J.B. Toner
(with apologies to G.M.H.) Stove-knobs, strange numbers, goblin-glinting dials, Flame-plates atop, caged conflagration hides, Broil, bake, baste, burn, bent digit-discs deride— O how to cook Spaghetti-O’s at whiles? [Read more...]
That My Kitchen is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Extinguisher
Barra’s Laird
Gabriel Olearnik
Palest is his face to me
my dearie.
Tis a tint
Of the overcook of mil’.
All hint of heat
Has left it.
Here ran his horse and hied through the heather
and ran a pretty mile from the brink o’ the river. [Read more...]
Nor Washed Away By the Flood
Anders O.F. Hendrickson
Ejected, exiled, homeless, Eden banned, no fires called Adam home at end of day but Eve’s; and there alone where Sarah lay held nomad Abram any share of land. Beside the garden locked seemed naught but sand to Solomon his court in royal array; and home enough was Egypt’s farthest quay to Joseph, if but Mary held his hand. [Read more...]
The White Stone
J.B. Toner
For Blaise Gerard Kurtz
To him who overcometh, says the Lord,
A white stone will be given whereupon
Is writ his name, known only to himself
And God Most High: his true, eternal name.
I AM has sent us, given us His Word
(The Word Who is God and is with God too),
By word brought forth the firmaments of earth
And peopled them with everlasting souls:
We see His Name in bird and flame and breath,
And every blade of grass; and yet–and yet–
These are but adumbrations of that Name. [Read more...]
The Egg
There is an oblong thing.
Its white by candle yellow.
Inside, unseen innards
can goosh and grow and mix
a dash life- color, and down
in sticky strands to fluff
and feather flower forth,
a chicken, not an omelet [Read more...]
Embers
Michael Miller
The days grow short; the nights are getting colder—
So are the conversations on the phone,
And almost every evening he’s alone.
He shivered when he thought of what he’d told her.
The fire that blazed has now begun to smolder.
A new fire kindled from the earlier one
Is quickly lit and just as shortly done:
To have loved and lost is to be that much older. [Read more...]
The Great Mystery
Ephesians 5:21-33 You stand in black and white, as clear a word As if I saw you printed on a page; The book is closed; the world is now your stage, The prologue-blessing given by a third; The script you know by heart: the truth conferred Upon you by Creation, that great sage (A truth daunted by neither youth nor age), Shown forth, imprinted, never to be blurred. [Read more...]
The Edifice
As soon as you enter, nothing is the same— A fact, perhaps, you knew before you came Inside. The shape alone, from down the street, Signals some fundamental and complete Transformation from what has come before, In motion by the time you touch the door.
The door—here, too, something seems amiss If known conventions be applied to this. Unlike the tidy portals near and next, Of chrome and glass, exquisitely Windexed, The knotted oak leaves outside witness blind, But those who enter know what they will find.
The Dove Looked In
Matthew Alderman
Vita Nuova, xxvi
I saw faded beauty once
Pass me by in a gallery of stippled Seurats:
Maybe she was an English teacher,
A soccer mom in homely new white sneakers,
A nurse in jade-green scrubs.
You would have never called her pretty,
Nor stopped, admiringly at a distance,
Draping a chaste lechery in classical garb with the wan
Affectations of swooning lovers,
And bothered to notice her. [Read more...]
The Transfiguration of Apulia
Matthew Alderman
… Who delights to scatter such masterpieces
over the place where we spend our brief time of exile.
—St. Therese of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul
So I looked up from The Story of a Soul and
Put Therese and the Child Jesus to sleep.
And felt the quiet wash over my brain.
Everyone on the bus was drowsing in their naps,
But me.
Light danced on the leaves caught on the
Movie screen of the bus windshield.
The endless telephone poles seemed like rows of crosses,
While ranks of windmills blew on ridges
Grand enough for an army of giants:
Don Quixote’s nephilim come back from the dead. [Read more...]
