J.S. Absher

Earthen Lavers Tyler Chadwick, Litany with WingsScott Hales, Hemingway in Paradiseand Other Mormon PoemsElizabeth Pinborough, The Brain’s Lectionary:Psalms and Observations

A few years ago, William Logan wrote, “Poetry has long been a major art with a minor audience.”[1] We could more accurately call it a major art with many minor audiences grouped, like the poets,…

First Place: His Own Hand

I desire to be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man.—Theologica Germanica i. What the Right Hand Is Take my right hand—the index finger crookedfrom a long-forgotten break; the dintwhere…

Grasshoppers in the Jar of the World

The jar is silent because it is full of praise.The grasshoppers are loud because they, too,are full of praise, clicking as they fly. The grasshoppers jump, but the jar is too high.They try to climb,…

Praying on Gravel

Not yet March, already weedsbring me to my kneeswith trowel and bare fingers. Under the loblollythe hellebore are in bloom,a periwinkle or two. The weeds are in the white gravelof the walk. My son has…

Until You Come

Taipei, ’97. I walk past side-streetvendors selling lychee nuts and blackrice cakes, to an acre of bare dirt,concrete pylons lifting a cloverleaf.A grizzled man by a beat-up Buickthrows gobbets of meat from the trunkto a…

Abracadabra

Bum Bam Boom