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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
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      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
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Lisa Higgs

Talking to My Daughters About God


                    “The ring in which you are but a grain
                      will glitter afresh forever.”

                     Nietzsche, Notes on the Eternal Recurrence

Easy to forget when you’re eight
and untutored in the rights of the holy,
you have no touchstone for the untouched,
which makes virgin a word as simple
as daguerreotype, for which you also sought
definition after some reference heard off
public radio earlier in the week. But
you’re eight, and your sister at eleven
has read the body book without
a chapter on babies, so I start with Mary
because it’s a week past Christmas,
and you know enough about the star
and manger to see specialty in a surrogate
birthing a god, unaided from the start
by the hands of a man. I can’t help
mention property, propriety. The real
message is a warning: how I lost
religion in this vision so delicate
the slightest brush of fingertips
could forever tarnish. Or in a desire
not to be locked behind some enclosure
of glass. I never bought a religion’s
insistence in men at the head, even more now
when men as head seem again eager
for the fight. So we try to separate god
from the warring faiths, locate the what was
before science’s spark, and the why create
if life means accepting only one half
the image, or only that which mirrors.
Or even less. We begin to think
science and god aren’t so different,
the natural world as random and unfair
as an unconcerned creator. We talk
about bilingual Jane, her T.V. virginity.
And Aristotle, Einstein. Energy that cannot
be destroyed, which you say is as close
to god as cinema’s force – also wrapped
in battlefronts and fictions. I avoid
Nietzsche, though we are circling
eternal return, because I can’t imagine
yet fully a world where humanity
means so little to itself. A world
floating in some thin space between
silver-plated copper and mercury fumes,
its image unmoored from its casing,
meaning a world all too easy to erase.
 


Unified Field Theory


                                        The passage of time depends on the particulars – trajectory
                                        followed and gravity experienced – of the measurer.
                                                           
                                                                                Brian Greene, The Hidden Reality

 
Suggest: time, as acted on
by gravity. Light stream
of photons or mathematical
waves based on your
language. Is strength
direction, the movement
of gears, switch of teeth
by valley, and your second
split in the ambient
radiation that makes each word
on each page clearer?
The centenarian sees each story
in the paper as human
oscillation. We repeat, in time,
repeat. In time, Einstein
sought to unify fields.
But only the two named
in his time, now four,
and we repeat tooth
to the valley. Numbers
can be words. As words emit
from moonglaze in wind
whipped waters, the stain
of diatomic slides.
Is there a theory of such
communications lodged
on record? To unity, then,
we repeat. And hope.
For a perspective better
than our own. A space
that lives life right.
A time, to repeat, a light
when the potential
needs not escape as actual,
but holds true to the best
dictionaries of all language.
So all can mean I have done
my share. And let go,
time, light, in elegance. 






--
Lisa Higgs’ third chapbook, Earthen Bound, is forthcoming from Red Bird Chapbooks at the end of 2018. She is poetry editor for Quiddity Literary Journal and has reviews at Kenyon Review online and the Poetry Foundation.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
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    • Submit Here
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Book Reviews
  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022