Floodlight
By Poetry Issue 107
Our bare hands redden as we work, / he high on the ladder cutting the old / connections, and I drilling / outlet hole through the siding.
Read MoreWhen your father is barely literate enough to read from the Bible aloud, but you so love that there is even this one moment he will share with you
By Poetry Issue 106
The voice of your brother’s blood
is crying to me from the ground.
A Fire in This House
By Essay Issue 105
In our solemn conversations about the firemen, in our statements of unconditional loyalty and trust, I realize that maybe instead of the moral authority of God in our household, I have given Toby the firemen. Brave and noble, yes, but a shabby substitute for the Almighty.
Read MoreOn Ronald
By Essay Issue 105
I have hurt my father two times that I know of.
Read MoreSanto Spirito
By Poetry Issue 104
In Leonardo’s
Annunciation,
is there a dove?
I certainly can’t
find one—but
Leonardo is famous
for hiding things,
Matins for My Father
By Poetry Issue 103
when I was young, his voice a low path through nightmare,
reading so that I wouldn’t dream of dying . . .
Ode to the Back
By Poetry Issue 103
Come up behind me. See through my eyes.
Read MoreExodus
By Poetry Issue 92
It takes a lifetime’s blindness to see one’s father. —Cid Corman My father mumbled forth his violated commandments for half my life. I inscribed them on incense and holy water and when I drank them they tasted like cigarette ashes in a coca-cola can. There were no tablets save the pills he didn’t take.…
Read MoreTo My Son Yacine
By Poetry Issue 91
My beloved son, I received your letter where you spoke to me like an adult told me all about how hard you studied at school and where I saw that your passion for learning chased all the darkness and ugliness away as you delved into the secrets of the big book of life You’re confident…
Read MoreField
By Poetry Issue 90
Heaven is a field I am driving an old truck across in the only dream I have on the subject. The sky over that pasture is so blue I know it will burst if it doesn’t turn twenty different reds at evening. The truck is my granddad’s ’72 Ford, still smelling of oilfield and aftershave.…
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