Fire

Marci Rae Johnson explores the paradox of desire and detachment.

In “Manifestation,” the poet Tania Runyan encounters prayer as something that hooks her “like a dendrite branch,” its movements slow, deliberate, and intimate.

In “O For a Thousand Tongues to Mutter,” Jennifer Strange tracks traces of corruption—a fallen soldier’s body, a swarm of ravenous ants—in the “pale business” of our passage “in and out of life.”

Brian Bork writes about the ways that America’s post 9/11 “patriotism” surfaced in cheap country pop, and how the artistry of Springsteen’s “The Rising” captured the real heart and soul of a mourning nation.

1 Adam Lowe was waking. In truth, he was wrestling to wake. Patches of Gunnison County had seen the risen sun, but for others, anyone west of the Bells, night stayed on a little longer, keeping them in an undecided blue. Adam’s interior body was mimicking the shadow of the valley, with his soul somehow […]