a ballad for my best friend // Hayden Armos

from judge Todd Robinson: “a ballad for my best friend” cartwheels on a knife’s edge for forty sublime lines, innocence grappling with experience, sense with sensibility, delight with torment. It’s such a nimble and inviting poem, rich in charms and vexed with harms. The sound and sense here! Each verb a plosion, the momentum relentless as the tenderness. I would give much to write a poem this sweet and salty, this luminous and lonely. The poet constantly swerves, yet strikes their target with an unerring eye. This is serious play; this is joyful work.

for M

1.

deranged, I asked if you would come
with me into the pink abyss.

you said, it doesn’t matter what color the abyss is.
instead, let's say the abyss was a tunnel.

train tracks lined the tunnel—the downward pitch of it.
graffiti swarmed the walls. laughing, you said,

let's race, and you threw off your shoes.
together, we somersaulted down

that hysterical kaleidoscope of nonautonomy.
afterward, like little kids,

we made up stories about what we saw.
for you it was: shame, shame, shame.

I said, me too.

2.

and, because you had me feeling sentimental,

I also told you about the horse I met—how at first
she was shy inside her luminous coat.

from the edge, she observed me falling
and burning, all meteorite-like

and ablated.
what I had become: a bright red ache.

the horse came to me then,
and as she unteased me from the wreckage,

the song of my heartbeat
against her bones was full and sweet.

you see, I had just one thing
left to give the horse.

I gave her rivers and rivers of it.

3.

one day, when I am old and gone,

you will remind me of the California poppies
waving us on with their caution orange,

the rolling hills flashing
green in our teeth. and I will tell you

of the anadromous fish—
how, against all odds, an alewife

swims ten miles upstream
to die in the same place it was born.

you will say, that's so me, and
I will nod, strumming my June guitar,

watching as fireflies punctuate
the black sky with their light.

---

Hayden Armos (he/they) originally hails from an island in the heart of the Pacific Northwest's Puget Sound. After graduating from college, he settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he currently lives with his ex-roommates two cats and works at a youth services nonprofit. His poetry explores intimacy, attention, wonder, and grief. You can read more in Gigantic Sequins, Salt Hill Journal, Press Pause Press, and Lost Pilots Lit. Instagram: @harmosarmos

Pretend // Tricia Knoll

from judge Todd Robinson: “Pretend” is as capacious and possibility-dazzled as the decorated refrigerator box it describes. The warmth of its invitation lowers a reader’s defenses, hurtles them through imaginal realms and hallucinatory terrain rich in visual sweets and psychic threats. In the wobble of space, the wonder of world-grit, the necessary palliative of friendship, this poem expertly braids possibility with reality, deft details with lightsome rhymes. Read it and be renewed.

Let’s play spaceship in this generously decorated refrigerator box, which pretends to guard against heat, meteors, and news flashes about dead friends. We crave escape. You wear your green frog hat; I drape my shoulders in my cape of Haida design. Let’s paint our fingernails black and sit cross-legged on purple pillows. Leave Earth singing wheels on the bus as if we are children. Fortify our lunch box with poppy-seed cake for a coffee break. Let me captain our ship for the first leg, where we jettison the thruster rocket of my obsession with today’s disheveled floods and fires and your dismay at your family’s betrayal. You take over when we wave to the moon, view earth war-torn, swirling with hyperstorms, a green of promise, blue of forgiveness. I don’t know how long it takes until we decide to turn back. We can’t be gone forever. My head rests on your shoulder, along with cake crumbs on your shirt. You hold my thumb until you guide our glide home, release the parachute for a soft landing in a heaving sea. To reawaken to wind on our skin. A pretend that mends. With the help of a friend.

