Category: Issue 29

Moving Myself Around   I am a crumpled piece of notepaper moving myself around the house like a scared tenant. I consider cave-life, but caves are so wholly black and full of nightimes. Roads were animal prints I followed. My heart a slick, scrubbed, washed wood-thingwith unsayable complaints– a marathon I ran first thing before I was awake. The day…

MONTH TO MONTH   I do it on purpose, I think. I’ve been without a phone plan for years now and every month I forget it’s time to pay until I can’t return a call or a street won’t show up. My map’s frozenand I’m nowhere on it. I imagine I’ve run away to a forest whose dark trees…

I saw the sacred and profane over my mother’s shoulder.  The massage therapy textbook held a naked man in reverent stance, palms upturned at his sides.  There, in the field otherwise unsullied, he stood or laid.  His expression hard, but neutral. Eyes shut and skinned, lids pink as the inside of my mouth.  I believed he had…

My sister is dead. I fold my socks and arrange themin shaky piles. They encounter the dark, dust. I am encountering the dead while I’m reading this book. It is about rearranging things, like thinking before feeling. Like with every book produced the world gets darker. The logic is shaky, the prose crude. The dead encounter these things, but tell…

  December is a poltergeist, noisy with carols and nor’easters. My familyis a wolf pack, and we celebrate Christmas stalking something timid and gamey: a goodnight’s sleep or lost souvenir spoon from a trip to Montréal. Lo, the churchyard bears the symbol of a virgin birth: a nativity whose sheepkeep turning up on the ridge, throats…

Ars Liturgica For the food on the other side of grace I sputtered shortwinded prayers. My father said “slow down; pray like this.” He said always start with gratitude. Even for another day. I scoured scripture for the blueprint. But even pater noster has no lines of thanksgiving. Only give us this day– Still I…