Sometimes a Prayer
By Poetry Issue 96
O Listener, You know how pleased I can be with the sounds of my own words. But sometimes a prayer comes out half chewed, like a tough crust that sticks in the teeth. Or spat out, the stone from a sour plum. What if my prayer is thin, rote, barren of belief? If so, remind…
Read MoreMy Life as an Open-Air Temple
By Poetry Issue 92
From cramped to roofless ——-I became—I don’t know how— ————–an open-air temple with no pillars. My walls of stone, lichen-covered, where many feet came to pray. ——-The willows shook around me ————–as mice and small insects knelt in moonlight, I could feel the breath of many spirits ——-winging through my chamber: ————–rabbis dropping pocket lint—…
Read MoreFat Tuesday
By Poetry Issue 92
Out of exceeding gloom and out of God, I break a prayer from a growl and sing a hymn more ordinary than tap water. I pray that I might be more than my skin, this dance of atoms, this ritual of ash, this tribe of twilight and rattled angels, this pattern of epiphanies rejected. I…
Read MoreThe Trick
By Poetry Issue 91
I’ve always loved that scene in The Seventh Seal where Jof, poor broke Jof the juggler, rushes back to tell his wife Mia that he’s just seen the virgin & child, so close to me that I could have touched her, but Mia is skeptical, wants to know what they’ll eat this winter, wants to…
Read MoreSalt of Sodom
By Poetry Issue 90
Ancient salt burned in the Temple incense, but also consumed. Mined, gathered from flats or evaporated Dead Sea brine— theories vary. So strong, hands were washed after meals because a careless touch to the eye could cause blindness. Lord, make us this pungent, that others might be thrown down blind, lifted up at the sight…
Read MoreIn the House of God
By Poetry Issue 89
The child who knelt before the wooden altar painted without passion finishes his prayers _______________ and gets up cramped what shakes the skies? Miserable skies that _______________ spill their dregs while I take refuge under the eaves of God’s house ____________ and that don’t clear up I don’t drink you from the chalice that the…
Read MoreHymn
By Poetry Issue 67
A child sees inside the stained-glass window the pride of the garden that came before the hand that raised this smoke, this corpse, this rose. His mother signals him to pray with those who come to kneel beneath the candle fire. The child sees inside their stained-glass window the petals of the wound that cannot…
Read MoreTenebrae
By Poetry Issue 88
Holy Wednesday Lord, I know that the bitterness is for her own good. Through the numbness that has made her quadriplegic, she has drawn nearer to you, has been purged as with bloodroot of whatever sins still grieved you. Her pneumonia has sent her to hospice. Her descent was rapid. She sleeps her morphine dreams.…
Read MoreThrough the Ear
By Book Review Issue 88
The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible by Aviya Kushner (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) The Art of Listening in the Early Church by Carol Harrison (Oxford, 2013) God’s “I” remains the root word that sounds like a pedal note through all of revelation; it resists all attempts…
Read MoreFull Thunder Moon
By Poetry Issue 88
Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful, for I have taken refuge in you; in the shadow of your wings will I take refuge until this time of trouble has gone by. _______________Psalm 57:1 Sitting in the gazebo at Saint Meinrad Archabbey, ___she hears the sky grumbling as one cloud swells, ______its lining stretched…
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