Category: Entertainment
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Can a Pastor Write Fiction?
Often in person or in emails I will get a pretty heartfelt question from some pastors. They want to know if it’s kosher for them to write mainstream fiction and still do pastoral ministry in the local church. “Can I be a pastor and still write fiction under my real name?” I received one of…
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Marching with 50,000 Peacemakers and the Silences that Followed
A single glance at America today can throw me into a rage and my rage prompts me to write. When a piece is born of wrath, I set it out in the windowsill and let it cool. Like a pie. Like rhubarb pie — the kind of pie I detest but must eat anyway because I…
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Lexi’s Song • from 54 Poems at 27
All the ice melted leaving dark snowmen every forty feet And all their plastic bones are exposed. All the glass open every screen up But the radiator’s set to a hundred and four. How did we go from the frozen circle of Lucifer and plunge into another myth, oh a lake of fire? I remember…
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Between Pretend and Reality
:: A trip to the Sunset Park CSA Farm :: originally at SunsetParkCSA.org (pitctures by the same) The day my wife and I planned on visiting the upstate farm our local Sunset Park CSA supports, I was hauling around a twelve-hundred-page Brandon Sanderson novel. Hardback. My arms ached. I’ve built up their strength recently by…
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On the Perfection Practice Makes • Artistic Craftsmanship
Confession time: I have a problem. A dialog problem. If there’s anything I learned early on, it’s that the professional discovers his weaknesses as quickly as possible and moves to mend them. That’s why they tell you to never tell a poker pro if you discover their tell — they’ll correct it at the first opportunity.…
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Contra Graham :: the War to Define YA Meaning and Maturity
Often in literary circles people will “punch down,” as critics of Charlie Hebdo have claimed. But sometimes it’s worse. Sometimes we kick the kids and even the young adult readership. As any family, the literary community is messy. We have a great many flaws to work through. But one issue that can wait no longer…
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When it Hit the Saltlick • from 54 poems at 27
when it hit the saltlick — sunlight — crystals added white to what’d released its color when it hit the snowfall — dayglow — crystals made it better, bright Salt of the Earth adults drawing from light’s abode magnificate Innocents in their first flurrious attempts at changing the landscape(s) together? Not. White. unbright, unilluminated melted,…
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Fall Into The • from 54 poems at 27
There’s a gap in the platform between the train and the earth you can fall right through it mind the gap. There’s a gap in the sidewalk between the grate and the earth you can fall right through it mind the gap. There’s a gap in the windshield between the crash and the reaction you…
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Vox Dei • from 54 poems at 27
Within my mind there hides a whitened stag whose face appears those times I find my voice. I saw him first within the books I write though handsome, he appeared robed like a hag. He offered my overgrown mind a choice: To keep on writing the story I’d found or follow him forward into the…
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The Wreaker • from 54 poems at 27
every tree torn down through the wrath of a terrible twister every branch broke off at the paws of this barreling bear all these homes, how I know they’re reduced to embers all our homes – so many triangles cut out of squares take one Omnimax camera and stack it up on top of another walk…
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Aftertastes • from 54 poems at 27
I’ve wondered at the flavor, at the tastes of hidden things I have licked the air to savor scents unknown – from palate, wings. I’ve dipped my thumb in The Thick Of It and stuffed it in my cheek and held it there till it dissolved— tobacco, so to speak. I’ve bit into unbitables: like loss…
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Beckon • from 54 poems at 27
When you walk between both soundhouses You will see that the lighthouse ain’t the only keep emitting sense for the feelhouses – those phalluses – reach, tingle make the hairs… how they stand on end, shivering. And the scenthouses billow upwards, smoke signals of the fragrances, fair and foul, to come: ethereal masts. When you…