The Thing Itself: Art and Poverty
By Essay Issue 84
The following is adapted from a presentation given at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley in January 2015 during a convocation on the topic “Blessed Are You Poor: What Does It Mean to Be a Poor Church for the Poor?” I SHOULD HAVE TOLD Father Michael Sweeney that if he really…
Read MoreKaren Laub-Novak: A Catholic Expressionist in the Era of Vatican II
By Essay Issue 83
IN COLD WAR-ERA AMERICA, one of the more remarkable cultural developments was the efflorescence of visual arts programs in colleges and universities. This unprecedented expansion from 1945 to 1990 was launched even as most Americans remained indifferent, skeptical, or hostile to the rise of modern art. The upsurge in academic art programs attracted artistically inclined…
Read MoreAppeal to the Self
By Poetry Issue 83
Do you want to go back inside? the neighbor asks his small dun dog. Beauty, do you want to go inside? A long look at the tiny fluff, as if speech is imminent. As if anything is imminent. What would help you unpack the boxes? my therapist asks. Love. And I want an authentic relationship…
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…
Read MoreThe Fruit Thereof
By Poetry Issue 83
Hold the phone, it wasn’t an apple, apples have seeds and seed-bearers, check, perfectly fine in vegan Eden, nor does the story name the fruit, botanical paradox, fruit without seed, which even those grapes, supposedly seedless, have at some stage, albeit vestigial, and if the tree delighted her eyes, then Stevens was wrong, beauty in…
Read MoreAnnunciation
By Poetry Issue 83
What matters is what occurs occurs Between them, not to them. It’s only that The angel doesn’t matter, nor the virgin. A blade of light scissors the air Between them. To them it’s only that: A glancing blow, or a kind of cleaving, A blade of light. Scissor the air Wide open, then it happens:…
Read MorePsalm Ghazal I & II
By Poetry Issue 83
Psalm Ghazal I Touch the cheek of a child and God comes in through the fingers. Open your mouth, and the devil comes in or the devil goes out. Flatter with your tongue the wine and then the hollow inside my hip. At the request of your lips, my mourning turns to dancing. Only…
Read MoreThe Vermilion Saint
By Short Story Issue 83
Santa Rosalía de Mulegé Baja California 1820 THE COCHIMÍ SAY THE VIRGIN guards her pearls, and for that reason the church is never locked. The stone mission of Mulegé, perched upon red hills above the reach of estuarial floodwaters, had no doors to lock. The Indian workmen had not finished the carving. The church doorway…
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