---

Tricia Knoll’s The Unknown Daughter was a finalist in the 2025 New England Poetry Club chapbook contest. More than 300 of her poems appear in journals and and nine collections, full-length or chapbook. Wild Apples (Fernwood Press) details downsizing and moving 3,000 miles from Oregon to Vermont. After 18 years of working with free verse, she is now writing mostly prose poems. Fernwood Press will publish her full-length poetry book, Gathering Marbles, in July 2027. Knoll serves as a Contributing Editor to the online journal Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com

Homespun // Molly Quinn

“They’ve done it again, those bastards,”
I grumble to him of the greed growing in our small town,
choking out the loveliness that used to flourish here.
He listens and slices a tomato to the rhythm of my rant,
red and ripe and freshly plucked from someone else’s garden
(a neighbor or a friend from work, perhaps).
His careful fingers plate the uneven pieces
then sprinkle them with pepper and salt.
He thoughtfully places the dish between us
without a word.
I look at him and he gives a nod—
a final beat to my tirade.
We feast in silence on the summer fruit
as if we were gods devouring ambrosia.
Such a small gesture to share a
simple plate of sliced tomato, homespun
hints of earth and sun within
its tender flesh, yet in this quiet moment
the whole world, all of it, is a tomato–
garden grown and given to me

---

Molly Quinn is a poet and incurable romantic. She lives in a town snuggled within the Ozark Mountains, where she works as a librarian. In her off time, she enjoys reading, writing, and finding meaning in the mundane.

The Shoemaker Finch That Does Not Exist // Les Bares

The serrated edge of a leaf on a beech tree
saws holes in the breeze, spins whirlpools
of air from its pointed tip.

It seems to be trying to tell me something
as it goes about its business being a leaf.

I populate the tree with a shoemaker finch,
a bird with hints of orange under its wing joint.
A bird I have apparently invented
as the internet tells me there is no such thing.

This cobbler bird hatched somewhere
in my fantasy flits invisible on wind currents
stirred by the knifelike edge of a leaf.

The tree itself is real, or I hope it still is
there on the shore of Lake Ontario.
I remember it, grand, with all its proclamations
of love carved into its silver bark.

The shoemaker finch, which does not exist,
warbles its buzzy slur, blessing young lovers
kissing beneath the beech tree. Their ardor
going extinct before it can be engraved
in the bark, before it too can ever be named.

All the while, the turbulence of a beech leaf
is sawing holes in what never existed,
or what is invisible to the naked eye.

---

Les Bares lives in Richmond, Virginia. He was the winner of the University of Virginia 2023 Meridian Journal Short Prose Prize and the 2018 Princemere Poetry Prize. His work has or will appear in The Midwest Review, The New York Quarterly, Spillway, the Irish Journal Southword, the English Magazine Stand, and other journals. 

The Sundered Seams // Michael McIrvin

For Eli and Jesse

Suffering is alchemy, change is God...
- Marilyn Chin

The man, considering without cease
how his world will soon be split to atoms, takes
the hand of his boy, who just asked if God
is in this gold-lit meadow among seedheads
heavy and swaying, insects turning light
to sound as aspen leaves shimmy, birds
singing under blue and intangible white, the day
turning down through every shade of heaven.

The child reaches to be carried and is asleep
before his head hits the man’s shoulder.
The child who will one day ask that his world
be mended, every wounded atom sewn
back together by a magical seamstress,
her thread made of sunlight and bee buzz
and the slightest breeze.

The child whose younger brother, not yet old
enough for these mountains, will someday ask
the same question after waking from a dream-
rescue of younger children assaulted by storm:
the dream hero who will himself, when grown,
pray to be saved from yet another terrible rending.

These children, who have not heard talk of God
and yet can read the name as it is written
on the dying page of a late August afternoon,
in fly dance and lark flight and every turn of leaf
and flower and stem, who can hear the name
shouted in a dream tempest that will become life.

The child in a far town, someday-dreamer-of-God-
in-a-fearsome-wind; the child cradled
in the man’s arms, sleeping soundly
as if any universe could ever be less than whole.

The man, as he walks this two-track road, whispers
lessons of care and grief for his sons, whose lessons
for him, the divine nearly shouting in their small voices,
are of beauty beyond measure. Not just in love’s

every breath but in the sundered seams, in the sky,
faltering blue or black-and-spinning. Within
the inevitably failing light between
whereby we all are transformed.

---

Michael McIrvin is the author of several poetry collections, including Optimism Blues: Poems Selected and New and Hearing Voices (Fearful Symmetry, 2020). His most recent novel is The Blue Man Dreams the End of Time. Michael lives on the High Plains of Wyoming.

