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Fed up with reflections and illusion
I am begging for something real-- To be alone in the kitchen at half past seven With flour on my knuckles, The nitty-gritty nascence of a feast. I want to bow my head, my heart, my whole body. I want to be completely hollowed Into hallowed ground, the divot That Moses wore away with kneeling-- Ash-stricken by the flames ahead, but holy. Hold me in some tangible embrace! Cast out the dark; cut every veil in two. Enter me incarnate, in bread and wine And weighty waiting, a patience renewed By reality, a glimpse of something true. -- Ava Pardue is a young poet studying at Wheaton College. Her work has been published in Christianity Today and The Christian Century and has been recognized by various groups including the Wells Young Poets Awards and the Wheaton Lowell-Grabill Prize.
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These mountains are in my bones--
both calcified spines, straight lines from head to heart. I sit in solitude and listen, bask in what He’s given. When I grow quiet, I learn that just beyond the wood-line, there is bird-swell: cardinals and wrens, jays and sparrows, chattering back and forth in endless creation-song-- bursting with verve in my repose-- among the ancient spruce and pines. And here, just beyond the blue mountain’s crest, a faithful train chugs west through the valley, and its longing whistle adds to the chorus of nature’s endless hymns. I come here to learn, to go low-- to be voiceless and see anew, to shed the scales I can’t see through. I have come here to disappear into it-- to be stripped of my self-obsession, to find a Truer Country-- when I dare to be still and know: the mighty ridge, the thick verdant forest of life, the lush rhythms of a coming spring. I have come to know God’s hours and his canvas for myself, to rest and wait in this quietude for the sunset, moonlight, and midnight stars to shine-- unencumbered by the city noise and city lights, unsheathed from my former self-- so I might watch it all unfold like the miracle it is: God stooping-- even here and ever still-- to paint the sky, all golden-grace and fire-glow, and to fill the air with a song for my silence. -- Kimberly Phinney is an award-winning professor and writer. She is the founder of TheWayBack2Ourselves.com. Kimberly holds her M.Ed. in English and is a doctoral candidate in Community Care and Counseling. Her work appears in Christianity Today, Ekstasis, Solum, and more. Her poetry collections, Of Wings and Dirt and Exalted Ground, were bestsellers. Her forthcoming book on art and faith debuts with Baker Books in 2027. She’s a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, Audience Choice Award winner with Ekstasis (now Inkwell), and runner-up in Fathom’s Poetry Contest. She was featured on Good Morning America for a national teaching award. Instagram: @kimberlyphinneywriter. Substack: https://thewayback2ourselves.substack.com/. The prayers crack like skin.
There never is enough spirit. Imagine the drip of it, the last of the flow in a thin line saved in an elderly woman’s flat, dark hand. Sometimes, the sudden rush of life. I splash my right hand into the pool and anoint myself with the sign of the cross. My wife holds our son over the waters -- after men women children for miles, years around slip in, jump in, dunk their heads -- and dips his frantic feet naked but for his nappy, and in the chapel I pray that even if he is not healed the blessing would sing over his whole life. -- after 'Blessing' by Imtiaz Dharker He was an extraordinary talker,
but he was not arrogant, conceited, or proud. His words painted the world with love and kindness, rather than charm and vanity. The beauty was always inside of him. Without the Light, you could only see its outline in the shadows. But with the Light's illumination, the kaleidoscope within came forth, speaking life into dead places, reflecting the Maker's radiance and His skillful shift of the mirrors in us to create something new. -- Madison is a biomedical researcher and emerging poet living in Virginia. Her work explores themes of love and loss and has appeared in Grande Dame Literary. with the parts of our soul
