(My son’s observation) Russia Threatens Nuclear Attack. —News Headline The sky’s movement turns epic over steep red canyons, stacked cumulus that can turn dark, flash daily floods through trails. To your less than a decade, the Canyon Ranger says 60 million years of the earth’s crust can be read in these rocks— ravines worn …
Tag: poetry
Why I Stay (another faith-promoting chiasmus!)
Because if I left the Church my wife’d kill me— and who knows, polygamy might come back! Besides, I’ve been a Mormon for so long I can’t even imagine not being one. And, finally and frankly, I stay because I …
Dog at Work
Pumping out pups was pleasurable union work, with minimal butt-kissing. Methodical (but far from boring), it left Dog’s mind free for multi-multi-tasking, as the line moved slowly, parts came and went, and looked the same (more or less). In a way, Dog was a lot like your average working stiff. He’d just been at it …
Pups and Cats
Half the pups were happy to hear that Dog could still chase cats (or cat, generally speaking). Dog said their next life would be just like this one, only better— which meant lots of cats. The pups’ other halves weren’t half so happy, but didn’t bark, as long as this was kept quiet. It had …
Science Fiction Fan, With Faith
I say I’ll return as a vampire, swirl my cape and morph into a crow, a bat, a storm, a whirlwind, farther from heaven than curse is from prayer and these words are from what I truly believe, but more acceptable to my unchurched friends who only believe in fiction.
Cup
Mine was empty except for a vague dampness, a condensation, at most a sprinkle, not enough to stick a stamp or wet one’s whistle, a fly could lick it clean and die of thirst, yet I was content to live in the desert and flower each year like prickly pear cactus, my days a series …
Mausoleum
As with the Egyptians, it begins by removing the brain. Gray matter caught on the hooked edge of a new name, then pulled through the nose. They leave the heart. It is easily bruised by new and everlasting covenants battered by promises to hearken, to serve, priestesses dressed in their burial clothes, given unto him. …
Common Grief
Flowers— they bloom a day, then to our graves. Wilted, these flowers; still fervent, the bees at Mother’s grave. We crowded in— sons, sons-in-law, grandsons— to carry her here. I am orphaned, though a man—dead: Father, now Mother. In this verdant valley they had farmed, we buried them. Winds—into the …
Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde
& these are my tomatoes planted 24 varieties this year been collecting seeds, trading for almost a decade here I feel like a patriarch fingers splayed, laying hands blessing the rows like a wife, these plants respond well to attention, a gentle sweep of the …
Emily Dow Partridge
Keep walking. Keep walking, don’t think about it. Don’t think about this morning, being deep in the washing when Mrs. Durfee stopped by, telling me to meet him tonight at the Kimballs’. Couldn’t change my dress, people would wonder, so here I am stinking of sweat and lye walking as fast as I can, walking …