Wrapped in a Banana Leaf // J. Rodriguez

wrapped in a banana leaf, // i float in the sea. // i smell like earth. // i am still green. // and when the soldiers come to get me, dressed // in their sunday killing best, // i will raise my arms // up towards the sun // and i will put up no fight.
... in boston, tío pedro is wrapped in ashes // and
spread across the world. // in some other version of our lives, // he is laughing in the kitchen // and the hospital room is far, // far away. // in another version, // he is given a proper burial. // in this one, // he is just a stone in my shoe // that rolls around and around, // and my mom keeps his photo // on the shelf by the television. // it is a ghost that haunts me. // now, he is a day in the calendar year, // and christmas passes like a ticker // counting up and up. // in this version, grief // is an unwound clock, // and i am waiting still // for the soldiers to come and get me.

---

Born in New York and growing up all around the United States, J. Rodriguez has called Minnesota their home since 2019, and has been writing for as long as they can remember. They have previously published poetry in Chanter and Spaces, two student publications at their alma mater, Macalester College. Now, they spend most of their time taking pictures around Minneapolis and regularly updating their Letterboxd profile. They are mother to one child, a tabby cat named Howl the Destroyer.

Trespassing // David B. Prather

The first time I saw a jack-in-the-pulpit,
it was an accident,
or is that by accident? Trees scattered
shadows, and
a freshwater spring wept from the side
of a hill. Or was that me?
The sun tried to part the leaves
for a better look,
and a breeze crept low in the weeds,
chasing mice and grasshoppers,
or it may have been searching a place to rest.
I thought the plant rare,
and my father told me if I were careless,
I could be punished,
or was it admonished? I was afraid
to touch those leaves,
sure they were toxic as poison ivy, sure
there would be a sermon
in mist and shade. I was alone, or was I lonely?
Sometimes, I can’t tell
the difference. There had to be birdsong,
and surely wild animals,
though I don’t remember either. I could
take you to that place,
but we’d have to secure the gate behind us
to make it appear
we were never there.

---

David B. Prather is the author of three poetry collections: We Were Birds (Main Street Rag, 2019), Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023), and Bending Light with Bare Hands: A Journal of Poems (Fernwood Press, 2025). His work has appeared in many publications, including New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Cutleaf, etc. He lives in Parkersburg, WV. Website: www.davidbprather.com

A Plain Old Man // William Doreski

Being a plain old man stuck
in a savage village, I take the wind

as personally as a bar brawl.
Trees consider touching their toes.

A copper weathervane goes south.
Wood smoke flattens and obscures

the innocence of the winter sky.
I read only quarrelsome books,

especially Plato. His version
of Socrates addles the young men

flaunting their marble torsos.
His arguments squeeze their brains

like oranges shipped from Egypt.
The village hunkers down and grins

that bestial grin I first saw
in the Forest Park Zoo when

my mother crushed my hand in fear
of great apes mocking their jailors.

The wind today could topple
a tree and render me homeless,

but I strain my elementary Greek
and believe everything I read.

---

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors (2024). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

Self Portrait as the Last Kumquat // Annie Diamond

We cool our feet in the oldest pool in Santa Ana,
built 1929. I am 29, inelegant save for swimming.

Remembering how to breathe among wisteria
and lilies, Easter. Is the Eiffel Tower the most

famous thing in the world? Took a boat
on the Douro under Gustave Eiffel Bridge,

eat the last kumquat off its tree, share one pitcher
of gin cocktail. California a conundrum. Sunlight

psalmic, smells of ocean. For so long I wanted
to be beautiful, and then I found I was. Novato

we ate Peruvian food and drank pisco cocktails,
hiked Cathedral Grove, Muir Woods: devotional.

For dappled things. Lemon trees so casual.
Once I thought I knew the size and shape of

this heart; I was 17, arrogant. Muscular
where I have not been before. Last week

a stranger in an elevator told me
I was radiating happiness, I think

the best compliment I have ever received. Once I
misread sunbathe as unbathe, preferred the mistake.

