Grief Daybook: A Love Supreme
By Poetry Issue 54
Today it’s like water in the ear, a slow bleed in the brain, thinking of your bones and the marrow inside them. Last night, half-awake, I leaned into the siren as it passed and thought of Coltrane writing his liner-note prayer —it all has to do with it— and listened for the drumbeat of another…
Read MoreThe Cartographer of Disaster
By Poetry Issue 54
And he sent forth a raven and it went back and forth, to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. —Genesis 8:7 To traverse open water searching for signs of life, a seabird is more suited than a land bird, which needs the trustworthy stubble of wheat fields and faithful…
Read MoreThe Newest Thing in the World
By Short Story Issue 54
FOR THE LAST MONTHS of his life, my father lived upstairs from us. His ceiling pitched all the way to the floor, and three tall windows overlooked the pines and the bayou behind the house. For furniture there was a double bed, an oak dresser, and a nightstand—any more wouldn’t fit. The room had never…
Read MoreLooking for a Renaissance
By Essay Issue 54
MOST EDUCATED PEOPLE, in addition to a set of favorite authors, artists, and composers, develop a fascination for one or more historic cultures: republican Rome, say, or colonial New England or the Ming dynasty. Sometimes these passions are matters of aesthetic or intellectual taste, but often they bear a relationship to the individual’s ideas about what constitutes the…
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