I can’t remember now who I read or heard say the phrase “saints of diminished capacity” (I thought it was Nadia Bolz-Weber, then today I found this book.), but it has stuck with me, and has been a poem I keep coming back and revising. Here is the 2020 version: saints of diminished capacity the…

Name ______________________________ 1. A word for when you’re not sure of the way out. 2. A word for losing track of time. 3. A word for the hunger for human touch. 4. A word for living through your anxieties and still feeling anxious. 5. A word for a consistent lack of adequate vocabulary. 6. A…

I’m not sure whether this poem works, but it seemed worth a shot. trustable was the word I heard the syllabic rhythm sent my mind dancing into the past to find uncrustable a made up word for a prepackaged PB&J designed to say the artful care of cutting off crusts takes too much time care…

One of my Facebook friends here in Guilford posted this picture of the sunset blurred by the ash of the fires on the other side of the country. scattered the east coast sunset looks like the west african haze of the harmattan but our sun is not muted by the desert dust but by the…

all is not lost the art of losing isn’t hard to master bishop said and that got her anthologized and awarded but not listened to we have so much more to lose life is losing we all go out empty-handed just this year we lost hugs and handshakes happy hours sacred gatherings live music and…

distance learning the word distance has its roots in discord and disagreement another way of saying something has come between us we stand apart before we masked and measured ourselves the strife simmered under our skins we want to blame the virus but our disease runs deeper long ago we learned to live at extremes…

My friend Nathan Brown is a poet. For a living. And he’s good. At the beginning of the pandemic, he began something called the Fire Pit Sessions on his Facebook page, which grew out of his invitation for people to commission poems about life in these days. He then began to come on every night…

August 3 marks seven years since my father died—on the same day that Gracie, our little goofy Schnauzer, died as well. the third of august the thing I never really liked about august is the way the heat and humidity ride under my skin making it all but impossible to be comfortable I can move…

opening day my baseball career consisted of afternoon tosses with my father and my brother in the backyard of several houses in several cities being a missionary kid meant I moved like a mediocre minor leaguer hoping for a big break those afternoons of overthrows and near misses taught me to love the game from…

hey, white people yeah, I’m talking to me you, too–those who never had to worry about being followed stopped lynched accused raped beaten shot gassed terrorized or humiliated because of our skin who never had to think twice about a hoodie making us a threat who never had to say I can’t breathe don’t shoot…