---

Annie Diamond is an Ashkenazi Jewish poet and recovering academic who has made her home in Chicago. She has been awarded fellowships by MacDowell, Luminarts Cultural Foundation, The Lighthouse Works, and Boston University, where she earned her MFA in 2018. Her poems appear and are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, No Tokens Journal, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. She is currently trying to place her first poetry manuscript.

Strauss’s Last Songs // Sandra Kolankiewicz

Later, I sought solitude, sure being
alone was not the same as loneliness,
till I started to recall and, in the
remembering, understood the broken
glass, the hand moving faster than I could
see. On my wrist the scar’s now visible
only in summer, my skin browner.
Unwanted thoughts, determined memories
intrude on my view of the river in
the midst of one of Strauss’s last songs,
composed for his wife when he was ninety,
an urgent celebration of love and
ecstasy, his bliss vying with my past
despair. Did she adore without losing
herself, embrace for a lifetime without
being caught up in his arms, find her breath
if wrapped too tightly, struggle to break free?

---

Sandra J. Kolankiewicz’s poems and stories have appeared widely over the decades, most recently in New World Writing, The Write Launch, and Courtship of Winds. Her most recent chapbook is Even the Cracks, published by Finishing Line Press. Read more from this author.

Be There or Be Square // Frederick Pollack

Clark in his book on Modernism
goes on and on about the green
half of the canvas above David’s dead
Marat. To which one intuitively adds
Malevich’s Black Square. They are images
of the Other World – at least an other world,
which is not, admittedly, inviting,

but also not, in a strict sense,
unattractive. A choice is required,
the kind you don’t make;
someone makes it for you. Meanwhile
lunch, the sky brightens,
the world outside is distances (unlike
the other, which cosmologists say,

although unreachable, is next door),
and several cars from the neighborhood leave
for a party. It’s been so long
since you were invited anywhere ... Though
it’s true that almost everyone
you know has died or otherwise dissolved,
you still regard your quarrel as with space, not time.

---

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and four collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and THE LIBERATOR (Survision Books, Ireland, 2024). Many other poems in print and online journals. Poetics: neither navelgazing mainstream nor academic pseudo-avant-garde. Website: frederickpollack.com

Horoscope / Affirmation / Promise /Prayer // Haylee Shull

New Year’s Day, 2025

Already the days grow longer a few seconds at a time.
Already the light traces a path along the wall.
The old years burrow and harden like swallowed stones
stuck deep in your gut. You will carry them with you.
There will be dancing and sparkly cocktails. There will be
footprints in stiff snow and cat hair on all your sweaters.
May will break your heart, but not for the reason you expect.
You will know hunger. You can interpret this however you choose.
On the other side of your grief is (I’m so sorry to tell you) more grief.
What I’m saying is, you will hear the wind through the leaves
and it will sound like rain. You will keep looking up.
You will keep waiting for the drops to hit your skin.
How long will you hold on to your dread? What I’m telling you
is that the moon will fall from the sky. The ground will swallow
you up along with everything you have ever loved. Then what?
Aren’t you listening? July is only July. A poem is only a poem and
a fortune is only a wish. Kiss someone before it’s too late.
Tally up your losses. Stand in the middle of the street and wail at the sky
until your sobs catch in your throat. Drop to your knees shouting,
why why why!, and fuck you, stars!, and fuck you, fate! Run
until you can’t feel your legs and then strip down and kiss
every part of your body that you can reach—bare and clammy
and yours and you. You’re alive and then you’re not. Alone, and then
you’re not. Teeth bared and then not. Don’t mistake self-awareness for
control. You will get sunburnt. You will pick at your wounds.
You will wake up every morning and want and want and want
and want. All these things will happen. You will swim. Sweat. Swear.
Break the skin. Bite your nails. Coax. Confess. Float. Forget.
Some days it will make you cry. Some days the light breaks through
the window and that’s all there is.

