How Do You Market Prayers?
By Poetry Issue 79
Does your prayer cross the street? Or is it like the skin of the serpent Scratched against a stick or sharp stone? Does your prayer shred? Has your prayer Ever heard a man cry, or touched a woman’s fur? No prayer for the smashed teeth of Ai Wei Wei held against his will? I saw…
Read MoreCyprian Variations
By Poetry Issue 79
A. The heart is a divided city Between two alphabets. Church bells, minarets Betoken Time has stopped where it is broken. Nothing forgets. This is called history, not pity, It is not spoken. B. To remember is to cross Through no-man’s land Into an imaginary country You do not recognize But where the streets are…
Read MoreThe Neighbor
By Short Story Issue 79
JACOB FELT TERRIBLE: he had slept through the whole thing. The ambulance, the EMTs. It had happened at seven in the morning, and his alarm had been set for eight. Was it better or worse that no one else in the hall heard anything either? Mrs. Wilkinson had been taken away, and she had not…
Read MoreThe Catholic Writer, Then and Now
By Essay Issue 79
WHEN DANA GIOIA’S ESSAY “Can Poetry Matter?” appeared in The Atlantic in 1991, it galvanized a national conversation about the state of American literature and how creative writing was being taught, produced, and consumed by the reading public. That piece justly propelled Gioia to the front ranks of American letters, not only as a critic but as…
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