Issue 126

As I watched him settle into his seat, I felt the tension in his body almost as if it were my own, as if in his taut shoulders and straight spine he was holding himself rigid against the enormity of desire pressing down on him, as I had at his age.

The recordings of jazz pianists are revised by a magnetic field.

I offered what I could from my human heart to hers. May you be blessed with protection. May love shine its face on you. May peace turn toward you.

I carry the bones
of everyone I have loved, even a little,
and of every forebear atop my head.

The luckiest can
be shown how
to walk through
fire en route

a dream whose
herrings all run
in red weather

Purgatorio’s full of song.

Our Lady of Vladimir’s tears are said to be myrrh. When she weeps, the faithful sop up her myrrh with cotton balls, pocket them, carry them home for the miracles. Sufferers are said to be healed. They speak of a scent that engulfs them, a scent like ten thousand roses.

THE MOTHER WORRIED when her Catholic son married a Hindu woman. To protect him, she sent a plastic glow-in-the-dark statue of the Madonna for his bedside table. She included a note: Our Lady, Help of Christians, will always watch over you, Baba. A dutiful son, he set up the Madonna on his nightstand. Every night…

“I must take them to the cobbler,
they’ve only got slightly
worn-down heels,”