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A Slaughter of Holy Innocents
A poem of grief for Charlotte Daniel Olivia Josephine Ana Dylan Madeleine Catherine Chase Jesse James Grace Emilie Jack Noah Caroline...
Jo Page
Dec 17, 20121 min read
Advent - a grim story (it can't all be sweetness and light)
Sam Schultz told Asa about the protesters--two of them, but each holding a hand-lettered sign: God Hates Fags. Jesus Cursed Queers....
Jo Page
Dec 2, 201215 min read
Going Out Dancing
My mother, in her dying days (by which I mean just a handful of them since she was not one to sit in waiting rooms for long) told me in a...
Jo Page
Nov 24, 20122 min read
From the novel....Milly and Johanna's Mother, Leah, in 1962
Thanksgiving, 1962 Driving back from Charles’ parents’ house in Summit we had the most ridiculous fight. Not that it was a fight in the...
Jo Page
Nov 18, 201214 min read
Peace Like A River
Two years ago my daughters and I lost a woman we loved as a mother and grandmother, though she was neither to us. Not closer than kin,...
Jo Page
Nov 13, 20123 min read
From the memoir, Going Out
Breaking Silence La Sainte Chappelle in Paris, from Monks and Mermaids, a Benedictine blog I’m up there in the pulpit in the middle of...
Jo Page
Nov 9, 20128 min read
A Poem by Jane Kenyon
Because it is Election Day. And because in my family we are still waiting, midwives to sorrow. Jane Kenyon herself, died too young, but...
Jo Page
Nov 6, 20121 min read
The Privacy of Loss
Sometimes I wonder if there are any private processes anymore. What was innovative in art in the twentieth-century included the...
Jo Page
Nov 5, 20122 min read
All Saints Day, and Beyond
The larger-than-life French writer Francois Rabalais is reported to have said on his deathbed, “I am going to see a great perhaps. Draw...
Jo Page
Oct 31, 20123 min read
Waiting for the Storm
Instead of immortality, the gods gave us human affection. --Eugene Mirabelli We are all waiting for the storm and there’s always a storm....
Jo Page
Oct 27, 20121 min read
A Story That is Barely There: Half-Life
I tried vomiting. I knew other girls who did it. They were assholes, but it isn’t only assholes who want to be thin. I didn’t like the...
Jo Page
Oct 23, 20127 min read
Johns: Ciardi and Ashbery
Leave it to me to find cause for complaint, in this case about those two stellar Johns of poetry of whom I am not worthy to touch the...
Jo Page
Oct 19, 20122 min read
Pie-Making
--for Tadeusz Borowski (1922-51), author of Ladies and Gentlemen, This Way for the Gas Such innocence in apples, peeled— pale,...
Jo Page
Oct 12, 20121 min read
The Beautiful Pauses and the Beautiful Changes
Okay, that post title sounds like an episode from Doctor Who. Or do I just create opportunities to allude to Doctor Who? Worse, am I...
Jo Page
Oct 11, 20122 min read
From the Memoir, Going Out
Faith of Our Fathers The only part of the Latin Mass that I understood was the English part when the congregation said three times,...
Jo Page
Oct 7, 201210 min read
After Apple-picking, After Frost
With Frost, it’s all about frost. He’s got a crop to harvest. That’s what it seems like. I don’t mind that he’s a curmudgeon. I heard he...
Jo Page
Oct 2, 20122 min read
Lucky and Pro- A Story
In high school John Lucky and Tony Premo effortlessly established their reputations as assholes. When they weren’t drunk or stoned, they...
Jo Page
Sep 28, 201211 min read
A villanelle for my mother, since a letter won't do
My beta-blocker sends me dreams of my mother, Dead thirteen years—well, there’s humor in numbers! And of course I would dream of her...
Jo Page
Sep 25, 20121 min read
Faith Comes From What is Heard
Okay, so there are two poems I can no longer bear to read aloud. One I used to read at the end of yoga classes sometimes. It's by Rainer...
Jo Page
Sep 21, 20122 min read
From the Novel...in which Milly's mother thinks she's dating Beethoven
In the Gloaming Milly always dreaded the Arts in the Schools programs when regional visual artists or dancers or musicians would come in...
Jo Page
Sep 16, 201224 min read
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