that submit, laying down on dark altars? the parts that giggle and groan and weep, beneath and behind glass frames? the parts that beat trowels into daggers and burn all the seeds, take mallets and chisels into the mines to wound, steal, be stripped and stained, to bleed alongside others in shadow? Why do we pretend they are hidden? Have they finally closed their mouths? Are they sitting quietly in cold sad corners, unseen and unheard? No. The feeblest dissemblers among us cannot keep them chained. They come screeching, smashing all our fables, hurling fire on each new name. Perhaps they slink and sneak to meet the One who hums-- “I will sprinkle you with hyssop. I will wash you. I will make you whiter than snow.” Perhaps they hope against the dark their offerings might be redeemed? Maybe we should bring them out to meet Him? -- Blake Kilgore is the author of Leviathan (Hapless Hip Books, 2021), a collection of poems wrestling with faith and doubt. He teaches history and coaches basketball during the workday and tries his best to love his wife and four sons when he goes home. His writing has appeared in many fine journals, recently including Vita Poetica, Fare Forward and Pensive: A Literary Journal of Spirituality and the Arts. You can find out more at blakekilgore.com. Each year the house was solemnly blessed
with colored chalk on the door jamb and header, a bloodless script to set this dwelling apart. In the bleak midwinter a large candle of beeswax was left lighted on the front window sill as a beacon for others in the footsteps of the Posada. In this ordinariness were also folio pages of a paper Bible taped to the glass, not as elegant as a Gutenberg in a museum’s showcase that had its pages in both volumes turned every day, but bright with devotion as our prayers rose up and fell like angels on an extended work ladder. Daily prayers were repeated so quickly, one after another, that some would think it was arcane gibberish, but it was instead a shibboleth test of the true heart. Some of the wealthy and even libraries cut out the richly illuminated head letters from broken books, sold as individual pages to increase profits in sales. Outside in this orderly suburban neighborhood no one thinks they need to find a place of safety, and no effort is required to find their daily bread. But I am the one neighbor who lights a bright candle that flickers and then moves it toward the window while I draw back the curtains as a new day begins. -- Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who taught classes on the history of Christianity and on global religions for almost forty years. He lives now in a small village that is near a nature conservancy, a green cemetery and Amish farms. The fire at the end of the day
roars like the distant sea. The logs are almost ashes now that once were mighty trees. But with the wind and heat within, they glow as if alive, like Adam in the holy garden clothed with Breath and light. There was a bush that burned, I've heard, but never was consumed. There was a Man who, after death, shook off his empty tomb. He said that if I 'take and eat' him, I too will never die. Let me become a bush that burns with everlasting life. Father Miguel had prepared for this moment with prayer and careful study. He'd read everything the refugee resettlement agency had sent—trauma counseling techniques, cultural sensitivity guidelines, age-appropriate approaches to grief. He'd even practiced Arabic phrases on his phone app, wanting to offer this child something familiar in her new world.
But nothing had prepared him for the weight of Layla's silence. She sat at the far end of the monastery's guest dining hall, her thin frame lost in a donated orange dress three sizes too large. Her long dark hair was heaped in a misshapen ponytail. Arms, scarred by operations to remove shrapnel, dangled like sticks from the short sleeves of the dress. Twelve years old, the paperwork said, though her dear eyes held decades. The other children – two Sudanese brothers, a girl from Honduras – chattered nervously over their breakfast, stealing glances at the new arrival who had said nothing since arriving three days ago. "She hasn't eaten," whispered Sister Catherine, sliding beside him with a cup of coffee. "Just picks at the bread, drinks a little tea water. Dr. Hendricks says her body is still remembering famine." Father Miguel nodded, watching as Layla's fingers traced patterns on the wooden table – unconscious movements that looked almost like Arabic script. He hadn’t seen this before in the other refugee children, the phantom writing, the muscle memory of a life left behind. “The child remembers school,” he told Sister. “Those better days… "I thought I might try again today," he murmured. "Maybe show her the garden. Children often respond to growing things, to life returning." Sister Catherine's glance fell so that Father couldn’t read her eyes. She'd been working with displaced children for fifteen years, had seen what war and hunger could do to a young soul. "Father, sometimes the kindest thing we can offer is simply... presence. Not healing. Not answers. Just being with someone in their darkness." But Father Miguel felt the familiar tug of his calling—to comfort the afflicted, to bring light to those who suffered. Surely God hadn't brought this child across an ocean just to sit in silence in a monastery dining hall. There had to be a purpose, a plan, a way through her pain. He approached Layla's table with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Sabah al-khayr," he