When it comes to sacred places, I feel considerable holy envy toward the Latter -day Saints. Their sacred sites stretch across the continent, from Vermont to California. Mormons can visit their founding prophet’s birthplace, […]
[…] integrating them into a narrative that casts Smith as doing work incongruous to that demanded by a Protestant epistemic tradition bent on stripping the divine presence not only from the altars but also from […]
[…] with discrete gendered bodies and heteronormative relations, the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints will reinforce interlocking systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, culture, and sexuality. Taylor […]
[…] had read Eliza R. Snow’s “The Lamanite” (adapted from a poem she wrote before becoming a Latter -day Saint titled “The Red Man of the West”), so I suspected that there were probably a […]
When a five -year–old boy tragically disappears from a quiet LDS neighborhood, grief–stricken family members, detectives, ward members, and suspects all struggle to find their footing in the agonizing aftermath. In The Contortionists, the […]
[…] left unsaid, the quiet between responses, the piecing of memories. Because there are many references to Latter -day Saint culture and especially to the city of Provo, while reading I often wondered who was […]
Slipping off a Sunday dress—hoping you’ll join me and undress.No more dark slacks and white shirts,corruption of innocence tends to hurt.It’s worship too irreverent for pews,forgive my transgression against a holy muse,but, trust me, crisis…
John the Baptist was a hairy scorpionwho skittered out from the wildernessand began stinging folksuntil they saw the Holy Ghost. He molted like all prophets do,lived in caves, under rocks,until the predators found him—took his…
An armadillo dug up the grassin my parents’ yard last year— the kind that bounce buckshotoff their back and carry leprosy. If only I could do the same:materialize armor, lumber along. I could curl up…
I suppose only the animals that paired offand shuffled up the rampsurvived the flood. So this Bishop, pointing outthat we would rather flirtthan marry—well, he built an Ark out of the treeslining the church property.He…