…
Read MoreThe Potter
By Poetry Issue 62
So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw [her] working at the wheel. —Jeremiah 18:3 Coming in from the wind, disheveled, we cluster like commas around the woman at the wheel. Her foot…
Read MoreAgain to Port Soderick
By Poetry Issue 88
(from Hopkins’s journal of a vacation on the Isle of Man, August 1872) So much need in that “Again.” To see it in good weather. To look down again from the cliffs at the high water of a full tide. To hold the kaleidoscope of the waves to his eye and watch them churn and…
Read MoreOrchard
By Poetry Issue 87
Numb-nerved roots plumb frigid ground. Death, not prayer, rules the apple grove. Love, not death, moves Jesus in his alcove. Soundlessly apples fall earthbound. Tapped sap opens the maple’s wound. The moon pulls earthly seas in gravity’s groove. The wall of roses spent, thorns lasso the loose trellis. Time owns the shroud and the crown…
Read MoreA Photograph from the Hubble Telescope
By Poetry Issue 86
These luminous clouds and whorls of amethyst, jade, and coral are transmitted down to earth as a babble of data: monochrome of linty gray that arrives in computers at NASA, gets filtered out, and colored in with a menu of splendid hues: the better to illuminate the original edge of the universe, and imagine the…
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