Elizabeth Garcia

Reviving Desdemona | Dayna Patterson, O Lady, Speak Again

When I began analyzing literature in high school, I was trained to see a poem as a thing made perfect by intent, by genius, an idea that prepared me to become adept at finding an…

Some Definitions of Gratitude

On our ride home from my brother’s house last Easter Sunday, having spent a few hours basking in our blessings of atonement and progeny, we pass an accident on the interstate. I say accident, though…

Sunni Brown Wilkinson, The Marriage of the Moon and the Field

“To speak to Moses, God / put a stone in his mouth, put on / a sackcloth of verbs (want, need), / cleared his throat. Cried out” (3). Sunni Brown Wilkinson this way begins her collection The…

The Holy Ghost in Polyhymnia’s Closet

Dear Holy (one?) I hope you are home for this. 
Tell me the name of your name. For this 

I am on my knees (though I am closed 
still. Bruised.) But I have come for this.

The Holy Ghost in Melpomene’s Closet

Before the black suits, 
before the string of pearls 
you will be in your bedroom slippers, steel woolling the pans.
Your coveralls, your boots, mucking out stalls. 

Atlanta to Salt Lake

Prose will not capture some people, the way 
they drift. You can only see them dragging 
their furniture through Wyoming night, 
down a dark throat of road, the ice 

Drum Major

The church’s framework swayed in the air. 
Inside, big women with big grief 
swayed with all their weight inside, and sang 
big songs to bloom big flowers