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.

[Read more...]

That My Kitchen is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Extinguisher

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...]

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 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. [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...]

Candlemas

Gabriel Olearnik

These cells of light, glowing with
the fat of flowers,
the entrails of summer:
it rises to a rhyme, the hum of fire
the laughing buds of radiant heat.

Oh, attend those burning prayers of bees
the censered sound of poured honey
a guttering, dribbled benediction, and in the temple all the
insects cry:

Glory.

I Am

I am an Artist
A Poet
A Prodigal Preacher
A Wanderer
A Pilgrim
I am a Truth Seeker

A Hopeful Romantic
A Lover
A Fool
Ever toeing the line between Foolish and Cool

[Read more...]

Cambridge, January 2001

Sally Thomas

     Seagulls surf the wet
Updrafts over roofs
	A hundred miles inland. 

Every weather's a weather
	Of gulls, a scream against
The bottle-blue or cloud-

	Mottled sky, the one
Constant besides rain
	Spittling the window: 

[Read more...]