Issue 117

I’ll take nails, / long nails, / and drive them into my body.

Olivia was about as high-Wasp as anyone I’d ever met, with her undergraduate degree from Smith and, before that, her four years at an all-girl’s boarding school in Pennsylvania, where she claimed she’d learned a song called “We Are Anglicans.” She loved to regale us with it when she came over for Shabbat.

Yesterday I spoke to a man from Dussen who’d had a very hard life. / For much of his story, he was a secondary character.

What was it he carried when he left / if not the dreams of those he’d touched?

-—They brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, placed her in their -—midst, and said to him, “Teacher, in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone -—such women. What do you say?” … -—Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.   What he made of dust became me. I…

The world that we still live very much in the midst of, the illusory rocks that slice us open and the faces made of infinitesimal and untouchable grains that we touch and love with everything we are—this is Jesus on the earth.

sorrow is unsafe when it is real sorrow.

There is no more / story to tell— / except I had / not died.

My relationship to the novel form is among the most important relationships in my life.