Drive north down Highway 301, past
the school where, weekdays, deaf children
run wild on the playground. Keep going until
you see the sign, "Snake Man," then turn left
into Camper's Lodge and swing on around
past the turquoise pool in front of the
Laundromat and park your car. Get out and
go inside-any wayfaring stranger is welcome
here of a Sunday morning, rain or shine.
Take a seat in one of the six pews painted
white as the washers and dryers lined up in
Poetry
Debra Elramey 9-01-2005
Kristin Berkey-Abbott 8-01-2005
In this month of dehydration,
we keep our eyes skyward, both to watch
for rain and to avoid the scorn
of the scorched succulents who reproach
us silently, saying, "You promised to care."
And so, although we thought we could stick
these seedlings in the ground and leave
them to their own devices, we haul
hoses and buckets of water to the outer edges
of the yard where the hose will not reach.
Louis Templeman 7-01-2005
Against the ugly annals of
Bible-thumper politics bounce the echoes
of Bad-Eye Thomas' lonesome cry.
His tears collect against the
coffers engineered by Robertson's broadcasts;
the retention walls defined by Falwell's broadsides.
Such rhetoric trickled down from
palatial headquarters (funded from small contributions)
to the votes of the faithful tithers.
Mrs. Thomas, Christopher's mother,
having deposited her social security check,
found his money coupon, kept neatly between
her phone bill and her monthly offering
Barbara Crooker 6-01-2005
Its a sweet June day, and the mockingbirds
are singing, as are the rubber tires of cars
on the road, and both of these sounds reverberate,
echo, the jazz of early summer, with the muffled
percussion of wind in the trees. A crow
twangs and plucks his big black bass,
Joel Kurz 4-01-2005
I have climbed out of the depths
where human ash and soil
comprise a pyramidal mound
covered by the green of life.
Here women, men, and children
Louise Murphy 3-01-2005
The earth is eating all the little birds.
It feasts, grows fat. Their eyes are stones, black jewels
we rattle in our pockets. Mouths are blurred
Scott Cairns 11-01-2004
Availing space in which
we live and move and come
to glimpse the import of
our being. Opening
occasion of our brief,
expansive guess that when
were after meaning, more
is always likelier
Linda Mills Woolsey 10-01-2004
At the regional airport in Waco, on the third day
of the war, we stand barefoot, as if on sacred ground.
As each in turn is beckoned, we file mutely past
the metal box that peers into our carry-ons and coats,
examines our watches, our wallets, our shoes.
Jene Beardsley 9-01-2004
"
as if religion were a state of shock,
deep, peaceful shock, that
men like these
are driven into by the spectacle of reality."
Peter Matthiessen in The Cloud Forest
Ananda Robinson 7-01-2004
Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. Outside are dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters.... - Revelation 22:14-15
A voice whispered in my dream:
Either you love or you're happy,
but never both.
I don't know how to live
without the dogs,
without faces writhing
in the bone-spurred night, bituminous
duels of prophets
and scoundrels, flayed
condoms in gutters,
without the infinite idols
to which we bow
in our desperation, shadow-dancing gods
that every day destroy
the city I cannot
live without.