The Absurd in Art and Mormonism
October 6, 2019This issue marks the first time that a Dialogue cover has ever had an LDS Church President riding on a dinosaur. Or a spiral jetty made of salt-water taffy. Or green jello stacked on a…
DiaBLOGue
To the Bishop Who Conducted My Father’s Funeral Service Yesterday
October 6, 2019As part of your opening welcome over the pulpit, you announced to us that filming and photography were not allowed in the chapel. We had just gathered there in front of my father’s closed casket…
A Mormon Boy Meets a King
October 6, 2019“Stop gawking at that guy,” Mother said, as I stood staring at a man while shopping in a five and dime store in Idaho Falls. I had never seen a black person before. I stood…
The Sacrifice
October 6, 2019Mnemosyne She was still puzzled that the stars were not the same ones she knew. She cor rects. That she used to know. Where was Orion, its belt and sword glowing bright with mythic power…
True Religion
October 6, 2019When you’re young you think “widow” is a misprint for “window.”
Then the tarp of age gets pulled over you and the words drift apart.
There is a cleanness to good marriage that is like the Renaissance.
It is a force of beauty that tramples mere love. When the blood rushes
The Agreement
October 6, 2019After the staredown, saliva gathering in their mouths,
cotton swelling in his, Daniel invited the lions
out for drinks and a late supper.
The Four Stanzas of the Apocalypse
October 6, 2019The sky has fasted in the desert
forty thousand years.
Now it’s caught a glimpse
of barley fields and orange groves:
the table the world sets for winter.
Advent: Moose in Moonlight
October 6, 2019Among the death of foliage
in skeleton trees
he appears, moonlight gracing
his rack—that upturned,
Creek Skating
October 6, 2019In the pasture behind the barn
where workhorse colts frolic all summer long,
the creek, once the broth of stones, freezes over,
greens and blues of creek bed and cottonwood
muted in meandering.
Bridegroom
October 6, 2019When Jesus took the church to bed, rocks rent,
earth groaned, sky split, spilt watered wine.
Trees shivered to their hearts to know the carpenter
laid in the bed he’d made, stone of his stone.