By Anita Tanner Or right-click here to download the audio file: Advent: Moose in Moonlight …he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him. —Isaiah 53:2 …
Category: Poetry
In My Father’s House
By Cecil Morris Or right-click here to download the audio file: In My Father’s House The house that dementia built my father filled with people. It hummed with talk both day and night, a host of long lost relatives returned to relive stories he had never shared with me. Sometimes I was …
Four Paws Full
by R. A. Christmas Or right-click here to download the audio file: Four Paws Full Dog had his paws full. He’d run Bad Pup off because Bad wanted his job (and glory) but Bad took a third of of a litter with him. There was hell to pay, with Bad (The …
Still Mormon
By Dayna Patterson Or right-click here to download the audio file: Still Mormon 1. I’m Mormon the way stars—rubbed out at noon, robbed by sun—still burn 2. The way a geode empty of its quartz is still stone 3. The way a whisper is still a breath carved by tongue …
Articles of New Faith
By Heather Holland Or right-click here to download the audio file: Articles of New Faith Invocation. A novice—raging away from the charred and blistered home of my former faith— I am called by the air in my lungs and the dirt beneath my feet to stand and to breathe, to begin …
Virga: The Long Streaks of Grief
By Anita Tanner Or right-click here to download the audio file: Virga: The Long Streaks of Grief Initially it’s a downpour you fear will never stop, but it’s cleansing in the sense that there’s an emptying, and you reach utter bottom where the dregs live. Not that you wear your grief …
Words Matter: Lines Written in a Pew
By Anita Tanner This is how religion kills language: it mounts a thought, drives and whips it to a frenzied destination high on a mountain peak— the ultimate, unquestioned authority of words, unaware how riding wreaks language, bleeds wounds spurred by desire here on the peak of performance. How facile, this peak, …
I Was Raised by Communists!
By R. A. Christmas Thank God—because my sweet grandpa admired Senator Bob Taft, disliked FDR, and was all for “shipping the Negroes back to Africa,” and my sour grandpa would back me into a corner of his warehouse, and tell me I didn’t know how to work, and why he hated the …
That’s Alright, Mama, Just Anyway You Do
By J. S. Absher Mama said she just had to see Elvis as he traveled back to Memphis by whistle-stop: He’ll be something, she sighed, in his dress blues. Daddy said, No, with a look in his eye, so she didn’t. But he did, and brought back news: Though Elvis never opened …