Patricia Clark – Elegy to be Breathed at the Grand River
Elegy to be Breathed at the Grand River Choose a fall night. Choose October’s last night when the costumed children go door-to-door, scaring only themselves. Remember the year a little girl cried at our door, saying, “I didn’t want to be a bride”? The girl turned and flounced away while her mother laughed. This elegy […]
Abbie Kiefer – Given
Given For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7 We will die, each one. I preach this to my people so the truth can’t catch us by surprise. I make it a liturgy: One day we will die. And […]
James K. Zimmerman – Edward Hopper’s Boy and Moon (Variations on a Theme)
Edward Hopper’s Boy and Moon (Variations on a Theme) I. the boy awakens from a time of flying, a dim hallway littered with tintypes, daguerrotypes, faces of bearded men, women in bonnets and lace, blank stares, blurred hands fluttering when the shutter clicked the walls of his room painted in the sullen hues of a […]
Dorothy Johnson-Laird – Red-Cloud Woman
Red-Cloud Woman I know a lady who had a butterfly sitting on her shoulder. That butterfly told her things. This made her become a great medicine woman. ~ Lame Deer, Lakota medicine man For my friend Ardija Red-Cloud (1933-2017) She came into the sunlight after the rain faded she moved with her head skyward, walking […]
Mark Christopherson – The Caves of Altamira
The Caves of Altamira We live in a house with glass birdswho say very little in the morning.It’s not a kind of sorrow to beall gesture and no song, bowedto the sun and collecting dustdisturbed by the passing traffic.We need the arch of crystal wings,even while sparrows are onthe feeder and crows litterour backyard trees; […]