---

Haylee Shull is a writer, artist, and Libra from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Her work has appeared in Swim Press. She has two cats and owns a super small, super gay art business with her sister.

old daze // Thomas Zimmerman

Venetian blinds moonlit your belly sliced
like bread // before though kisses traded rassling
in the weedy lot behind the Beef Days
Ferris wheel // we bummed a ride back home
Cheap Trick Bob Seger playing loud inside
the F-10 cab yes we were stacked in back
with tarps scrap metal sparking when we tossed it
on the highway singing “I Fought the Law”
// then homeward you & i my arm slung cross
your shoulders drunken broken orphic such
was my delusion // notebook out i scribbled lines
a sonnet “College Daze” you poured the drinks
bikini line the border guarded no
i met you at the great divide alive

---

Thomas Zimmerman (he/him/his) teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His poems have appeared recently in Ablanatha, Cold Signal, and Lowlife Lit. His latest poetry book is My Night to Cook (Cyberwit, 2024). Website: thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/

I Wish I Was a Riot Grrrl // Jadey Holcomb

Darling, you make me wolfish
up on this rooftop, under this
volcanic light.

Can I drink Cherry Bomb
lipstick, chew fishnets for dessert?
Press your lips to mine, fill me -
bones and all - with your smoke.

Let me quarry your leather-cracked
ribs. Let me burrow under soft tissue.

Grunge girl, goddess of violets
I remember when you jumped
from that bridge, billowing into

glittering waters. Can you hear me,
under this bubbling music, under this erupting light?

---

Jadey Holcomb (she/her) is a poet, storyteller, and author of Average Asexual. She is currently studying Creative Writing and is the poetry editor of her university’s literary journal. She has a deep infatuation with Conan Gray, red eyeliner, and yearning for what she does not have. When not writing she can be found searching the night sky for Orion’s Belt.

Sign Off // Ellie Snyder

While out at Bullman’s Pizza with Ty and Caroline
to celebrate the job offer my mother watched
her most recent ex-husband arrive with a woman
and sit down next booth. By the time I visit in three
weeks I expect she’ll have been on at least
that many dates, less thin, no longer saying
she’d just like to find a companion. Still saying
she’d just like to warn the new woman, he’ll
fuck her up. Her laugh convincing since finally true.
She’ll still be sad I don’t want love from my lover. 

My brother? Starts flying tomorrow and put down
crabby deaf white-faced Daisy yesterday,
his dog at his dad’s. Grief never gives a moment.
He is otherwise happy, obsessive, the straightest
gay man possible, glancing up against the staples
only thanks to the man with whom he exchanged
gold bands on a bench in Mexico City. Thanks to
Brayden I can tell my brother I think I’m Miranda
but also Samantha and a little bit Carrie. They’ll
marry once settled in Colorado, once my brother
is used to his monthly jumps across the sky.

I love them more than usual tonight without
wanting to speak to them. A signature
lifted the fog and it’s like I no longer have
a single problem, perpetual catch plucked
from my throat. The sleep alone. I’ve learned
how to eat again and walk uphill, I’ve read
200 books. I’m finally moving forward.
I just remembered I used to eat men.

---

Montanan poet Ellie Snyder writes and manages socials for a global nonprofit and is passionate about literature, fashion and music. Find her work in Pangyrus, The Headlight Review, The Blood Pudding, and elsewhere, and find her fitchecks on Instagram @elliegsnyder.

The Coast (A Diary Entry) // Cole Forrest

miss the lake back home
so I drove to the ocean
mussels always taste like the waters they’re from
it’s like that pop song with the ice cream out here
ate at the same ice cream shop
I like what’s simple like personal fulfillment like going to places they talk about in songs
I missed water so much
I wonder if I taste just like the lake
it’s sweet to me, I hope I’m sweet tasting to you
thought about all the traditional land we’re moving through
mom would probably want me to leave some tobacco
“I didn’t know it was actually in a valley”
I genuinely believe I’m an idiot most days
ndn idiot
ndiot? it’s not funny
walked through a neighborhood with palm trees I wondered what it would take for me to live here
went bowling and I was humbled
bowling one of those things in life that it’s okay to be like just fine at
going across Arizona some of it reminded me of the landscape back home
everything is almost like home
my heart’s one of those squishy toys that’s full of liquid and you’re kind of worried it’s gonna burst everywhere or it crosses your mind like “what if this totally explodes on my couch”
that’s my heart filled with lake water
don’t squeeze it too hard
if you know you know but those dinosaurs beside the tipis on the side of the highway always make me laugh
the land makes me laugh
had a realization the other day when I lay tobacco down it’s for everyone
it’s an offering to everyone in my life, not just my own dreams
cried in the bathtub the water’s never the right temperature
I had a dream once about the ocean
I was with someone I didn’t know
we stood on a hill overlooking the water
I asked where I was
she said I was home

