Breasts: A Graphic Essay
By Visual Art Issue 119
In Sicily, they bake Mini di Virginia, little pink cakes with cherries for nipples, to honor her saint’s day.
Read MoreMary, Mother
By Poetry Issue 92
It is a fact that no one worries in the Bible. —Adam Phillips i. She worried. & she knew. Good enough makes a faint halo. Still she was good enough. She let the infant dream his unbroken body at her nipple. She suckled him & waited as lightning struck. Often. His eyes clouded— ultramarine, gray…
Read MoreAdvent
By Poetry Issue 89
Last week a jellied disc in one of my husband’s lower vertebrae cinched, slipped—on the x-ray the bones’ thorned edges gritted against each other, his whole spine yearning left, a lily stem arched toward the promise of light. Now the days shrink into themselves, the trees bare-limbed but for squirrels’ nests and the green bloom…
Read MoreMary
By Poetry Issue 88
If she had said, No, The world would not have stopped: Birds would have flown high still into sky, The heavens would have proclaimed his glory And the firmament the work of his hands. We would have gone on reproving him, Unaware of how deeply down His love might plunge into our affliction, Unaware of…
Read MoreFor the Virgin of Sorrows
By Poetry Issue 69
Remember a time before the big, important occasions that made it into the book, before the winemaking and the raising from the dead. Remember you were a girl, and a boy brought you flowers. The moon moved and another boy brought you flowers. It looked like that was the way it was going to be…
Read MoreIn the Candleroom at Saint Bartholomew’s on New Year’s Eve
By Poetry Issue 83
A long time spent trying, kneeling, to light a votive for my mother from a votive for another. Each fire floats on shallow viscous water. With my stick, I wet wicks, extinguishing prayers instead of sending up mine: I loved you every day, will. My stick blackens, does not carry light. Evening bells ring. The…
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