Good Friday

1
A slab of cloud hisses on dawn’s gas stove. Across the vale and atop the steeple, an ornate, Latin electric chair glints.

2
All in white, the candidate knelt before the gallows, awaiting the bishop’s hands. Around her neck, a sterling noose, her godparents’ gift.

3
The megachurch tore out its cup holders and cushioned seats and installed 1,300 electric chairs. The service was amped that Sunday.

4
Our parish is low church. When we genuflect before the gibbet, we choke ourselves with just one hand.

5
“For the word of the firing squad is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the caliber of God.” [SRV]

6
“If any will come after me, let him deny himself, shoot up his lethal injection, and follow me.” [SRV]

“Trill” are my Twitters. Tweet suites from @slowreads.

Photo copyright Randen L. Pederson. Used by permission.

By Peter

After stints as a trial lawyer and a church worker, Peter Stephens has settled in as a Virginia high school English teacher. Peter has read several books and poems. He wrote none of the posts below filed under "Passages." Click the link at the end of each post to see it in the context of the author's original post.

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Passages

SHADED GREY

23 February 2021 - Tom

Shaded grey,a dull sunbehind it.Autumn leaves.Whateverstays now wantsto be here.Even windin these trees,loving them.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

CATARACTS AND SHOES

22 February 2021 - Unknown

Cataract removal no.2 over and done with this morning. Am typing this with one hand while the other hand holds a magnifying glass over the keyboard. Plastic shield over operated eye plus post-op whatever prevents vision so I can't tell as yet what the result is but the consultant, my NHS surgeon, said it went very well. He also said I was very calm whereas most people are not calm during this operation. He also said he liked my shoes, which was very nice. I wore my lucky comfortable flat golden shoes. It has taken me almost an hour to type this. Read the rest at the main Blaugustine: http://www.nataliedarbeloff.com/blaugustine.html [Read more...]

A fog, a weight, a program running in the background

22 February 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

"I don't know why everything is so hard," you say to me. Everyone's hitting the wall, I point out. We're reaching one year of global pandemic. Even if we're okay, it's okay with an asterisk. Okay within global pandemic parameters. Not the same. You protest: "but I'm fine. I'm not sick. My family isn't sick. I don't know why I'm struggling so much. I'm healthy, I have a job, I have electricity and internet, I'm as lucky as anyone can be. And yet life still feels like slogging through cold molasses." I can't tell you how many people have said those things to me. (So if you're reading this and thinking, "Is she blogging about our conversation?" the answer is, I've had this conversation lately more times than I can count.) Almost everyone is struggling. As longtime readers know, I've lived with grief (the end of my marriage, mourning my mother's death) and I've lived with depression. As we reach the end of the first year of COVID-19, I think a global pandemic is a little… [Read more...]

THE WITHINNESS

22 February 2021 - Tom

The withinnesswith youis so withoutwith me.The blessingof that momentlifts usagain, again.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Incremental

22 February 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

An animal whimpering in the long hours of night— until you realize the sound has come from your own throat. Trembling maple leaves outlined on cream- colored sidings; musk of previous repasts souring in the cracked garbage bin. Someone unzips a garment in another room or jostles with the glassy points of something they either welcome or dread. [Read more...]

Poetry Blog Digest 2021, Week 7

22 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. This week: a hodge-podge of delightful and challenging posts that nonetheless seem to converge on a single point, or cluster of related points, though at the moment I’m too tired to work out quite what that might be. Enjoy. The big conversation that the world is having. Human voices are only the tiniest part of it. Zipper of crow flight against the white blank sky. Syllables of sea birds that float, read left to right, right to left, moment to disappear. Alder branch hashmarks over a smudge of obscured sunlight. Blue slash of shadow, so sharp it cuts you.In the preface of The Way Winter Comes, Sherry Simpson writes, “The more you looked, the more you saw, but you could never see it all.” The poet Jane Hirshfield says, “Everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention.” Two voices that I love speaking to each other over… [Read more...]

