A grace note is a musical term for a miniature note placed before a prominent note in a musical phrase. If music is the direct line to human emotion, as Heidi Hart claims in her…
This book is something of a watershed in the study of Mormon history and Mormon scripture. It is the first significant popularization of evidence by a writer within the Church indicating that Joseph Smith’s ancient…
Beth: Listening “Take care,” says my Grandma Tess. She is the first one to leave after Thanksgiving dinner because she can’t drive at night. She’s got two hours’ driving to do, south to Salt Lake.…
You notice the smells first, more spring, or
even summer, than late fall, the stale-clean
scent of wet sunlit streets after last night’s
heavy rain, the musk of soaked dead leaves,
I’m mostly brown. I have brown hair and, in summer, brown skin. It’s not a pretty golden brown like the models in the tanning lotion ads. It’s a kind of ashy, dirty brown. My eyes…
When my father sucked in and released his last hyphenated breath, I was holding his weightless hands, trying to make them warm. He was old. He had cirrhosis of the liver, an abdominal aortal aneurysm…
Soft summer wind lifts girls’ sheer dresses into wings,
Pinks, reds, and golds winking and rippling through the air
Like babies cooing far away.
They pose round-faced and porcelain
In my dream, people mill at a fair, trying things they’ve never before done. There’s horseback riding on flashy steeds and archery with brightly fletched arrows. At the fair’s farthermost edge, wings rest upon the…
A lined calendar of empty trees
turns the cold
consolable. Even light this dim
is an invitation.
Winter already edging down
from mountain passes, I walk past
our first town cemetery, filled with upright
markers and gold-red trees.
It’s had no vacancies for years.