said carefully, offering the morning greeting he'd practiced. Good morning. Layla's hand stilled. For a moment, just a moment, something flickered across her face—not recognition exactly, but acknowledgment. Then it was gone, shuttered behind the same impenetrable silence. "I think," Father Miguel continued in broken Arabic, settling into the chair across from her, "if you might like to see our garden. Al-khuḍrawāt wa al-ʿaʿshāb – Vegetables and herbs. Some of the plants... well, some might be familiar to you." He'd researched this too – Mediterranean plants that might grow in Gaza, things that could bridge the distance between her old world and this new one. Olive trees, rosemary, mint. Layla's eyes met his briefly, then slid away to the window where morning light filtered through the monastery's ancient Pittsburgh glass. She was beautiful in the way children are after the world breaks them – more beautiful because of what she'd survived, though Father Miguel immediately felt guilty for the thought. "You don't have to talk," he said gently. "We could just walk. Sometimes walking helps when... when everything feels too heavy to carry." This time, to his surprise, Layla stood. Not eagerly, not with any visible interest, but she stood. It was something. They walked through the monastery's stone corridors in silence, their footsteps echoing off sandy brick walls that had absorbed centuries of prayers. Father Miguel found himself fighting the urge to fill the quiet with words, explanations, reassurances. Instead, he practiced what Sister Catherine had suggested – simple presence. The garden, when they reached it, was in its full September glory. Red tomatoes heavy on the vine, late summer herbs sending up their fragrances in the warm air, the olive tree that Brother Thomas had somehow coaxed to survive three Pennsylvania winters. Layla stopped at the garden's edge, her hands hanging at her sides. "Where does everything go when it is lost?" she asked suddenly, so quietly Father Miguel almost missed it. Her first words since arriving, spoken in accented English. On the paperwork, it did say she had attended an American Catholic school before the war in Gaza struck. Barely two years later, 62,000 people in Gaza had died in air raids and other attacks. A third of those were children. But Layla was not one of them. He waited, hardly daring to breathe. "The garden. My grandmother's lemon tree. The bread oven my grandfather built with stones." Her voice was steady, matter-of-fact, as if she were reciting a grocery list rather than describing the destruction of her world. "People say God has a plan. What plan needs war?" The question hit Father Miguel like a physical blow. He'd prepared for grief, for anger, even for despair. But not for this – this child's clear-eyed challenge to everything he'd built his faith upon. "I don't know," he heard himself say, and immediately regretted it. Where were the theological responses he'd studied? His long investigation into the Book of Job? Still, I will not preach to her, he told himself. Layla looked at him directly for the first time, measuring something in his face. "My baby brother," she continued, still in that terrible calm voice, "cried for three days before he died. He was hungry." Father Miguel felt something crack inside his chest. All his careful preparation, his confidence in his ability to minister to this child—it crumbled like sand. "I carried him," Layla said, kneeling now beside a patch of mint, her fingers ghosting over the leaves without quite touching them. "Four kilometers to the hospital. But there was no hospital anymore. Just stones and metal and... pieces." She finally touched the mint, then, crushing a leaf between her fingers and bringing it to her nose. The familiar scent seemed to undo something in her – not tears, but a tremor that ran through her small frame. "Your God," she said, looking up at Father Miguel with those ancient eyes, "what does He know?" And Father Miguel, who had spent twenty-three years in the priesthood offering comfort and explanation to those who suffered, found he had no ready answer. “God forgive me! The child strikes me speechless,” he prayed silently. + + + In the small light of morning, Layla had woken from her dusty mat and made her way through the streets of Madīnat al-Aytām al-Baraka, otherwise known as Orphanage City, where thousands of children were lost and wandering. Layla had used rubble to climb into a dumpster, hoping to find scraps of paper to light a fire for tea someone might give her. She feared if she crawled in, she would never climb out. Weak arms and shrapnel-pocked legs made the slightest effort painful. If only I can make it, thought she. The yellow dumpster, nothing extraordinary, had endured the Gaza war that droned on for a third of Layla’s young life. The rubbish container’s square now formed a misshapen thing