My Brother Was Buried Wearing a Red Jacket
March 22, 2018Walking up to the coffin
(a little larger than a viola case),
I see his jacket lying stiff
as baseball card gum.
DiaBLOGue
Brooklyn: City of Churches
March 22, 2018At the OTB, men “cross” themselves
as their horses race across TV screens
double-checking their stubs
before dropping them on the floor
Old Rodeo Man
March 22, 2018The ground is an absolute, the air lets
you down. The way you leave your bronc sustains
a conspiracy of violence you embrace
the way you mean an oath. Forever.
Carol Took the Call
March 22, 2018Al had tethered me to the class of 53,
webbed me to classmates before the web,
invited me back every ten years.
Homecomings
March 22, 2018At Eastside School in Idaho Falls, they gave us a full hour for lunch; and like most of the kids, I went home each day. Mom always had my lunch ready. I’d gulp it down…
White Shell
March 22, 2018There are pieces of white shell sifted with the sands and soils of Dinetah that confuse newcomers and outsiders. Tourists look at the shells like puzzle pieces, trying to force them into what they know.…
Householding: A Quaker-Mormon Marriage
March 22, 2018The scene: my house on any weekday evening. The table’s scattered with toy airplanes, homework, books, the orange-eyed cat that’s recently adopted us, and several chewed-up pencils. I’m hunting for my keys on my way…
Napoleon Dynamite, Priesthood Skills, and the Eschatology of the Non-Rational: A Nonwarranted Physiotheologic Analysis
March 22, 2018Napoleon fever has struck. Thousands of young girls are adorning their walls with posters of the nerdy hero in the sweet brown suit and scrambling to learn the womanly art of weaving key chains from…
The Man Lying in the Grass
March 22, 2018We’re in Ogden, Utah, on the second day of May, heading home to Orem after a Sunday afternoon with grandchildren. Carol is driving south on Washington Boulevard passing low business buildings whose shadows are covering the lawns and reaching out into the street. Up ahead, I spot a man lying in the grass maybe twenty feet back from the curb. A drunk sleeping himself sober? I wonder. Probably drunk . . . But what if he’s a diabetic whose sugar is low and he can’t get up?
My Belief
March 22, 2018In 1831 at the same time that Joseph Smith was receiving visions and establishing a new church because no contemporary religion was true—they had all become dead relics with no prophecy in them—Scottish writer Thomas…