Question for My Father
By Poetry Issue 86
When I look up, into the needles of the cypress tree, brown in November, I see cinnamon—I see wood of violins, breast feathers of the sedge wren, a setter’s fur, toasted grain…. I see the cypress glowing within a cloudless noon, pale blue at horizon as background of a Botticelli annunciation, that turns unpaintably, achingly…
Read MoreOn Lazarus, Weeks before Her Death
By Poetry Issue 86
She wants to believe he clung to death, that the sweetness of the light that took him soaked him until he was fat with gladness, that bringing him back to the dark cave, making him breathe through oil-soaked cloth, pushing life back into his stiffened fingers and toes, that calling him with a siren’s voice…
Read MoreCanticle of Want
By Poetry Issue 86
Lord of worn stone cliffs and the guileless trill of the canyon wren; Lord of stunted hemlocks, imperiled mussels, seeds that fall on shallow soil; Lord of boreal forests, of the fragile nitrogen cycle, of vanishing aquifers, spreading deserts; Lord of neglect and…
Read MoreThe Breaking Strain of Grace
By Poetry Issue 86
Holy Week again: unleavened sky, all tensions held past hold. Mostly, what I feel is the unlikelihood. These days, pick a miracle, there’s science to explain it. Say it’s nighttime in the Garden, Jesus praying in a bloody sweat: Hematidrosis—rare; not unknown— …
Read MoreSister Saint Maisie Connecticut
By Short Story Issue 86
WHEN CALEB WAS THREE YEARS OLD, he went to his cousin’s house. At the door he was met by a little girl holding two coins in one hand while pulling down her bottom lip with the other. She lived a few houses over and was visiting to show off the money she’d been given for…
Read MoreThe Shadow Players
By Short Story Issue 55
PETE DZIEDZIC’S TEETH lay buried a half-mile south of the Da Nang Air Base. There the lance corporal had quarreled with a private over who’d recorded “Sea of Love.” Guys in the outfit were singing along to Armed Forces Radio when Pete said, “That singer’s from the northern U.S.” “He’s from my hometown,” replied the…
Read MoreA Conversation with Thomas Lynch
By Interview Issue 59
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…
Read MoreQuo Vadis?
By Poetry Issue 59
…when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and take you where you do not want to go. ————————————————–—John 21:18 The woman with the invisible stigmata sits day by day in the gelateria and wonders why no one else can see what she cannot, though she knows her…
Read MoreA Conversation with Emmanuel Garibay
By Interview Issue 65
Neighbors, Strangers, Family, Friends Four Artists Reflect on Charis The traveling art exhibition Charis—Boundary Crossings: Neighbors Strangers Family Friends features work by seven Asian and seven North American artists. The show grew out of a two-week seminar in Indonesia sponsored by Calvin College’s Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity and the Council for…
Read MoreI Said to God, “I’m Thinking of You”
By Poetry Issue 66
Nevertheless, the rain continued. In dark doorways and under loading docks men slept with cardboard and cold. I said, “My heart is full with praising your justice.” Still, the sniper drew in a long terrible breath—or so I understand. I said I was lonely for my old body and my body became older still. I…
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