And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made. —Exodus 32:35 When you are thunder to us, when you are smoke and fire, we sift through the air, ashen. Out of the smoke, coals drop; we pick them up, burn each other, in disgust […]
A poem by Debra Rienstra.
John 12:1-11 Solemn, weightless, she appears in the slender doorway of his time. Heavy-sweet perfume rises, mingles with murmurous voices bruising the air, stinging her bare, bending nape; hair falls unveiled on urgent fingers. She weeps for the brother, living; for the master, dead; Time, a slivered moon, turns toward the dark. Broken pieces of […]
TOJ: When did your interest in poetry begin? DR: I was first conscious of the magic of poetry in middle school when a student teacher asked us to read Tennyson’s “The Eagle.” The sound effects in that little poem blew me away—so much power in so few words. But I think by that age I […]