Alaska Girlhood
April 4, 2018Eden was a winter
when gods skated the earth.
They’d warm themselves by the fires
that lit the man-high snowbanks
DiaBLOGue
The Miracles of Jesus: Three Basic Questions for the Historian
April 4, 2018Once upon a time, down Mexico way—actually down in San Diego in 1988—an unsuspecting editor from Doubleday offered me a contract to write a book on the historical Jesus for the Anchor Bible Reference Library…
We Dress for Armageddon
April 3, 2018for Shelley Turley
When trouble—an earthquake, a heart—
Comes to town, breaking dams,
Leveling shops, clubs
Kick and Muff
April 3, 2018I hear the fist-sized heart
cannon in the fog of rhythm
death and future.
From it I take the few things
Wide Angle
April 3, 2018I told Darcy I’d meet her here. Right here. I can’t say where here is. I’ve made promises. We’re going to grab a bite to eat. You wouldn’t know to eat here. It’s on the…
Cordoba
April 3, 2018Mom moved up to Santa Barbara, and Dad started having girlfriends over. Ladyfriends, he called them. When I stayed home sick from school, I saw the ladyfriends leave for work. “How cute. Is this yours?”…
Shorn
April 3, 2018Locking the door to the bath,
opens the collar of the shirt,
raises chin, fingers buttons
from their holes, lengthens torso,
molts like a snake.
“Awaiting Translation”: Timothy Liu, Identity Politics, and the Question of Religious Authenticity
April 3, 2018In a 1991 New York Times Book Review article, African-American literary theorist and cultural critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr., used the bizarre case of The Education of Little Tree to reexamine the issues of “identity” and “authenticity” in literary studies.
Don’t Fence Me In: A Conversation About Mormon Fiction
April 3, 2018Custom/culture; sacred/profane; vision/imagination; literal/figurative—call them borderlands, call them crossroads—we catch glimpses of possibility and more fully understand the limits of our faith in these places. And the place where “Mormon” crosses “literature” looks like the…
The Woman of Worth: Impressions of Proverbs 31:10-31
April 3, 2018I am neither a scholar of the Hebrew Bible nor a theologian, yet very occasionally some unsuspecting soul asks me to preach or speak about the Bible. In 1994 I substituted one Sunday for a…