A Pair of Poems by Steven Sloan

Characters Of Lead Some people, to be politic, Keep heavy words inside their head. But, the full weight of such a word Won’t dissipate when it’s not said. Too, the lighter words they pick Will seem as though they each have shed Their meaning, since they will be heard To name the famished as well-fed, Or call dead-soil a flowering bed, Instead of what all plainly see. So, don’t set light lies in truth’s stead As there’s a cost you … Read on…

Who Sings in the Deepest Water of the Abandoned Lagoon?

-Title after Pablo Neruda- Fanciful creatures who inhale water, and exhale ballads through windpipes of coral and kelp, lungs of sandstone and shells, teeth of abalone, netted lips, knotted hairs in tangled locks. From Bottomland, one rose and sang to me, his voice a chorus all in one, of heavy doors that would not open, their hinges blazed in the fires of Hell. He sang of six-legged beasts with flipper arms that tossed him into treeless air, of taloned birds … Read on…

Secular Thanksgiving

“So, if you don’t believe in God, what do you do on Thanksgiving?” I have heard that question a few times. Over the years I have developed an answer, of course, but I have never written it down. It has served me well in those moments at mixed atheistic / theistic table when some of those gathered have looked at me to participate in the ritual thanking that believers seem to require ore even to say “grace.” It may not … Read on…

Logic in the Gospels

A first look at Christendom is like a first peek into a kaleidoscope, a snowflake, or a magic-mirror lantern.  In fact, the World Christian Encyclopedia, 2001 edition, counts 33,830 Christian variants and sects, often divided on even the most basic tenets of belief.  More conservative counts suggest about 9000 groups1.  By contrast, Islam has about 20 sects or denominations, or maybe a few more, depending on how finely you tune your focus; Judaism perhaps 15; and Buddhism is in a … Read on…

Mission Dolores Part III (of four)

At Mission Delores, San Francisco: Religious Romance & Genocide III – The Cemetery, Graves & Roses At the entrance to the mission cemetery, I hear traffic flow on Dolores Street, which parallels the mission but is blocked from sight by a wall landscaped with trees and shrubs. Tires drone, now a tailpipe or muffler drags on the road and clatters. Rap music builds until I feel its tremor that soon diffuses to echo. An engine’s high-pitched whine goes silent. Immediately, … Read on…

A Funny Thing Happened

Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh (aka Allah), the Pope, Zeus, Odin, and Mohammed walk into a bar…. You don’t hear too many jokes that begin this way.  Religious icons have been fodder for humorists and novelists for centuries, though much of the mockery has stayed underground until the 20th century. Good-natured (and bad-natured) humor directed at gods and their prophets could, and often did, result in slow death. A single death was usually sufficient to slow down the person so bold as … Read on…

The Hole of the Fox

Mo didn’t think that it was a foxhole, really, but  more of a shallow depression left when a recent mortar misfire had landed in the soft, moist, often-tilled black earth of this poor farmer’s field. The ground itself was dismally flat, even this close to the river, as was most of the land in this country. But the hole itself was very difficult to see, surrounded as it was by the withered tall stubble of common wheat that littered the … Read on…