I Tell My Mother Lies
By Essay Issue 64
I TELL MY mother lies. Sometimes three or four times a day. I lie mostly about money. That I’ve sent it or that I’m just about to send it. Or that surely I will send it tomorrow. My mother waits for money like the bums waited for Godot. One day she called seventeen times. So…
Read MoreSentence
By Poetry Issue 64
You lie like a comma in the sentence of your bed. Your legs stack like planks; each hand steadies the opposite shoulder. It’s a position you assume when assailed by dreams or sleepless longing, or on nights you feel you’re breathing broken glass. Tonight you buckle into yourself and mourn two vocabularies, a moldy discourse…
Read MoreThirty Seconds Away
By Essay Issue 63
The following is an expanded version of the introductory remarks delivered at Image’s Glen Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on July 27, 2009. The theme for both the workshop and Image’s twentieth anniversary year, now concluding, was “Fully Human: Art and the Religious Sense.” BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, a bishop of…
Read MorePontius Pilate Fugue
By Poetry Issue 76
_____What is truth That truth-telling is like theft Under your odd, local laws? Your own kind call you scofflaw. In fact, they prefer a thief. We don’t nail your type in Rome; Preach, and we just stroll past you _____And your truth. _____What is truth Anyway but a king thief Talking his way past the…
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