Articles

I just couldn’t breathe in its shadow. It weighed what the cross weighed, that shadow Cross, more than any shadow should. No Sun could shoulder that kind of shadow, No man kneel there without a shudder. The dark beams crushed me flat as shadow, My flesh, grass, matted by the shade. No Way a mere…

_____What is truth That truth-telling is like theft Under your odd, local laws? Your own kind call you scofflaw. In fact, they prefer a thief. We don’t nail your type in Rome; Preach, and we just stroll past you _____And your truth. _____What is truth Anyway but a king thief Talking his way past the…

In all this wind I’m sure you’ll find something empty, an unsent package or the edge of a glass. Perhaps you’ll come back cradled, released to your barest parts. My emptiness loves yours. Can you hear it? As grace and distraction, our many selves bend in order to sing. You’d tell me the better to…

My better angel, my necessary, my made or my born, my homunculus, dwarf star, burning-ship swimmer, my opal and orb, my one truth abandoning or abandoned, long oxbow and pest, my socket and thread, locus and shift, my betrayed and betraying, my thief at the window, broken my bottle, my child gone hungry, room laced…

It is March; in Ireland daffodils will be suffering the harshest winds; here the coach had turned back from the slopes of the Beatitudes towards Tiberias; to the right the valleys, green and flush, rising to the hills; to the left, the lake, quietened in an evening lull and pleasuring; I settled in my seat,…

M Y SISTER, SONDRA, stood on my porch smoking a cigarette, just like she does every Wednesday while her son practices soccer at the school three blocks from my house. “Alisa, you ever been around one of them savants? Like the one that was in that movie Rain Man?” Cigarette smoke rose and fought against the…

S HE WAS A BEAUTIFUL child and then a beautiful girl who seemed protected by an aura of goodness so that lascivious men kept their thoughts to themselves and didn’t lay a hand on her. But one afternoon her luck ran out during a hurricane which brushed New England in September of 1948. Her mother’s…

A S I WRITE, POPE BENEDICT XVI has just departed by helicopter from the Vatican to begin his retirement. It is a safe bet that in the flood of commentary on his legacy little attention will be paid to one of his more inconspicuous initiatives—the “Courtyard of the Gentiles.” But to my mind, this little program,…

An Interview with Fred Bahnson Image: Soil and Sacrament took you around the country exploring the spiritual practice of agriculture, so to speak. What made you want to write the book? How did it take its shape? Fred Bahnson: The travel story I’ll describe shortly, but first I’ll say that the impetus to write the book came…

Blessed Are Those Who Yearn New Poetry in Review The Glacier’s Wake by Katy Didden (Pleiades Press, 2013) God Loves You by Kathryn Maris (Seren Books UK, 2013) Incarnadine by Mary Szybist (Graywolf Press, 2013)   AT THE END of Paradiso, Dante, after confessing his inability to describe the vision of Love he sees, nonetheless…