Issue 120

Dwelling contemplatively is hard. The imagination is, for too many, a foreign country. Arguing about is easier than being. Perhaps this is true in the same way that it’s safer and more comfortable to talk about God than risk actual encounter.

Olive doesn’t know why she’s rushing to the brick building with the barred windows and parquet basement floor, and this is itself a kind of proof of urgency.

I feel I’m floating on a pond
of sadness,

They had set up tents. Not all; some had a few blankets thrown down and were lying on them. Often there was a man with a woman and child on each blanket. It seemed a little odd to me, because some had dug a hole and built a shallow shelter with the blanket on top. It might get very windy and cold at night.

the children
were everywhere,
some you gave birth to
and some you didn’t,

The Z falls from doze
waking us to the forested creature inside

I could not tell you the story of my living.
Terrific tsunami or closed cabinet of heart.

The paintings were inspired by an old Bible with engravings of scenes from the Old and New Testaments.

NEAR THE REPUTED SITE of the Garden of Eden, an international team of environmental engineers, sewage treatment experts, and others are restoring historic marshlands in what has become a desert wasteland. They are creating a new Eden-not simply a public works project that will filter wastewater for the Ahwar region in southern Iraq, but also…

I let them choose the rock from which the water would flow.