The Chastity Gum
April 14, 2018It wasn’t like Sister Farley to chew gum. She took her stewardship over her little swarm of Beehive girls seriously, and normally she was the very soul of decorum, showing us by her dress and…
DiaBLOGue
One of the Women
April 14, 2018One of the women inside me
cannot rejoice with anyone.
She stays in the shadows
bowing her head.
Her long hair has never been cut.
Songs
April 14, 2018Marta Pillahuel was very old. She lived in the country with her pigs on one side and her chickens on the other. Her wooden house leaned to the east and let in the weather—a warm…
The Slow Way Home
April 14, 2018She leaves the women in her husband’s house
and makes a slow way home
to her own mother, to friends singing
as they bring sweet butter
for the first month, molasses
Empathy
April 14, 2018Several times a year, I give one of the Relief Society’s supplemental lessons. Jokingly, I call this my token Church job; in truth it means a great deal to me. I deeply value the opportunity…
Deity
April 14, 2018Who is he from the Sunday pulpit
acquiring the air of sins
with his lecture,
hell’s woes never hidden
Carrying On
April 14, 2018Firm as the mountains around us, Stalwart and brave we stand On the rock our fathers planted For us in this goodly land.— Ruth May Fox (no. 255, Hymns, 1985) One of my earliest memories is of my mother…
Mothers, Daughters, and Dolls
April 14, 2018Came home from school Thursday about 7:30 absolutely exhausted but committed to writing a paper. Although I had planned to go to Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro that night, I forgot to get tickets before it…
Daddy Hung Me Out
April 14, 2018He hung me next to the load of dripping clothes.
I was just a child! Couldn’t walk! Couldn’t talk!
Too frozen stiff to cry! But strong enough
to clench my monkey fists around the line.
I still can see the pomegranate bush.
The Playhouse
April 14, 2018I sit scrunched in a fetal position, my eyes tightly closed, savoring the womblike comfort of the playhouse. A spider is weaving its filmy home in one corner of the ceiling, and a fly has…