Minium
By Poetry Issue 73
The monk stipples the page with convoluted trails of lead toasted rust red, brick red, the color first used for rubric and for miniature. Three thousand tiny dots prick the initials, as if the text itself were pierced with nails, red edging each green, black, or yellow letter to embolden the story of Christ’s dolor…
Read MoreEaster Pantoum
By Poetry Issue 73
for the Twelve-foot Tall Dancing Icons of Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, California In a church in a city on the edge of the world The risen Christ dances Over the heads of the congregants Who are also dancing The risen Christ dances With all the saints—certified or surprised Who are…
Read MoreMagdalen
By Poetry Issue 73
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb…. —John 20 She came to take care of the body. Some are like that. They feel the need to touch and handle _____where life was. We call it seeking closure. We call it clinging. We call it having difficulty facing reality; the reality that life itself _____has left…
Read MoreNo Counting Sheep without Feeding Them, Too
By Poetry Issue 74
Sleeping pill dependence may prompt referral to laboratory overnights (Polysomnography, would you look good on me, electrodes attached?) and wee-hour waking may be a sign of depression, it says, but what could depress when neither son of Zebedee needed hypnotics, white ones like these approved by the Air Force in support of mission readiness, to…
Read MoreFourth Week, First Contemplation, Second Prelude
By Poetry Issue 74
Your place, not mine. Vessels for water, of course. Maybe one for wine. Bread, smoked fish, honey in an earthen jar. Basins for ablutions. The bed you share with pleasure to ponder. And somewhere for prayer, rug, bench, stool, shelf beneath the shell collection, keepsake chips of Egyptian glass, Silk Road cloth, a dark blue…
Read MorePeter Howson and the Harrowing of Hell
By Essay Issue 76
AMID THE USUAL eclectic lower Manhattan gallery offerings of Swiss cow-decorated milk bottles, comic-book art of the Oism faith, and an installation of banners with bankrupt bank logos, the opening of the exhibition Redemption at Flowers in Chelsea last spring, featuring four huge oil paintings of Christ’s death and resurrection by Scottish artist Peter Howson, qualified as…
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