TEN OLD MONK POEMS (3)

21 February 2021 - Tom

DON'T ASK YOURSELFDon't ask yourself,You might not likewhat you answer,the old monk says.That's the whole plotin a few simple words.~THE STARS AREThe stars are shifting,the old monk said.The horses have runaway, yet the starsdon't worry. Everymoment is tomorrow.~WE HAVE SO MUCHWe have so muchinfinity,the old monk said.It never ends.~IF YOU DON'TIf you don't dowhat you always do,the old monk said,you may not dowhat you need to.~I HAVE SAIDI have said so much,the old monk said,the silence is full.~WHEN I SEEWhen I see the same thingI say the same thing,the old monk said,when saying something newwouldn't be fruitful.~THE MOONThe moonopens the sky,the old monk says.The pines singan old song.Listen:the night saysHow long,how long?~LEARNING THISLearning this silence,the old monk says,prepares you forthe next one.~YOU CANNOTYou cannotmean silence,the old monk says,when you keepspeaking in words.~WHEN YOU KNOWWhen you know,the old monk says,you knowyou can saynothing.You ownyour silence.The silenceowns you.~The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Displaced

21 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

It being weather like the beginning of a frost and the ground dry, I walked as far as the Temple, and there took coach and to White Hall, but the Committee not being met I to Westminster, and there I do hear of the letter that is in the pamphlet this day of the King of France, declaring his design to go on against Flanders, and the grounds of it, which do set us mightily at rest. So to White Hall, and there a committee of Tangier, but little done there, only I did get two or three little jobs done to the perfecting two or three papers about my Tangier accounts. Here Mr. Povy do tell me how he is like to lose his 400l. a-year pension of the Duke of York, which he took in consideration of his place which was taken from him. He tells me the Duchesse is a devil against him, and do now come like Queen Elizabeth, and sits with the Duke of York’s Council, and sees what they… [Read more...]

LITERATURE, YOU KNOW

21 February 2021 - Unknown

Is this a new lockdown-inspired industry? For the past couple of months I've been getting a steady stream of emails in my junk folder from ladies with constantly changing names, some exotic, some Anglo-Saxon, inviting me for sex. From references to my hardness and other virile qualities, they evidently assume that I am male. All give links to photographs and phone numbers (needless to say, I never click on anything). At first all the emails said, with variations, that she had "seen me walking around her apartment, I am amazing, exactly her type, I can come and spend the night with her and stay for breakfast." Then the style changed and invitations were from "young, inexperienced college girl yearning for a mature man to show her all that he can do to her." Later the messages took on more outright porno details of what was on offer. Then, since those desperate entreaties weren't getting any response, a cooler approach was tried: she is now a bored married woman longing for a mystery lover but we… [Read more...]

IN SOME LANGUAGE (10)

21 February 2021 - Tom

In some languagethe word for desirealso means death.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Queen of the Night

21 February 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

- after Leonora Carrington's "And then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur" We wished to tell her of certain buds that bloom only one night of the year— about how, when at last they raise their heads, the perianth opens and the ivory wings of petals fall away. Finally, from out of one of the glass balls we rolled into her lair, some seed must have broken free. The ceiling rejoiced by building a softer canopy of clouds. The garment her father was always trying to unravel stayed faithful to her body. We witnessed how she had not burned herself into coal, how the years of solitude had merely curved the points of her horns into softer filaments resemblimg those growing out of the sex of flowers. We were as curious as she was about the guide dressed in gauze, dancing to a melody only it could hear; it pointed toward an archway through which soft sepia light spilled, as if from the mouth of a bell. [Read more...]

Winter Den

21 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

Watch on Vimeo Limbs against the snow, outlined with more snow. Treetops no longer canopies but the bare nets of need. Their no-longer-rare caresses and collisions in the winter wind. The moans of the ice-bound. How tormented they’d be if they hadn’t retreated to the underworld, that silken matrix of rootlets and hyphae, to trade fermented memories of sunlight for the bones of a mouse. winter den a slow leak of breath growing needles snowy meadow seedhead bending into its own pit We who cannot hibernate, isolated in our boxes of wood or brick, fight the cold any way we can. A poet posts a selfie taken by snowlight. A long-Covid survivor befriends the horse stabled beneath her apartment. The snow plowman dreams of combine harvesters bringing in the crop: a wintry mix. One of his chickens goes gaga over her egg. cold sun the fetal curl of rhododendron leaves What fever do I still need to break? I take a dose of Vitamin D with my morning outrage. Whose salt-block ignorance or black-ice tongue… [Read more...]

