Web Exclusive: A Conversation with Morgan Meis
By Interview Issue 80
Morgan Meis blogs about philosophy and art criticism at The Smart Set. His essay “Conversion” in Image Issue 80 takes an oblique approach to his coming into the Catholic Church–it’s at least as much a portrait of the elderly Sri Lankan nun who catechized him as it is a personal essay. Image: You are a…
Read MoreHow Do You Market Prayers?
By Poetry Issue 79
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…
Read MoreConverted
By Essay Issue 80
MY WIFE AND I were living in Sri Lanka when I suddenly found myself baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. I don’t regret it one bit, mind you. But it was surprising at the time. In retrospect, there were signs. My father was sent to Jesuit boarding school as a youth, and though he later left…
Read MoreFor Whom the Resurrection is the Full Moon Rising
By Poetry Issue 80
Gauzed shine on the infinite, the moondog blooms like a distant searchlight left of the moon, almost unmoving to the naked eye, as if tracking a slow-drifting object, like one of the balloons wafting into North Korea, balloons with winter socks tied to them, or one of Chagall’s ethereal blue bodies above a nameless Russian…
Read More111th Street Jesus: The Art and Faith of Muralist Kent Twitchell
By Essay Issue 82
KENT TWITCHELL has painted Jesus on the sides of buildings in Los Angeles four times. One of those Jesuses (until it was whitewashed recently by a new property owner) was on the exterior of a liquor store at Vermont Avenue and 111th Street, in a gang-patrolled part of south Los Angeles known by city homicide detectives…
Read MorePoem in July
By Poetry Issue 85
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…
Read MoreJune
By Poetry Issue 85
The black cat is always scratching behind his ears, always slinking off to piss in some hidden corner of the guest room. It is both unkind and self-congratulatory of me to feel sympathy for people who don’t possess a sense of humor. Where the hell do I get off, anyway? Admitting something hardly ever makes…
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