Issue 119

God bless the man whose brow greases
the glass when he naps or despairs.

Once, night floated for ten or twelve seconds
on daybreak, following a sleepless night,
with Lydia, my cat of nineteen years,

in pain from renal failure, beside me….

Clarice Lispector. The Complete Stories. Translated by Katrina Dodson. Edited by Benjamin Moser. New Directions, 2015. Kevin McIlvoy. Is It So? Glimpses, Glyphs, and Found Novels. WTAW Press, 2023. Alva Noë. Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature. Hill and Wang, 2015.   HOW TO BEAR HAPPINESS?” That’s the question a character identified only as “Number…

And what of the tongue
Too long in the silky purse
Of the coveted spot, slurping up
Every pearl?

Now these voices hover around the belfry and bellow out Pray every day that you’ll see things.
I have. I’ve worked and watched. This was not the answer I wanted.

Every year, I surprise myself 
with how bad I am at most of the things 
I want to be good at: gardening
and happiness, mainly. 

Sham is subtractive, but I, a being, am aggregate. Creation is aggregate. Human creativity is, in its deepest dynamics, aggregate and productive. Let us ornament ourselves, yes, but not toward the end of erasure. Let our adornments extend our penumbrae, our enveloping souls, into the ether that melts into heaven, stacking glory upon glory as cell and organ, skin and fur, aura and crown, radiate the Life that animates all.

I don’t pretend that I am capturing the truth about my subjects. I’m interested in creating something that feels timeless, that could have been made at any moment.

In Sicily, they bake Mini di Virginia, little pink cakes with cherries for nipples, to honor her saint’s day.