Issue 110

Good criticism also helps us see why some art doesn’t work, or works poorly, activating the worst in us. When criticism is judgmental in the sense of being censorious, that too is in the service of art and our experience. The critic is showing us why we need and deserve better.

Every time the women came to bathe, inevitably, someone’s bracelet or earring fell into the drain, and the head female bath attendant led a blindfolded Haji Gershin into the baths, where he stood amidst the naked women, tapping the copper pipes, his head cocked to the side.

I felt / the soil-dark downward / proof of being, the earth / an appetite, an almost-love, the air / a meeting ground, / the whole of seeing / seeable

Throughout the winter, Dr. Iske obsessively polished their furniture with oil. He had studied plant biology in college before going on to med school, and when he saw varnished wood, he saw the tree it had come from.

A psalm for the plague year by Philip Metres: “Loss, you have been our regent, / Refusing the refugees / you sent. / / Truly we’re boxed in an annex / Of the mansion / of your text.”

Wasim’s was the only part of the family cut off when the wall was erected, the rest residing on the other side near the Israeli settlement of Gilo. From their family balcony, Gilo can be seen—ten thousand red-roofed pillars by night, one colossal cloud by day.

But innocence / / Is not responsibility / cleansed by command / And water, lifted, can but flee / the trembling hand.

The sound I imagine / you make has to / hold me and wake / me to its own kind / of internal return.

How a thing looked was important. Not just Is it useful, but Is it nice to look at. Trees made fruit, and fruit is useful, he’d said to Zeke. But before fruit comes flowers, and there’s not a thing to be done with them but look.

I cut a hole in the ice each winter, an extraordinary black trapezoid—“avanto” in Finnish—intended for the bracing plunge to follow the extreme heat of the Finnish sauna. The shape carries so much personal meaning.

We’re talking here about two projects: rereading art history to recover a wider context for religious meaning, and rereading it to recover a wider sense of the art historical project. You are aiming at the first, which is the larger and more important one, but our examples have been mainly the second, which would be a tonic to the discipline.

Beginning and beginning again, / the eye opens to see the border / of its galaxy and finds there a snake.

Occasionally, she would indulge / in controlled acts of remembrance, / letting the distant world intrude. / She found this sometimes helpful / to her investigations, but a little / went a long way.

We get the crap… If you get white people over here, then they’ll start making the produce look worthy… It shouldn’t be like that. This is our city… We care just as much about our kids, just as much as the white people out there in Williamsville, Amherst, and other surrounding areas… Why can’t our kids see the same things?

Lasting images go beyond the simple act of documenting a moment by demanding a response from the viewer. The viewer reacts at a much deeper level, like we do to smell, but with the eyes.

And then the angel pulled, just slightly, / on one of the threads / composing the linen / the painter had tacked to his stretcher.

It’s the taste of that first sip / of coffee, rich and strong, the Mr. Coffee cup warmer / on your desk. It’s having the right pen.

Summer already fading, out of the question. Light / arrives at an oblique angle. Scatters of rain. Yet here / we are, alive and attentive

The trees of evening are filled, a sieve of leaves and small birds, the resident choir offering an evening orison of twitter. But look! high on the power line a singular sentinel robin conducts the evening’s benediction of western light glittering across the bay, between the islands, all the way to Canada.     Luci…

When Moses led / the senseless run toward the waters, I pulled / the reins to slow my horses. But then the sea / diverged itself into two walls and stood / as if held by glass.

I begin with the soul, that escape / artist, that meme.

I am soothing; on an empty leash, eyes / cease to be sexy.

In my family, as in others, it was money that finally broke us apart. The brother who was out—my uncle—was now in; the brother who was in—my father—was now out. An old story, set now in southeast Georgia: Lear in the Low Country, the prodigal son come home to the provinces.

He’ll rewire you / Because you let him, no, because you were looking / Always for someone who could.

It’s as though the movie represents an alternate life for any of us. Take away a job. Take away a spouse. Take away an able body. Take away good mental health. How many of us could maintain our current lifestyles for long before we’d feel the crunch, the walls closing in?

Today, in a comprehensive fulfilment of biblical promise, your iPhone, which counts your steps and is acquainted with your ways both public and private, will offer to route your path home and watch over your lying down.

This faith was not mine / this bite into colorless / this flush with skin and bones / this eating the circle this / fingering of names

Each body a consecrated temple. / That means // sister, no one needs to see / past your knees.

The waters of the Sonoran Desert are scarce and wily. In O’odham lands, shy rivers will retreat underground, seeping into the sand, as if to rest from the seen world for a while.

We cannot see our loved ones, shut into hospitals / like mysterious shrines, taken out alive or dead. // They close our eyes. We have no say in whether / we breathe or not.

And so, emboldened by what the angel told them, / off they went toward Bethlehem to find / the swaddled babe and manger and lolling beasts, / their beauty and their beings ramified / in carols lightening our lamentations

Is it always necessary— / I think but do not say— / for the eyes of men / to penetrate the ways of the most high?

were onto something, separating the good god / from all of this, but you’re so stubborn, you / insist on hanging dead in the web