More on: prayer

Julia Spicher Kasdorf is the author of three poetry collections—Sleeping Preacher (1992), Eve’s Striptease (1998), and Poetry in America (2011)—all from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Sleeping Preacher won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and the Great Lakes College’s Association Award for New Writing, and Eve’s Striptease was named one of the top twenty poetry books of 1998 by Library Journal. She has…

grief and triumph were one and perennial, petals on the same rose, or the same rose by other names. —Kelly Cherry When Rachel was dying, and too weak any longer to sit up when visitors, crying, came to say their last goodbyes, she listened to her friend Deb’s prayers, whispered over the hospital bed. Then,…

Ya-Quddus One of the ninety-nine names of God Yours is the name of God that comes most easily to me— God holy, pure, perfect as geometry, that which is set apart. God to whom I pray, though I deserve no favors. And would you, Ya-Quddus, whom I simply call God, Lord, bargain with my heart…

Does your prayer cross the street? Or is it like the skin of the serpent Scratched against a stick or sharp stone? Does your prayer shred? Has your prayer Ever heard a man cry, or touched a woman’s fur? No prayer for the smashed teeth of Ai Wei Wei held against his will? I saw…

HOME, I SAY. I’m on the road, I say. I’m in class. No, it’s okay. What’s the matter? It was always the first question. Where I was would determine whether I could help. Where are you?—during those early months when I would pick up. He was locked out, he was stuck in the mud, etc.…

I’ve made plans to keep a private heart, a heart for God, I’ve made plans to pray, and each time I’ve planned poorly—no time, no time, no spirit— and my private heart has been revealed and it has been embarrassing, like when my daughter found my little vibrator—pink and smooth and fun with one bright…

Your name, Jesus, is childhood in the body, at times a single malt upon the tongue, Vivaldi to the ears; your name, Christ, forgiveness to the heart, acceptance to the flesh, a troubled joy across the soul; at ever my very best I will plead to you, closest to me, for kindness. Perhaps the silence…

I have love And a child, A banjo And shadows. It was the light, always the light. First, that absent early hour when he woke to find the world made strange, knocked awry, as if creation had suddenly undone itself, the landscape dishonored by this loss. The dawn moved haltingly toward day. He would have…

                 Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. It is what the law says. However, the summer of our prayers was one of grace in action. An outage from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon never occurred despite all the signs. I witnessed utility men working in the street as well…

the sea saying, This is how you pray to your rock of a god, your massive cliff of a god, sheer drop into the bay, immovable, not-going-anywhere kind of god. Look at photos from a hundred years ago. Your god’s not moved. Glacial remains of a god. Impenetrable. Can’t-wear-it- down god. Rock face of a…