In Our First House of Marriage
By Poetry Issue 89
I think of the days in our first house of marriage, in our country of clouds that were black like shadows on shadows, when hope and history seemed to hang in the balance between the bomber and the assassin. Those were the evenings spent leaning across the wooden table to hear the talk of dear…
Read MoreWalking to Emmaus
By Poetry Issue 89
The man I imagine walking to Emmaus is the one I saw in Caravaggio’s flesh-and-bone depiction of Christ beckoning the taxman to his side, steady arm outstretched, pointing a finger at the table of cardsharps. It’s a gesture that’s the same in every language and seems to say there’s no time to wait for those…
Read MoreOne Morning
By Poetry Issue 89
Everything solid Melts away The knot in the heart Laughter from the lips Waves come loose from the ocean Grind the shingle into gritty lines Every line is sea-scum and the cry of gulls The moon drags up water and the fluids of my body My veins—a red hammock beneath the moon I dream I…
Read MoreWalking the Dog Last Night
By Poetry Issue 89
While my dog examined the yellow messages On lampposts And in the dry grass And morsed back messages of its own I asked myself Am I holding the dog by the leash Or is it the other way around And the dog is holding me? Maybe it seems foolish to involve God in this But…
Read MoreCamp Meeting
By Poetry Issue 89
Old Saybrook, Connecticut, April 1827 Wealthy Ann, Ruhama, Othelia, Harriet, Hipsey, and I took the ferry to the big camp meeting in Old Saybrook, where ten famous preachers took turns exhorting us to find Jesus and to serve him by serving each other. The crowd swarmed like ants taking breadcrumbs home. Wealthy Ann said smelling…
Read MoreUncomfortable Things
By Poetry Issue 89
e.g. Abolition, Prudence Crandall, the Amistad, Nat Turner, Indian Removal, Female Complaints: First Congregational Church, Lyme, Connecticut, ca. 1816 Even the pulpit Bible was consumed in the fire that turned the meeting-house to ash. An architect planned the new meeting-house, a steeple equipped with a lightning-rod, a belfry, and a golden weathervane; Ionic columns supporting…
Read MoreMeeting-House Fire
By Poetry Issue 89
_________Lyme, Connecticut, 3 July 1815 Nor’easter and calm shine, high tide and neap, combined lives shuttled between births and deaths, from baptisms to funerals, amen. Mehitabel, Uriah, Moses, John. Robert, Elihu, Azanaha, Love. Wakes, marriages, fallings-out and laughter, arguments, broken hearts, betrayals, guilt: thus time shaped a community of faith. Jerusha, Wealthy, Esther, Hepzibah. Moses,…
Read MoreChrist in São Paulo
By Poetry Issue 89
On Christmas Eve while the bells were ringing, I saw Christ walking on a street in São Paulo. He was already a man when he was born, swaddled in his manger with solitude and death. The white cold wind whispered a secret: —Life was brief for men and gods, a sigh of Christ breathed in…
Read MoreThe Clearing
By Poetry Issue 89
What does God want with so many stars and black holes in infinite space? What is God’s plan on rainy nights when the wind blows and topples the flowers? In this dark empire the gift of uncertainty follows me through the forest. Maybe I dreamed the clearing I saw in the trees. Translated from…
Read MoreIn the House of God
By Poetry Issue 89
The child who knelt before the wooden altar painted without passion finishes his prayers _______________ and gets up cramped what shakes the skies? Miserable skies that _______________ spill their dregs while I take refuge under the eaves of God’s house ____________ and that don’t clear up I don’t drink you from the chalice that the…
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