January 2022
Reading From The Desert Fathers At The Laundromat
A certain brother went to Abbot Moses and asked him for a good word. And the elder said to him: Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.
Sunbeams
Silence is something that comes naturally when you are watching, when you are watching without motive, without any kind of demand, just to watch, and see the beauty of a single star in the sky, or to watch a single tree in a field, or to watch your wife or husband, or whatever you watch. To watch with a great silence and space. Then in that watching, in that alertness, there is something that is beyond words, beyond all measure.
The Desert Within
Douglas Christie On The Power Of Silence And Contemplation
There was a value placed on listening as closely as possible to the mysterious silence that supports existence, which is both the actual silence of the desert landscape and the silence of the self in contemplation.
Penned
Drugs can make us do stupid things — though, to be fair, drugs can also help us meet formidable demands. Meth can make you work hard as hell, the way my mom did, doing a full-time job at a farm-equipment company on weekdays and part-time retail jobs on weekends, until it all came crashing down.
The Devil Takes Back
No one would admit that they’d stolen my phone, so Manager threatened to call a juju priest to settle the issue spiritually.
My Mother Returns, This Time For Good
Six weeks ago my wife walked into our living room to find me curled up on the couch, sobbing. In our twenty-one years of marriage we had experienced a lot of griefs, big and little, but she’d never seen me cry like this.
Disclosure And Consent
I understand that though it was not my choice to listen to the Jackson 5 during the procedure, I will now think of their seminal hits every time I smell isopropyl alcohol in my vicinity.
The River Corrib
Lovely things, the railings. When it’s raining just right — half raining, the way it so often does here — the spiderwebs spun across the rails collect mist and shine, so that the Corrib looks like it’s swathed in sequined cloth.
A Thousand Words
January 2022
A new feature in the magazine, A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.
Test
This time my mother got it all right. / The year, the month, and the day. / The president’s name. Where she’s staying. / So she thinks she’s going home. / When I stop by the rehab center, she tells me / to make sure the heat’s turned up, / the cable switched on again, fresh / milk in the fridge.
Quarantine Poem #17
Staying at home with my books and out-of-tune piano / and a cat who loves me only when she’s out of food is nothing new. / I’m OK. Thank you for asking. I have become quite used to sending / thoughts and prayers to those who keep the world going round / while I spin old punk records — Dead Kennedys, Buzzcocks, Crass — / lamenting days long past.
