In Between
By Poetry Issue 63
They had reasons to believe in God. Miracles helped. And their aftereffects must have lingered for a time, but then, the disciples needed to start walking again, one town to another, nothing in between but the hot, dusty road and a desert of sand and rock where not one thing required a moment’s appreciation. Just…
Read MoreBetween Prayer
By Poetry Issue 84
Do not make me one of the trees bowing in soft wind, not the heavy branches at sway or the murmuring leaves. But let me be a molecule of water flowing in the veins, the inner blood pressured through the rings. Nothing so grand as ocean waves crumbling on a beach, or the river running…
Read MoreEphesus
By Poetry Issue 84
Revelation 2:1–7 1. Here’s where a thing gets turned on its head in the mind of a man self-named a sinner. He deciphers inscriptions on gates to the agora: Son of Caesar. Lord. High Priest. Titles claimed by VIPS of empire: Divinity a thing to be grasped at. Gloated on. Devotion wrought by drawn swords,…
Read MoreSardis
By Poetry Issue 84
Revelation 3:1–6 Not much is left of this fourth-century stone church barnacled to the broken temple honoring the goddess Artemis. And this early synagogue partly restored. Moonlight dissolves the acropolis. The apostle drifts—a shadow, a ghost—past Roman baths, fragmented capitals of pillars, pagan altars. Past a gymnasium. His sandals tattered, old cloak stained. He is scouting…
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