By Lyn Lifshin Pale salmon light, 9 degrees. Floor tiles icy. Past branches the beaver’s gnawed at the small hole the heron waits, deep in the water. Sky goes apricot, tangerine, rose. Suddenly, a dive, then the heron with sun squirming in his mouth, a carp that looks a third as …
Category: Issue 172
Still and Small
By J Washburn I STEPPED OUT the front door sporting a long black coat and one white earbud, my breath turning to fog in the morning air. Twenty minutes of audiobook transfusion awaited me. But as I lingered on the first stair, finger hovering over the play button, a thought came to me: I should …
Eve’s Faith Crisis
By Michael Vinson And the serpent said unto the woman: Ye shall not surely die; For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. —MOSES 3:10-11 TRADITIONALLY WE THINK of the story of Adam …
Since 9/11: Poetry
By Anita Tanner I hear them overhead— jets’ Doppler motors, small thunders sucking up sectors of sky. I pause, listening for their reassurance, flight paths going somewhere and returning in crisscross pattern thrumming across the blue beyond. My body vibrates with the faint knocking of photos on the wall, blood pulsing in my temples, …
Cell Mates: Poetry
By Paul Swenson Called to hold the keys of mysteries. Yet both, at 34, were locked away; Joseph jailed at Liberty, dropped through a hole in prison floor into the pit. In Birmingham, Martin declared: Where there is injustice, I am there, and it would not be fair of me to spurn …
Book Review: Revelation, Resistance & Mormon Polygamy, by Merina Smith
Reviewed by George D. Smith Revelation, Resistance & Mormon Polygamy: The Introduction and Implementation of the Principle, 1830–1853, Merina Smith (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2013). With this book, Merina Smith, a graduate of the University of Colorado with a Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego, has synthesized research …
Hosannas at Glide Memorial Church
By Robert A. Rees There is no music like that music, no drama like the drama of the saints rejoicing, the sinners moaning, the tambourines racing, and all those voices coming together and crying holy unto the Lord. —James Baldwin On Palm Sunday there are two long lines at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church …
In the Wrong Hands: Poetry
By Jordan Marshall-Pinegar Don’t give it away, whatever it is, to the wrong person. Because when you see it in their hands it will look different and somehow you’ll be sorry you let them hold it, whatever it is: The way you felt that day on the subway when the man with his son …
Repeat: Poetry
By Norman Nathan If for a day or one more lifetime every grave relented, and here in this cemetery of genius all arose, ready to return to what they did best, a hundred conductors would wave their batons each demanding to lead the orchestra; and who, among the multitude of soloists, would sing in …
The Curious Case of James Madison Monroe
By Edward Hogan Or, right-click here to download the audio file: The Curious Case of James Madison Monroe IN LATE SEPTEMBER of 1851, Howard Egan left Salt Lake City and headed east determined to find James Madison Monroe, whom he had just found out had been his wife’s lover. On 30 September …