Sodom and Gomorrah
April 5, 2023Listen to the interview about this piece here. Listen to the audio version of this piece here. A man stands naked on the rubber of a checkout counter’s clnveyer belt, face smeared with something red.…
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Joseph Smith and the Possibility of Comics Andrew Knaupp and Sal Velluto, Pillar of Light Mark Elwood, The Glass Looker Noah Van Sciver, Joseph Smith and the Mormons
April 5, 2023Renaissance scholar Ada Palmer estimates we know 1 percent of what happened five hundred years ago and that two-thirds of what we know is wrong. I have no reason to doubt her expertise—and every reason…
Elongated Time Phyllis Barber, The Precarious Walk: Essays from Sand and Sky
April 5, 2023Phyllis Barber’s new work, The Precarious Walk: Essays from Sand and Sky, spans immense time. The book carries the reader from Barber’s childhood in post–World War II Nevada through adolescence, multiple marriages, children, relocation, ecological…
My Body in the Temple
April 5, 2023Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. Halfway through the session, I become awareof a full bladder and nothing else.All that is holy is eclipsedby flesh. I pant in claustrophobiabetween the lady who…
Experience with Religion, Experience with the Spirit Matthew Wickman, Life to the Whole Being:The Spiritual Memoir of a Literature Professor
April 5, 2023Frankly, I am not sure why I was invited to review Matthew Wickman’s Life to the Whole Being. It is not an opportunity that I sought or for which I volunteered. I have written very…
Like a Prayer—Phormium tenax
April 5, 2023Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. How that late sabbath afternoon you sat cross-legged on their lawn, Elder S at your side, the couple just across, their backs to her late summer…
anamnesis: confronting God in the flesh
April 5, 2023Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. 1. a patient’s accountof medical history,a reiteration of conditionscontracted by mortality,a form of proud flesh’sgranulation over a wound,a raised tissue massdelineating impact to sayhere is pain,…
Osmond Ward Chapel, Now Demolished
April 5, 2023Sometimes from the thresholdof these doorswe are greeted by another self,another worldwe wish to worship, incarnationthe tithe we offerfor such a crossing: we, seeking the divine,the divine leaning toward us,fading coal of memory igniting into…
Genetics and Gathering the House of Israel
April 5, 2023Questions from My Past Listen to an interview about this piece here. My patriarchal blessing indicates that I am a literal descendant of Ephraim and heir to specific blessings and promises. But what does this…
Portrait of Agnes
April 5, 2023Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. Stern little lady,ancestor in an oval frame,I like the way your shoulders slopeand your fingers dangleover the book and the carpetbag skirt.I like the way your…