Tobacco, Psalms, and Bloodletting
By Poetry Issue 72
I sometimes think back to my youth Remembering the heavy sack of sin on my shoulders And I bent double so it seemed Across the fields, with scarecrows hung on crosses, Along straight roads that led to nowhere, Weighed down in ditches, barns, the hollow trees I slept in; And how I searched like a…
Read MoreThe Watcher
By Essay Issue 70
BEST OXTAIL SOUP” I said. My husband nodded. “Best Healthy for You Fish Fry.” His mouth quirked up in a smile, an effort I appreciated. We were both zonked from not getting enough sleep. Jamaican bakeries swung past, their windows advertising fluorescent-yellow-crusted beef pies as well as jerk chicken and sorrel. This was deep…
Read MoreImpromptu Novena in September
By Poetry Issue 71
Understand the light, then, and recognize it ————————–—Corpus Hermeticum ——————–Memory is a kind of accomplishment ————————William Carlos Williams I Birdsong on the book page, birdsong on the brown rug; fanfare of birdsong above the radio orchestra; birdsong in shafted light of the wooden blinds. In one moment I heard them—by which I mean they’d all…
Read MoreThe Field
By Poetry Issue 71
I have often been afraid to think of Augustine thinking, his mind a field, he confesses, that must be worked with much cost and sweat, and he the farmer laboring. Just knowing how little one can know is enough for most, but not Augustine— whatever crept around in his mind had no right to privacy.…
Read MoreA Request
By Poetry Issue 74
Please give me the watches, Mother. Engraved 11-6-46. A gold Gruen and bracelet Bulova retired to a worn reliquary, a remote shelf, hall closet ripe: serial cakes of soap, tissue boxes, toothpaste on sale in case of another Depression. I’m surprised there are no smokes in there though Dad dragged on his last too late…
Read MoreStory
By Essay Issue 75
The Word-Soaked World Troubling the Lexicon of Art and Faith Since 1989, Image has hosted a conversation at the nexus of art and faith among writers and artists in all forms. As the conversation has evolved, certain words have cropped up again and again: Beauty. Mystery. Presence. For this issue, we invited a handful of…
Read MoreThe Discipline of the Notebook
By Essay Issue 76
A MURDERER was living around the corner—on Smith Street. I saw them filming America’s Most Wanted in front of his building,” said the old woman in the Key Food on Atlantic Avenue yesterday, talking to the manager in his booth. “You don’t know who is a killer today and who isn’t. Have a nice day.” And…
Read MoreBede’s Sparrow
By Poetry Issue 76
In the middle of the day, I was lost in thought, staring at my newly dead father, or the portion of him the funeral home gave me back in a cheap little plastic urn I’d placed on my study’s mantle. I’d been reading about Bede’s sparrow, which, it turned out, was not Bede’s at all,…
Read MoreForgiveness IV
By Poetry Issue 78
Today just today is a forgiveness exercise. I try to live as though yesterday has no hold on me. …
Read MoreShortnin’ Bread
By Poetry Issue 78
The lyrics were appalling. Three little children lying in bed, two were sick an’ the other most dead and how the song, written by James Whitcomb Riley in racist dialect, became a minstrel song. Yet the bread itself was wonderful: cornmeal, flour, hot water, eggs, baking powder, milk, a good deal of shortening. My mother…
Read More