riddled by blasts. Out of breath, she leaned into a far corner atop rags and closed her eyes. She was found later that day, alive but barely. Layla hadn’t intended to throw herself away in a dumpster. But rescue volunteers thought so after she was found there by accident, by marauding men and women who rummaged the giant rubbish container. That, or so they assumed, someone else threw her away. + + + Now she prepared for bed in a single cell not unlike those used by the priests and nuns at the giant monastery. She removed the orange dress, its cinched waist so large it was tied with a long black ribbon that wrapped twice. Her thin hair fell down her neck, heavy but no longer hot as it had been at home. She did not forget to wash her face. Lavender soap smelled like heaven. “I don’t want to think of you,” she whispered aloud. Crossing her mind, as if it were a stage, were the loved ones gone now. She did not always want to pray their names or view their faces: Ula, Marcus, Tamara, Farah … She opened her palm and sniffed the mint leaf Father had allowed her to pluck. This is how at last she fell to sleep. + + + That night, Father Miguel knelt in his cell as he had every night for twenty-three years, but the familiar words wouldn't come. Instead of the comforting rhythm of the rosary, he found himself staring at the wooden crucifix on his wall – really seeing it, perhaps for the first time. Christ's face, carved in suffering, seemed to ask the same question Layla had posed: What do you know? The psalms he'd memorized felt hollow in his mouth. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken them?" he whispered, and understood that these weren't just words King David had written – they were the cry of every child who had ever gone hungry, every mother who had carried a dead baby, every twelve-year-old girl who had climbed into a dumpster hoping to disappear. His decades as a priest hadn’t allowed him to forget his own cries as a child in Mexico, but he’d long since felt the salvation of a loving God. He stayed on his knees until dawn, not praying exactly, but learning a new kind of silence—one that didn't demand answers, but simply held space for questions too large for any theology to contain. + + + “She likes the garden,” Sister Catherine told Father Miguel. The two stood near the window, watching her after breakfast. The girl had eaten a single boiled egg that morning. She’d made tiny bites of it, as if it were a huge repast. She pecked at the toast as if she were a beaked bird. As they watched, Layla stood, brushing dirt from her knees with careful precision. She walked to the olive tree and pressed her palm against its bark – not seeking comfort, but testing its reality, as if everything in this safe place might dissolve like the mirages she'd seen in the dusty rubble-strewn streets of home. "I used to pray," she said without looking at Father Miguel. "Five times a day, like my grandmother taught me. But God never answered. Not once. So maybe God is just... quiet. Or maybe God is the mint that still grows, even when everything else is gone." She touched the crushed leaf to her forehead, a gesture so small and private it made Father Miguel feel like he was witnessing something sacred he had no right to see. + + + The following Saturday, Father Miguel loaded crates of tomatoes into the monastery's old pickup truck. Brother Thomas had grown more than they could use. The weekly farmer's market provided a small income for their refugee program. "Would you like to come with me?" he asked Layla as she sat on the garden bench, watching him work. "Just for the ride. You could stay in the truck if you want." She considered this for a long moment, then nodded. The drive into town was quiet, Layla pressed against the passenger door, watching Pittsburgh’s suburbs merge with city streets and tall buildings. Father Miguel found himself praying silently – not for guidance this time, but simply for her peace, for this small venture to go well. The Shadyside Farmer's Market bustled with Saturday morning energy. Families wandered between booths, children clutching balloons, couples sampling cheese and honey. Father Miguel parked near their usual spot and began unloading crates. "I'll just be a few minutes," he told Layla, but when he turned back, she had climbed out of the truck and stood frozen at the market's edge. The abundance hit her like a physical force. Mountains of apples, perfect and gleaming. Towers of bread loaves, more than a village could eat. Children whining about wanting different snacks while their parents juggled multiple grocery bags made of cloth. A teenager threw half a sandwich into a trash can, and Layla's hands began to shake. "So much," she whispered, and Father Miguel saw her face go pale. A toddler dropped a container of blueberries, the fruit scattering across the asphalt. The mother sighed, bought another