In 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…
Read MoreNostalghia
By Poetry Issue 88
A meditation before the Madonna del Parto of Piero della Francesca 1. I speak to you, Lady, in words of my time still new as the boy’s laughter as he cut this morning’s bread. You sway a little, in the soft shadows where you dwell, like a boat painted inexpressibly blue. To speak of that…
Read MoreBent Body, Lamb
By Essay Issue 88
Really, though, I’m struggling. Is it absurd to adhere to a religion whose most central rituals my body won’t even let me perform? What am I to make of all the parables in the New Testament where Jesus heals the crippled and the lame? And, most importantly, if I believe we’ll all eventually be resurrected back into the world, then is this body—this bruised, broken, wreck of a form—the one I’m stuck with for all time?
Read MoreIf I Decide to Pray Again It Won’t Be Words Strung in a Line
By Poetry Issue 87
I’m going to pray with my whole body. I don’t mean snake-handling sanctifications in a wood’s hollow nor torso-rolling, arm-waving hollering on a carpeted aisle. No, God of dark matter and everything in between, I’m going to concentrate every particle of my being, each neuron-strumming molecule, each cell pitching and sliding beneath…
Read MoreTo Begin With
By Poetry Issue 87
I am going to lie down in the field, grass a green halo over my head. I’ll let the sun singe the peach, my flesh, luxurious, ruined. Let rain have its way with me so I can feel my mother’s washcloth on my face, hand I turned from. Lord, soften the hard pit of my…
Read MoreWaiting with Cynthia
By Poetry Issue 87
While my brother and I waited for our father to die, which took longer than we thought it would, one of the hospital’s chaplains came in to visit us. Her name was Cynthia, and the first thing she did was read some passages from The Book of Common Prayer as we stood around our father—…
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