Paul Swenson

Utah Takes a Holiday: An Interview with Paul Swenson

Nostrums in the Newsroom

Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Six was not a dull year for the 127-year-old Deseret News. Melvin Dummar, a Box Elder County service station operator, was named, along with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,…

Mama and Daddy Standin’ By

Best thing that ever happened 
In church was when Martha 
Got Nancy to sing “Summertime” 
On Mother’s Day— 

Negative Space

It’s hard being Mormon Mormon mind regards nipples

Brides of the Afternoon

White brides, dark grooms 
lustrous silks on 
an orange afternoon, 
scuffing through dry leaves 

Toni’s Song

She prays in the shower, lifts 
her face to the streaming water 
god, to the shining metallic head 

Black Moroni

Painted on the wall behind the seats where choir sings 
See the shining figure in a steep green wood 
Angel wears a shirtwaist robe, fabric wing as thin as filament
He looks downslope where Joseph kneels, treasure spread in dirt

Dragging Fanny

Her last hymn in the book—and they’re dragging it.
Behold, her royal army’s old. Band of stragglers,
banners furled, tired voices buckling the pews. 

Jesus Lost

Do you know this picture, asks
the magazine. Yes, I’ve seen
this man before. I’m sure 
that clean, bronze brow, those
dark eyes’ intensity surprised

Martin in Me

Three times I take his words into my mouth 
and make them thunder from my tongue. 
His final speech will not remain unsung in me. 

The Long-Distance Mormon | R. A. Christmas, The Kingdom of God or Nothing!

With his poem, “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Mormon,” R. A. (Robert Allen) Christmas, among the most flickeringly idiosyncratic lights in the Mormon literary cosmos, may have (purposely or unconsciously) described himself as a living exemplar of the poem’s evocative title. The poem’s protagonist, however, is a high priests’ quorum instructor named Melvin, who was married for fifty years to a Mormon woman before he joined the Church and took his wife to the temple—but only after realizing he was too old to continue playing tennis on Sunday. 

Accidental Mystic

Once I picnicked with an atheist 
(only one in Davis County?), 
spread our gourmet bounty 
on a blanket where we lay, 

Marginalia

Does the margin ail you? Scary edge of things,
where fools barely cling to normal, fail
to hug the middle. Do they bug you—out there
on the ledge beyond the pale? Ugly,