container, left the spilled berries for others to step on. Layla stared at the waste – food that could have fed her family for days, now ground into the pavement. “Your peaches aren’t sweet,” a woman complained loudly, demanding her money back for fruit that looked like paradise to Layla's eyes. Two boys ran past, each clutching enormous turkey legs from the food truck, grease dripping down their chins. Layla doubled over suddenly, retching onto the grass beside the truck. Nothing came up—her stomach was too empty—but her body convulsed with dry heaves, her thin frame shaking with each spasm. She gasped between heaves. "Too much, too much." Father Miguel gathered her quickly, loading now-empty crates back into the truck with one hand while supporting her with the other. People stared, but he didn't care. He needed to get her away from this overwhelming display of plenty, this casual abundance that felt obscene to a child who had known true hunger. On the drive back, Layla sat curled against the door, her arms wrapped around her stomach. "I'm sorry," Father Miguel said quietly. "I thought... I thought it might be good for you to see normal life, but I didn't think..." "Do they know where food goes when they don’t eat it?" Father Miguel had no answer for that either. + + + That evening, Father Miguel sat in his cell staring at his hands—the same hands that had meant to help, that had instead led a traumatized child into another moment of anguish. The image of Layla retching beside the truck, her thin body convulsing with dry heaves, played over and over in his mind. He knelt before his wooden crucifix, but the familiar posture brought no comfort. "I don't understand," he said aloud to the carved figure on the wall. "I've studied everything—trauma counseling, refugee psychology, cultural sensitivity. I've prayed, I've prepared, I've tried to do everything right." His voice cracked. "And I keep hurting her. Every time I think I'm helping, I make it worse." The crucifix stared back in silent compassion. Father Miguel's hands clenched into fists. "She asked me what You know about their suffering, and I answered not. Next time I pray for doing better, the true response is that You know everything about suffering. Now I'm asking: what can I do to avoid making her suffering worse?” For not the first time in his twenty-three years of priesthood, he felt truly angry at God. "If You brought her here, if this is Your plan, then show me how to help her! Give me a sign—anything—because I'm failing her, and I don't know what else to do." The silence stretched on. No sudden insight came. No divine whisper. Just the sound of his own ragged breathing and the distant hum of the monastery's old heating system. Father Miguel remained on his knees until his legs went numb, waiting for an answer that finally came. + + + The next morning, Father Miguel found Layla in the garden again, sitting cross-legged beside the mint patch. She looked up when he approached, and he braced himself for questions about yesterday, for anger or fear or withdrawal. Instead, she held up something small in her palm—a single mint seed, barely visible. "I found," she said quietly. "It fell from the plant yesterday when we picked the leaves." Father Miguel sat down beside her on the grass, unsure where this was leading. "In Baraku, my village," Layla continued, rolling the tiny seed between her fingers, "my grandmother always saved seeds. Even when we had no garden left, even when the soil was full of glass and metal, she kept them in a little cloth bag." She paused. "She said seeds are prayers you plant in the ground." "What happened to the seeds?" Father Miguel asked gently. "They burned." Layla's voice was matter-of-fact, but her fingers tightened around the mint seed. Father Miguel looked at her—really looked—and saw something he'd missed in all his attempts to counsel and comfort her. This child wasn't just surviving; she was already beginning to grow, in ways too small and slow for him to notice. Like a seed in foreign soil, putting down roots he couldn't see. "Yes," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "It could still grow." Layla carefully pressed the seed into the earth beside the mint plant, covering it with a thin layer of soil. "My grandmother used to say that God doesn't always answer prayers the way we expect. Sometimes God answers by giving us something to tend, something small to care for while we wait." Father Miguel felt something shift inside his chest—not the dramatic revelation he'd prayed for, but something quieter and more profound. He'd been so focused on healing Layla's wounds that he'd failed to see the new growth already beginning. She wasn't broken and waiting to be fixed; she was planted and slowly, silently, putting down roots. "Would you like to help me tend the whole garden?" he asked. "Not as therapy or healing or any kind of