Head cleaner

21 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

(Lord’s day). Up, and with my wife to Church, and at noon home to dinner. No strangers there; and all the afternoon and evening very late doing serious business of my Tangier accounts, and examining my East India accounts, with Mr. Poynter, whom I employed all this day, to transcribe it fair; and so to supper, W. Hewer with us, and so the girl to comb my head till I slept, and then to bed. examining my accounts I employ a girl to comb my head * (Lord’s day). Up, and with my wife to Church, and at noon home to dinner. No strangers there; and all the afternoon and evening very late doing serious business of my Tangier accounts, and examining my East India accounts, with Mr. Poynter, whom I employed all this day, to transcribe it fair; and so to supper, W. Hewer with us, and so the girl to comb my head till I slept, and then to bed. no angers mining my head I slept Erasure poems derived from The Diary… [Read more...]

BIRDS

20 February 2021 - Tom

The big birdsand small ones,the weed birdsand beauties,God's creatureson the wingto whereverheaven is.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

NOT YOUR BODY

20 February 2021 - Tom

Not your body,not mine,which breaksbetween uswhen we break.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Pelikula

20 February 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

In Tagalog, the word for movie or film is pelikula, which borrows from the Spanish pelicula; this leans, in turn, toward the Italian pellicula, typically meaning the place where people go to watch the latest movies. Before Netflix or Hulu, the projectionist leans out of his overheated second-floor booth, impatiently waiting for the runner to arrive from the next town, panting as he hands over the second reel. It gets there just in time for him to feed the film into the sprocket- lined rollers, in time to fend off jeers and insults peppered with whistles and boos from the restive audience. In the old days, this was also the way films were distributed in the Philippines. My father once told me as we drove through Pangasinan on the way to Manila that a town at one end of a bridge was named Carmen, and the one at the other end was named Rosales, after a Filipina actress considered the queen of cinema in the '40s and '50s. When not playing the sweetly pliable girlfriend,… [Read more...]

Problematizical

20 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, where busy all the morning, and then at noon to the ’Change with Mr. Hater, and there he and I to a tavern to meet Captain Minors, which we did, and dined; and there happened to be Mr. Prichard, a ropemaker of his acquaintance, and whom I know also, and did once mistake for a fiddler, which sung well, and I asked him for such a song that I had heard him sing, and after dinner did fall to discourse about the business of the old contract between the King and the East India Company for the ships of the King that went thither, and about this did beat my brains all the afternoon, and then home and made an end of the accounts to my great content, and so late home tired and my eyes sore, to supper and to bed. which to be a ropemaker or a sun the old East India Company or the rains no end of accounts to tire my yes Erasure poem derived from… [Read more...]

Perseverance and the portable ark

20 February 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

"וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃ / Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell within them." (Ex. 25:8 - in this week's Torah portion, T'rumah.) The word mishkan (the portable dwelling-place for God) shares a root with the word Shechinah, the divine Presence. We build sacred space so God will dwell in us. I talk about this verse every year, because I love it. But this year, what jumps out at me is its juxtaposition with what follows. Immediately after this verse, Torah tells us to make an ark to hold the tablets of the covenant. Cover it with gold. Put rings on the sides, and poles through the rings. And keep it that way. The ark over which the divine Presence would rest needed to be ready to go at a moment's notice. Wherever the people go, holy words and presence go with them -- which is to say, with us. As beautiful as the mishkan was (as beautiful as our beloved shul building is) God's presence doesn't live… [Read more...]

ENOUGH

19 February 2021 - Tom

Enough, he says,when wind fills hisbreath, when the skyroars, when the birdsstay low. Wisdomis turning wherethe road goes.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

The closest thing to spring

19 February 2021 - Lorianne

February is hard. Years ago, I repeated Jo(e)’s claim that February is the longest month, and she is exactly right. Come February, the novelty of winter has long worn off. The snow is cleared from streets and sidewalks after each storm, but it piles and ossifies in yards and corners. Our dog pen is as slick as a rink, with weeks of snow trampled and saturated with last week’s sleet, then frozen hard: snow covering ice layered atop treachery. The daily winter drill is now familiar and mundane. The piling on of coats and hats and gloves, then the pulling on of boots: it takes so much effort to take the trash to the curb, the dog to the pen, one’s own self to the car. Along with any obligation, there are these extra intervening steps: almost inconceivable are those summer days when stepping outside was as simple as slipping on sandals. By February, winter has grown old, a tired routine that wears thin. And this year, we are in the February of the pandemic:… [Read more...]

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By Peter