the contents of
Mothers, Missionaries, Majesty, Mayhem
So Exalted
How would you say your childbirth experience
compares to those described in classic Russian literature?
Even Eden
Speaking gently every morning,
smoothing out my sleep-warm back
How to Sleep in an Airport
First, find the room
called by many names
Baptism Day in Bom Pastor
The water in the font, left over
from some forgotten baptism
Easter
palm leaves scattered
tasted sacred dinner
Pomegranate Season
I crack sorrow open.
Yellow pulp burrows under my thumb nail
The Marvelous Work
The winter-white Wasatch range reflected
in the great glass façade of the humanities building
Pilgrimage along Montparnasse
Long before my conversion:
I enjoy café au lait at the Rotunde
God Remembered Maria
Listen, God: I am not Abraham.
I do not want a world-full of children
Brother
From childhood’s eve I have not been
As others were
What He Saw in the Stone
Imagine the stone’s a crystal.
Imagine he sees his dead cat Missy
Fasting, Always Imperfect
While I was fasting (tense: imperfect-ly)
I realized that I was about to break
Yanking the Veil
God’s hand slices through the
sweaty summer air
Schoolyard Confessional
Do you see this scar on my upper lip?
A dog bit me at the park when I was four
Sin
I saw a spider in the temple today,
a black speck on white stone
A New Creature
I have been thinking about the tenderness
of scavengers, about the vulture’s flat, gentle feet
Glue Sniffers at the Cathedral
The red brick Cathedral
loomed in the Center of Paulista
Living Water
When the contractions begin in earnest, Mary
is finally able to cry the tears that have not come
Mouthfuls of Yaya
Four missionaries sat in the dim chapel
of a Mormon church in Ravenna, Italy
This Is Not a Sad Story
Grandma said
write the wailing baby
