Alex LaFollette

Leonardo da Vinci’s Reflection on Death

Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Saint John the Baptist was the last portrait he created. Stylistically, it fits well within the canon of his work. John’s mysterious smile pairs seamlessly with that of the Mona Lisa. His oval-eyed gaze matches that of the Lady with an Ermine. But just as Leonardo kept a similar process and […]

Jason Barnhart

A Morbid Mosaic

“Love ya, Dad!” These were the last words I spoke to my father as I gave him a side hug inside my mother’s car. He was fiddling with his oxygen tanks, and we didn’t get an opportunity to have a full embrace. His anxiety was spiking as he prepared to head home. I wonder if […]

Micah Rickard

The Passion of Humanity

Everything encounters death. There’s no way around that: every life, be it human or flora or fauna, will perish. Every culture crumbles; every sensation fades; every memory is at some point forgotten. In the same vein every teleology, every philosophy, ends in death—or at least must pass through death. It is the inescapable, that which […]

Sonja Lund

These Cold, Still Hands

The first time I touched a dead man, my hands shook. On an otherwise ordinary day in the hospital, his heart had stopped. Despite the best efforts of the nurses surrounding him, his body wouldn’t take its cues from the hands pressing on his chest and pushing air from a bottle down his throat. When […]

Christine A. Marie

The Harrowing of Hell

Several years ago, my closest friend took her own life. Her death catapulted me into an abyss of unanswerable questions. Especially: Does suicide destroy or illuminate soul friendship? Our relationship as poets, soul friends and sister elders was grounded in deep and daring contemplation of matters of ultimate meaning. At the heart of our contemplation […]

Michael Dean Clark

Sometimes These Collisions Are Final

The human instinct to make lessons out of living is built around one constant: our bodies cling to life, even when that life is being lived by others. The need to live tears muscle from bone as certainly as it rips a metaphoric heart in two. Sometimes I wonder if it’s our wounds that bind […]

​Claire Hanlon

Like Jonah I am Swallowed Down, Entire

July 19th, 2018 was a Thursday. That morning at work, I settled into the week’s downhill slide with a warm mug of coffee and a covert scroll through Facebook. The blow fell with a whisper, as I almost scrolled past an old picture of Libby wearing her newborn baby in a sling, dressed for winter, […]

Rachel M. Srubas

The Soul and Ground of Motherhood

Raindrops flecked the windows beside my booth at Nighthawks Diner and Bar. I ordered the walleye and an old-fashioned. Petunias, purple and blousy, bloomed in flower boxes on the windowsills. I wrote a few lines in my journal and relished the spice and citrus of the cocktail, the Midwestern savor of my dinner. Minneapolis was […]

Payton Conlin

Mourning Meeting

“No, not that button. You gotta click the one that says, ‘Stop video.’ Bottom left.” “Yours says ‘Stop’ because your video’s on. He needs to push ‘Start video,’ and it’ll turn on.” You say nothing. You scan the other boxes on the video call, trying to match the names and unfamiliar faces to what you […]