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Then he let go of me, and the meaning of the poem was clear. This man had finally brought me inside of it. Both of us had somehow been given what we came for. On the trail down to the bridge I broke out in goose flesh.
By Stephen T. ButterfieldJune 1992At the age of two, I saw the ocean for the first time. I threw wide my short arms and ran shouting, straight into the Pacific, where an undertow reached out to embrace me. I still remember the upside-down whirlpool of warmth, like the womb out of which I’d so recently swum.
By Brenda PetersonApril 1992Mark’s forehead smacks against the visor, but he’s held in by the steering wheel. Cindi finds herself in the air, and there is a moment of crazy exhilaration as she sees the jeep spin beneath her, as if some childhood dream of flying has come true.
By Richard GoldsteinJanuary 1992December 1991The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
James Baldwin
Somehow the knowledge of his identity passed through to me in the moment I stood there locked to him. It passed through his knuckles and into my skin. It burned out at me through his eyes.
By Robert KoehlerDecember 1991He’s functional now, of course, a basically normal guy. That’s what gets me — I look at him and marvel at what a ground of pure craziness that normality is built on.
By Tim FarringtonNovember 1991What is in a body? We see flesh with blood going through, but who knows what it is? I never asked before. All my life I saw a body as just a body, this bit of flesh we’re put inside the day we come alive.
By James JankoNovember 1991We have to get back to that sense of raw reverence. And by reverence I don’t mean this bourgeois thing of nodding your head and being pious. Reverence comes from the word to revere, which means to stand in awe. The Bible has been mistranslated; where we read that wisdom begins with fear of the Lord, it should read awe. Awe is the beginning of wisdom.
By Michael TomsAugust 1991For a long time the whole idea of God is bewildering to a little girl, but in a dreamy and faraway fashion, you know him. Like the moon and the stars across the night’s long distance, you love and fear him.
By Dana BranscumAugust 1991Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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