Smoke
By Essay Issue 121
I think of my chest like the inside of a grand piano, each key triggering an invisible response in the instrument’s body, releasing some build of pressure within an anatomy of hammers and strings. I think about writing. It’s always a gamble to live life without writing everything down in real time—the fear of what will be forgotten haunted by anxiety over what’s already been lost. A train of inkblots surfaces behind my eyes and disappears just as quickly, like music. I try to resist reaching for metaphors, attaching any images or words that would put distance between myself and the moment as it’s happening. I try not to feel like a failure.
Read MoreAphorism 48: Faith Is the Bird That Sings in the Dark
By Poetry Issue 115
our hearts labor at salvation
despite our honest efforts to resist
A Superior Mirage Is a Particular Refraction of Light
By Poetry Issue 114
When my children ask questions,
I try to answer them truthfully, which means
admitting to failure.
In the Studio
By Visual Art Issue 114
After the George Floyd murder and protests, painter Askia Bilal began a series called Non-Portraits, exploring his experience of Blackness.
Read MoreDispatch: Unknown Festival, Galicia, April
By Poetry Issue 114
Faith’s a dissonance, a forgetfulness.
Read MoreAmerican Contrapasso: The Kingdoms Are Always Near
By Culture Issue 112
One can almost hear T.S. Eliot, the native Missourian in his self-imposed exile from America, looking out over these rust belts and muttering, “I had not thought that globalism had undone so many.”
Read MoreWind
By Poetry Issue 112
Give me proof, said Thomas,
and he could see a hole in the palm before him,
and inside the wound a glimpse
Read MoreFaith
By Fiction Issue 109
My feelings toward Izzy changed by the hour. She was the most dominant person I’d ever known, shorter than me but somehow looking down on me constantly. On her left wrist was a tattoo of a cross. I asked if she was religious. She said no.
Read MoreField of Encounter: A Conversation with G.C. Waldrep
By Interview Issue 107
It is one thing to write an inspirational poem about the raising of Lazarus, from this great distance in time and space, and another to be Lazarus: to be the one who is raised. I think any genuine religious art leads the reader (and presumably the writer) to a place of encounter, an encounter with radical otherness.
Read MorePastor Eaten by Crocodiles While Trying to Walk on Water Like Jesus
By Poetry Issue 103
Deacon Nkosi, a member of the church, told the newspaper,
“The pastor taught us about faith on Sunday last week.”