---

Cole Forrest is a Queer Anishinaabe writer from Nipissing First Nation. Last year they published a debut co-authored poetry collection titled Once The Smudge is Lit. Writing is their passion, and any opportunity to share their words is a welcomed one. Miigwetch.

Roxy’s Heaven // Cole Weiss

They have boarded up the place, emptied out the popcorn machines, and the carpet stinks of butter and mud as it is torn from the flooring. You and I are still sitting in Theater 2. They are

ripping out the fixtures, gutting the cinema, throwing out the rolled up movie posters that didn’t sell. We have not opened our diet root beers yet. The hiss of the soda’s gas is forever.

I am waiting for the previews. They never come. They are tearing down the Roxy
and in my imagination you and I hold hands over the armrest as they take us with her.

---

Cole Weiss (they/he) is a current junior at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, working towards a degree in elementary education. When not drafting lesson plans, they enjoy writing, digital photography, and scouring bookstores to expand their poetry book collection.

What’s Human // Thomas Higgins

When a cat comes to lay at your feet
you never ask why, but you do
hold still for as long as you possibly can,
even holding your breath as you once did
passing a grave. In the presence
of ghosts and small gods, you believe
that it’s wise to be humble, despite having
no proof of either. A cat, however, proves
there are some things language can’t tell us
which love also is, that what’s human
about us can be what sustains it
as silence and stillness sustain
a cat’s slumber, the pulse of its breathing
a language you both understand.

---

Thomas Higgins is a poet and critic who is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at The New School. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Magpie Zine, The Inquisitive Eater, The Adroit Journal, Hoxie Gorge Review, the minnesota review, and elsewhere.

If a Plant Dreams // Zixiang Zhang

the ground
into being, what does that say about farming?
a pilosus in the seam,
hearing john’s words on the radio
machine potentiating
world war iii, thinking miles to set ablaze. 
tacit
is their need for light.
i am     
perch on first waking,
bladder ridding the sapless grain; water 
tipping
out of bed,
to find the anointed pressure point. 

the first disappointment
in genesis is
the immaculate conception of a granny smith:
that the axis bifurcates 
& center
of mass surrenders
bark, to be always heart. 
blue veins shedding dendritic
discharge
underneath the atlantic, silver lilies
brought to blush
on the face
draining the existence of red— the winds
can’t breathe into being, the potassium 
aplenty.
flowers grow tall
& halt the crown that thomas dreams of 
engorging.
gamma rays dislodge the train. 
it is winter 
400 million years away, iapetus
prior to photoshop. seabiscuits 
avoiding molasses,
tricuspid tongues
from the stable licking the moonlit antorbit.  

if a thought,
to be human, spends
bilateral symmetry
in the attic, or
if a plant dreams,         
a plant              dreams a planter.

---

Zixiang Zhang (he/him/his) has poems published or forthcoming in Hanging Loose, Cathexis Northwest, Consilience, Pedestal, The Nature of Our Times, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality, and others. He holds an undergraduate degree in geology from Stanford University and master’s degrees from UC Berkeley and the American Museum of Natural History. Once, he published research on brachiopod evolution in the journal Paleobiology. Now, he teaches Earth Science at a small high school in NYC and enjoys growing succulents, erging, sunbathing, and sundry. He may be active @zzverse.

How the Moonbeam Endows the Rime // John August

Barely, brushingly.

---

John August is an emerging writer. He currently resides in the Midwest, and his work explores themes of addiction recovery, ecological mourning, and the place of the sacred in modern life. At his best, his work says something about how those three things are one.