program. Just... because plants need tending, and it's good work to do together." For the first time since her arrival, Layla smiled—barely a curve of her lips, but unmistakably a smile. "Yes," she said. "I would like that." -- Naomi Klouda, a longtime Alaska journalist, is the author of Anna's Whale, a novella set in a village during this time of climate change when a rare whale beaches on the shore. She also wrote the newly released The Alaska Glacier Dictionary, a compendium of 700 named glaciers detailing their vital statistics and histories. She is a member of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Homer, Alaska, a community by the sea. The Picayune settlement was founded very early in the nation’s history (well before its
first millennium), but even by the standards of its own time, it operated in provincial antiquity, keeping mostly to itself and the surrounding regions, and remaining deeply ingrained with its priestly order. Yet in its – some would say – ‘stunted’ progress, the settlement enjoyed a century or so of prosperity before it was suddenly wiped from the map along with the rest of the old Gulf Coast (the new coast would have been 20–30 miles inland of the old, depending on the location) in the well-documented and now quite avoidable super hurricane phenomenon of the mid-third millennium C.E. [author's note: knock on wood]. Underwater excavations and discoveries of the civilizations tragically lost began centuries ago and continue to this day. The Picayune settlement is only the latest among these, with its position on the ancient crescent line, and its disproportionately extravagant temple – which at least contains the true subject of this report. For my lauded peers have already made extensive catalogues of the settlement’s structures and artifacts, and rather than add to their exhaustive list, I purpose to piece together the culture of Picayune’s priesthood, through comparison of the archaeological findings with contemporary northern depictions of a ‘Southern Baptist Church.’ The layout of the living quarters reveals a tight-knit community, with the upper echelons of the priesthood in constant interaction with the lowest of the low. With elegant architecture reflecting the fibonacci spirals of nature, the suite’s entrance boasts the widest, lightest cells, after which the hall turns in upon itself, housing deeper, more private offices. There is a sense of the esoteric in this design, of the dribbling out of knowledge, and the dribbling in of distractions. The most central of these offices therefore belongs to the chief priest, and has no windows. Our modern tastes may scoff, yet for a chief he can do no better, for the cell will likely stay coolest in the summer, warmest in the winter, and provide a space for study away from the constant needs of the settlement. Down the hall the lesser priests make their beds, the least being the only priestess found in the settlement’s records, and finally back to the opening of the conch shell we find the quarters of the priests’ female attendants. While these spaces are more spacious, much of them are used for the purpose of hosting the needy, or welcoming the wealthy members of the settlement who do business with the priests, rather than for the pleasure of the tenants. And without record of any payment or spouses for these women, we can only assume that they were slaves and virgins, consecrated as adolescents to the service of their gods. Indeed, a steady progression of age can be observed in the artifacts found in each attendant’s space, as if once one reaches a certain age, she crawls up in the pecking order, and a younger slave takes her place. Yet still lower than these women, are older male servants who keep their offices outside of the conch formation. Their roles seem to be of the upkeep of the temple, and their ages and infirmities suggest that they were cast off by their former masters on the doorstep of the temple, and given shelter and renewed purpose there. Between weekly sacraments in the temple proper, the priests accept visits into their quarters from the people by way of the gatekeeper, the youngest of the female attendants. Trained in a special art to discern the auras of visitors, she grants or denies entry. A paradoxical position of the keenest vulnerability, and yet the most practical power. As well as receiving visits, the priests engage in many visits themselves, travelling in their bulky, uneconomical carriages, common status symbols of the era and region. Their appointments range from charitable to downright ambitious. Representations of this type of settlement by northern publications of the time claim much crossover between politician and priest, and we have no reason to believe Picayune an exception. The chief priest is the frequent guest of the leaders of state, and vice versa. Within the living quarters also, the priests