shatters the sky with unexpected snow, bursting into surprise. The future unrolls itself like the ark of a new covenant, promising everything, which arrives differently each year, a gradual light, or perhaps suddenly, like thunder, like children playing or a blackbird singing after a long silence or a woman on her deathbed, seeing for the […]

Sister Jane wore men’s shoes, black leather oxfords shaped like hams, not the slender, fishlike lace-ups with chunky block-heels the other nuns wore,  letting them walk with grace, toes pointed front,  dark veils drifting behind. No,   Sister Jane walked like a man,  feet splayed outward, the echo of her stride  loudly declared by shoes […]

for Pavel, in My Antonia The Cather classic tells how the wolves follow the sleigh carrying bride and groom into a night of fleshly violence under a darkened moon. Strange how that image of howling blood screams in my memory above all else— sod huts, scorching sun, chilblain-cold, cradles and fiddles, snakes and sparsely-settled prairies, […]