Sojourning on the Highway of Soul
By Book Review Issue 70
Rifraff By Stephen Cushman (Lousiana State University Press, 2011) A Walk in Victoria’s Secret By Kate Daniels (Lousiana State University Press, 2011) Bone Fires: New & Selected By Mark Jarman (Sarbande Books, 2011) Every Riven Things By Christian Wiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) CENTRAL TO MOST SPIRITUAL, personal, or religious beliefs—whether one of…
Read MoreNo Counting Sheep without Feeding Them, Too
By Poetry Issue 74
Sleeping pill dependence may prompt referral to laboratory overnights (Polysomnography, would you look good on me, electrodes attached?) and wee-hour waking may be a sign of depression, it says, but what could depress when neither son of Zebedee needed hypnotics, white ones like these approved by the Air Force in support of mission readiness, to…
Read MoreFourth Week, First Contemplation, Second Prelude
By Poetry Issue 74
Your place, not mine. Vessels for water, of course. Maybe one for wine. Bread, smoked fish, honey in an earthen jar. Basins for ablutions. The bed you share with pleasure to ponder. And somewhere for prayer, rug, bench, stool, shelf beneath the shell collection, keepsake chips of Egyptian glass, Silk Road cloth, a dark blue…
Read MoreAtheism’s Easier
By Poetry Issue 74
Abstain from staring too long at the sky. Stick to screens, little keyboards; block out birds with private earbuds; never hear the wind breathe harder. Watch TV. Always drive. Try to avoid a night outside in ladled moonlight, glowing broth. Eschew solitude; cut back on silence; call up someone just to gossip; send lots of…
Read MoreSyllable Nutshell
By Poetry Issue 83
G is for onset, kickoff, square one, raging beginning of in the beginning out of the starting gate, raw originality in original sense, and if consonantal sine qua non for vanity plates. O is for nucleus, sonorous meat in a syllable sandwich, bellybutton earful, always a vowel, animal imperative enough in itself to tell 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…
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