DiaBLOGue

A Test Case for Heresy and Gender Discourse | Terryl L. Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, and Joan Smyth Iversen, The Antipolygamy Controversy in U.S. Women’s Movements, 1880-1925: A Debate on the American Home

March 31, 2018

The nineteenth century saw the rise and fall of many “crusades” that have been painstakingly examined by scholars, including abolition, temperance, and nativism. Yet the equally important campaigns to eradicate polygamy and stem the tide…

Dragging Fanny

March 31, 2018

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. 

The Last Code Talker

March 31, 2018

DZEH-NESH-CHEE-AH-NAH-TSIN-TLITI-TSAH-AS-ZIH. Elk-Nut-Eye-Match-Yucca. His grandfather used to say the bilagaanas always come in twos. The first time he was barely five years old, playing on a sand dune near their hogan west of Valley Store.  He…

Afterward

March 31, 2018

Once on the porch I asked 
great-grandfather Porter a question 
loudly and he said wait 
though he was just sitting still 
his face raised to low sun 
eyes half-open 

Sparrow Hunter

March 31, 2018

At fourteen, when I could legally hunt game birds, I became a serious hunter. I hunted ducks and pheasants, but also rabbits, crows, rock chucks, hawks, owls, eagles, coyotes, rodents, and rattlesnakes. I never killed…

Metaphysics over lunch

March 31, 2018

English professor and rebel: 
Off campus, our sentences race 
the tabletop, garbed in wit and color. 
By the time food comes, our ideas dance 

On Meditation

March 31, 2018

I used to run. Fast and furiously, always anxious, always thinking I should be quicker, go farther. I had friends who had run marathons and competed in 10Ks. I envied them and wanted to be like them: longer legs, faster times, thinner limbs. I counted calories and measured miles. I ran, but never liked it, didn’t like the way I beat myself up while I was running—”faster! faster!”—nor the fact that I dreaded the next run before the current one was even done. 

Caught Gull, Plowing

March 31, 2018

At five, standing at the edge of the field, 
Dad up there on the great green Deere, 
I must have been scared he’d leave. 
He made me an offer: Catch me a seagull