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Merton Listens to the Requiem

By Ewa Elzbieta Nowakowska Poetry

The bow drops. The baton slips from a hand. Can one conduct trees? In the Lacrimosa the violins rush to set up tall trunks in an autumn wood. In the chancel amber leaves flicker. Death descends from the pulpit, a traveling peddler in rented garb. The church cracks open like a jewel case. A vaulting…

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Meditation on Soteriology

By Karen An-Hwei Lee Poetry

__________The poet is in labor.    ______________—Denise Levertov   _______I confess the obvious, my inadequacy to translate famine to bread to feed all the hungry children on earth. Wish I could invent a happiness machine or dollar tree blossoming with nontaxable revenue for small businesses. Wish for a thousand bitcoins, wild doves of aqueous tongues,…

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The Last Book on the Shelf

By Richard Jones Essay

Why Believe in God? Over the past few years, the Image staff contemplated assembling a symposium based on this simple problem. But we hesitated. Should we pose such a disarmingly straightforward question to artists and writers, who tend to shun the explicit and the rational? Or were we hesitating because the question itself made us…

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The Last Supper

By Jack Stewart Poetry

Pieces of torn bread on the tablecloth. Plates empty in front of them as if they have just removed the halos they will wear in a few years. Jesus holds out his arms like he is scolding them for such a mess. They look startled, like they are seeing it for the first time: it…

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Carol of the Christ Child’s Garden

By David Brendan Hopes Poetry

Come into my garden, the Christ Child said to me. Here is the lily for what’s past, the rose for what’s to be. Here is the emerald mound where love lies till the day all sleeping souls must rise and do what the hardest scriptures say. Here is the sapphire pool from which the laughing…

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The Humiliation of the Word

By Gregory Wolfe Essay

The following is adapted from the commencement address given to the first graduating class of the Seattle Pacific University Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. The ceremony was held on August 4, 2007, as part of the MFA residency that is held concurrently with Image’s Glen Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  …

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The Anxiety Offices

By Lisa Russ Spaar Poetry

I am none the less
boundless this morning,

trawling, under your sway,
winter’s counterfeit cages

wracked & rife & caroled
by the catalogue of all

I do and must learn to love
beyond my power to stay.

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The Medicine of Immortality

By Daniel Donaghy Poetry

was what our nuns called it, the bread of angels, the Lord’s supper on the eve of his pure and holy sacrifice, their black habits hovering over us like threats, always the rosary dangling from a curveless hip, always chalk dust swirled on the cracked blackboard, above which the patron saints sat awaiting our prayers…

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A Conversation with Thomas Lynch

By Gregory Wolfe Interview

Thomas Lynch is the author of three collections of poetry: Skating with Heather Grace (Knopf), Grimalkin & Other Poems (Jonathan Cape), and Still Life in Milford (Jonathan Cape and W.W. Norton). His essay collection The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (Norton) won the Heartland Prize for nonfiction and the American Book Award, was…

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