May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
I watched Rebel Without a Cause on TV late one college night when I learned …
The Windsor Report, 10/18/04
The toppling wakes me
from sleep, that sweet retreat
to denial, the state that makes it
easier to dismiss destruction. Open eyes
collect dust, allow the beams in
near the iris, adjust the view
dramatically. When pretenses come down,
everything’s a window
for catastrophic collapse
but also Light.
Look, you can see
the sun just to the right
of the wrecking ball.
About the Author
Marjorie Maddox
Marjorie Maddox is a professor of English at Lock Haven University and an assistant editor at Presence. She has published eleven collections of poetry, including True, False, None of the Above, which was published in the Poiema Poetry Series and was an Illumination Book Award Medalist; Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation, which won the Yellowglen Prize; and Perpendicular As I, which won the Sandstone Book Award. She also published the short story collection What She Was Saying, four children’s books, a contemporary poetry anthology, and over 550 stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Please see www.marjoriemaddox.com. The cover image for this poem, Asphalt Heart, is used with permission by the photographer and activist Karen Elias.
Susan Lilley
May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
Mary Van Denend
May 3, 2011 / Creative Writing
May 3, 2011 / Creative Writing
Mary Van Denend reflects on Simone Weil’s “Waiting for God,” a seminal piece on Weil’s understandings of grace, affliction, and our “sacred longing” for God.