Linda Sillitoe

Linda Buhler Sillitoe was an American journalist, poet and historian. She is best known for her journalistic coverage about Mark Hofmann and the "Mormon forgery murders

Trip Toward Prayer

Articles/Essays – Volume 06, No. 3

                        You can’t pray with a clenched brain 
                        Or fall asleep with fisted hands; 
                        But force one finger open at a time 
                        Until thoughts clatter loose and fall 
                        Like budded balls of crumpled paper. 

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The Reaping

Articles/Essays – Volume 07, No. 3

                Reading is one thing—and metaphors 
                imitate life in literature only. 
Yet when birds flapped a curtain of chatter over a sky-scrap

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These are the Severely Retarded

Articles/Essays – Volume 07, No. 3

Leaves of a different cut, 
perceiving other winds, 
the children blow in spring 
and laugh aloud like children. 

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The Buffalo and the Dentist

Articles/Essays – Volume 08, No. 2

                        Frontier Village, restored and furnished 
                        with relics of ancestral time 
                        includes live anachronisms. 
                        So we saunter to see the buffalo, laughing, 
                         swinging up between corral boards 
                        and nearly boot it in the rump as we demand, 
                        “Where’s the buffalo?—oh!” 

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Still-Life Study of an Ancestor

Articles/Essays – Volume 09, No. 2

Warren Walling (seed of fishers of the sea 
who warred to birth a nation of vast vision) 
studied thrift, hard labor, common sense, 
belief in God and good; grasped the Word 

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Waiting for Lightning

Articles/Essays – Volume 09, No. 3

Again I am the child hunched into a tense ball
            in bed on Christmas morning, 
            breathless with frogs trampolining 
            my stomach, for the house to wake, 
            the curtained French doors to break 
open on a storybook scene—and the Doll 

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The Photograph

Articles/Essays – Volume 10, No. 3

The magazine picture xeroxed a duplicate print 
            in my brain. Its caption Mother 
            cradles child dying of starvation 
turned my thumb toward the page corner 

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Some Nights

Articles/Essays – Volume 11, No. 3

Some nights in a small cove 
sea and shore talk endlessly 
(of dapples shallows hollows) 
seeking sun despite the polar 
breath from dark’s yawning throat 

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Song of Creation

Articles/Essays – Volume 12, No. 4

Who made the world, my child? 
            Father made the rain 
            silver and forever. 
                        Mother’s hand 
drew riverbeds and hollowed seas, 
drew riverbeds and hollowed seas 
            to bring the rain home. 

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New Voices, New Songs: Contemporary Poems by Mormon Women

Articles/Essays – Volume 13, No. 4

The sensibility described by Amy Lowell—that there is something odd about women who write serious poetry—is still given substance today by the endangered state of the species. Even I will not waste time counting the few woman poets anthologized before Lowell’s time; contemporary statistics suffice.

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The Last Day of Spring

Articles/Essays – Volume 14, No. 4

Laurie had wanted for a long time to visit Jen. When Mama took David, the baby, to visit their favorite aunt she and Carol complained. “I know you want to see her,” Mama explained, “but…

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Home from the North

Articles/Essays – Volume 15, No. 4

only from the nesting hollow 
            of our bed 
will I say how cold it’s been 
            so cold 

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Missing Persons

Articles/Essays – Volume 16, No. 1

I know where the bodies are buried 
in my house and can whistle past 
indefinitely before I must dig and sift. 

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Charm for a Sick Child

Articles/Essays – Volume 17, No. 1

we will dream now of a cave 
with a figure at the entrance, 
see the magic seeds she holds 

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Another Birth

Articles/Essays – Volume 17, No. 1

They dream of going hack. 
            The bars on their beds 
            are fingers before a face. 
Their knees rise up toward chins 

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Mornings

Articles/Essays – Volume 19, No. 1

I  Friday morning. June sky like denim through the bus windows. The last day before the weekend, Marc repeated to himself, like a gypsy muttering a chant.  He swung off the bus four blocks before his…

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Sonnet for Spring

Articles/Essays – Volume 19, No. 1

there’s honeysuckle in the exhaust, a fine green 
beard between walks, spring softens us 
again, now we confess the earth is a drum 
encased in living skin, not concrete, 

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from the laurel

Articles/Essays – Volume 20, No. 1

we come playing flute 
and violin the notes 
lift limber as the green 
aspen see how we sway 

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The Successful Marketing of the Holy Grail

Articles/Essays – Volume 20, No. 4

Not long ago at a convention in Salt Lake City for police chiefs, a visiting law enforcer dubbed Utah a “white-collar crime capital.” He was alluding to pyramid schemes and speculative investments initiated by unscrupulous…

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During Recess

Articles/Essays – Volume 22, No. 1

Spring sneaked into town while court convened. 
One noon, I walk from my office to my 
old neighborhood and find it well-kept. 
The ditch I’d hurtle galloping home 
from school has been curbed and guttered. 

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sonnet on life’s dangers

Articles/Essays – Volume 22, No. 1

cop and father, he cautioned us of more 
than boogeymen and fire, in case of snakes, 
freeze where you are, same for skunks and por-
cupines, brave enough to tromp on cracks, 

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Walking the Dark Side: Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell by Jack Olsen

Articles/Essays – Volume 23, No. 1

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Passion Poems | Emma Lou Thayne, How Much for the Earth?

Articles/Essays – Volume 23, No. 2

One might suspect that a book of poems published by Utahns United Against the Nuclear Arms Race might possess as interesting a history as the poems that comprise it. How Much for the Earth? by…

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Rescue from Home: Some Ins and Outs

Articles/Essays – Volume 23, No. 3

As a journalist, I have learned secondhand about domestic violence, child abuse, mental health, and homicide. I have interviewed experts and victims; I have read and listened. I know that the names printed in the…

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Who We Are, Where We Come From

Articles/Essays – Volume 25, No. 3

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Hospital Healing

Articles/Essays – Volume 28, No. 1

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Slant Sonnet for Melissa

Articles/Essays – Volume 28, No. 2

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Oasis

Articles/Essays – Volume 30, No. 2

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Long Distance

Articles/Essays – Volume 31, No. 1

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Fact of my Life

Articles/Essays – Volume 31, No. 4

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Metaphysics Over Lunch

Articles/Essays – Volume 32, No. 1

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In Riverdale

Articles/Essays – Volume 33, No. 3

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Sensing Spirits

Articles/Essays – Volume 33, No. 4

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Encounter

Articles/Essays – Volume 35, No. 1

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