hold regular feasts with the entirety of the household, even celebrating individual birthdays – when birthdays are known, that is. Though patriarchal in nature, at these feasts it seems the priesthood readily gives the female attendants an equal platform for airing grievances, at least insofar as they do not neglect keeping the minutes, watching the doors, and serving the food. Besides existing for simple fellowship, these feasts act as meetings to discuss the aforementioned weekly sacraments, large services that during the busiest times of the year hold up to half the population of the entire settlement within the temple’s grand antechamber. During sacrament, ritual sacrifices are performed, lectures given, and collective music sung and played on such lyres and ancient percussive instruments as my colleagues have studied at length. The sacrificial system is a subject where we must assume much, yet confidently. Most assuredly we know that regular monetary sacrifices are made to the gods under the management of the eldest female attendant – a post of honor as much as thrall. Less regularly is the sacrifice of foodstuffs, to please the gods with tantalizing aromas. The laymen and women of the settlement keep a kitchen on the temple’s grounds almost industrial in its level of operation. Money, food, and finally – human. Fragments of surviving literature make frequent mention of being ‘washed in the blood’, of ‘atonement’, and of being ‘crushed for our transgressions’. Such graphic language leaves little doubt of the nature of the most important sacrament of the year, taking place on the onset of spring – the common time in ancient civilizations for festivals symbolizing rebirth, often dramatized in a wedding and culminating in a human sacrifice. No victims of this ceremony have been fully confirmed, although one case, very close to our study thus far, is heavily theorized to be the last that occurred before the calamity. Perhaps she was even committed to the gods as supplication for a good hurricane season. If we have surmised correctly, that the gatekeeper herself was sacrificed on the altar of the Picayune settlement’s temple, then much can be inferred about the rituals associated by the state of the gatekeeper’s quarters when it was plunged under the deeps. Many scraps of paper with cheery sentiments decorate her furniture. Well wishes and tokens of the people to ward off her restless spirit. A gift of money is set in a prominent place, with the marks of the chief priest himself. A travel stipend for her journey to the underworld. Some food, especially sweet pastries, for this same reason. All in all, the gatekeeper is held somewhat in reverence and gratitude for her role in this year's rite of spring, but why is she chosen? From history we must assume as a form of punishment, an assumption supported by acknowledging her prominent position in the settlement. Though she is a slave, her job is special, and she will only be properly replaced with great effort on the priests’ parts. We can only speculate on the gatekeeper’s crimes; common abominations of the time, according to the contemporary northern corpus on the subject, include–in no particular order– scientific study, higher education, being awake (?), too much melanin, and democracy. Of whichever the gatekeeper is guilty, she does not fight her sentence. Unrestrained, she is offered to the gods, and thus belongs to them for eternity. -- Taylor Inmon is a creative writing student (MFA) at Sarah Lawrence College, New York. at the end of your uncle’s
graveside service, waiting in the van, a hundred yards from you and the white pop-up tent while I sat enclosed by sunbleached headstones benign as merlons of a fallen castle. There is a time for everything and for everyone the lamp will go out: for you, for me, for the glass bottle wheeze of our napping toddler, for Leroy M. Gallup, his fire snuffed out since 1918, for his elderly great-granddaughter out in the rain. I watched her grip his gravestone, crouch down to anchor a plastic pinwheel beside his epitaph. I saw everything through a beaded windshield, not darkly, not clearly, but magnified. Love, I don’t know a thing about Leroy M. Gallup; I barely knew uncle Mike, but what I knew then was alive: to marvel at you in the mid-June drizzle, left hand gripping a rose, program, and hem of your skirt as you tip-toed back through the wet grass, umbrella synced with your quickened step. You know I could have pulled further ahead, and I knew you’d tell me as much, eyes flickering, I hoped, from that furnace still blazing inside. -- Ryan Apple is a music professor at a small Christian college in Lansing, MI. His chapbook, Stars and Sparrows Alike, was published in November 2020 through Finishing Line Press. Ryan is also one of ten poets featured in the Poiema Poetry Series anthology In a Strange Land: Introducing Ten Kingdom Poets. |