In The People’s Justice, Judge Amul Thapar adroitly assumes the role of storyteller to defend an influential and controversial jurist’s reputation. He recounts twelve prominent cases that have come before Justice Clarence Thomas during his thirty-two-year term on the Supreme Court. The book . . . . Continue Reading »
Murray’s poems pack an impossible amount of meaning into short lines. Continue Reading »
Devotions by timothy murphy north dakota state, 192 pages, $24.95 Not a knee is padded in Timothy Murphy’s new collection. This is no minor point, considering that knee remains for the length of the volume perpetually bent and on the floor. Like the poet himself, these poems—religious . . . . Continue Reading »
Dancing, in mind at least, toward a stage of untested embrace— Virginal spirits grasped in the shared, unexpected spectacle Of one season’s end, and another’s hesitant . . . . Continue Reading »
The body has a clarityBetween high and low hierarchies tenebras et luces. He would be undone Who for too long scorns Either throng to court the other.Vengeance is mine clamors Each. Angel bright of Intellection, her glittering Sword sends straight to Heaven. Angel dark of Palpitation, her furious . . . . Continue Reading »
You heard the voices waftingBeyond the mechanical street.Attending seraphs sighingYou caught their half-notesIn the narrows of the halls at night.Unscrewing lightbulbs from the sockets,Blinding the world to heed the light,You announced in the kitchenWith old prophetic ardorAgainst our din of talk . . . . Continue Reading »
As you lie there(bedridden, they say),Dull eyes fixing on objects deemed less than worthy of ordinary attention— uneven surfaces, hairline cracks in a painted wall, . . . . Continue Reading »
“Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.” —Pascal, Pensées Five degrees. Rough, shifting winds. Sunlight crashing Almost audibly, sky to snow-pack, snow-pack to sky. Eyes shrink hard to their smallest stop, but winter drills in. Brilliant splinters of ice in . . . . Continue Reading »
Nutshells on patched linoleum,cracks skipped overon the long sidewalk home,hide-and-go-seek gamewe stopped counting. Still sometimes we huntfor that small face,ragged sleeve abovea chapped hand.We search beneathdecayed porches, throughyards full of dry weedsand rusted cans. The blown years . . . . Continue Reading »
I It took him 20 years to reach the top,but he made it, CEO, a winner, just what his mom always wanted. Thinnerthan his brothers, tougher, he’d never stopuntil he’d earned more in a year than allhis frat mates earned together all their lives, until his parents, brothers, and their wivesadmitted . . . . Continue Reading »
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