Spring 2020
Spring 2020
The 2020 issue of Relief is the culmination of working under extremely unusual circumstances, including a pandemic that shut down our campus in the middle of the semester, and movements for racial justice in the US and abroad. What can art do in times of crisis? It can help us lament by reflecting images of our brokenness. And perhaps it can guide us toward healing in some small way. For us it all starts with the cover: a stunning image titled “Shut In” by Minneapolis artist Jennifer Davis which, believe it or not, was selected by the editors before COVID-19 made us all shut-ins. So although it may be awhile before we can go back out into the world, we invite you into this shared space of new poems, stories, comics, and essays, in the hopes that we’ll see one another healthy and well in-person soon.
Daniel Bowman, Jr.
From the Editor's Desk
Poetry
Jesse Breite
For the Ones Who Died Young
When My Wife Travels
Patrice Claeys
Bedside Vigil
The Machinery of Grace Is Always Simple
Barbara Crooker
Annunciation
Sonnet From Ecclesiastes:
Michial Farmer
Ordinary Time
Daniel Elias Galicia
Desert Music
English Literature
Kevin Griffin
Fool
Carrie Heimer
Duchenne Smile
I Want Things Clean & Empty
Rebekah Denison Hewitt
Libby Tells Me She Has Recovered Her First Memory
Lot’s Wife Speaks Of Turning
Laura Reece Hogan
Transmission
Kevin Honold
Letter of Pope Boniface to Angela of Foligno
Fred Johnson
Early Death and the Liturgy of Turning Screws
Karen Bjork Kubin
Anchorite
But His Wife, Phoenix
Dallas Lee
The Last Camellia
Robert Lewis
Among the Forgotten
Westerbork, 1943
Margaret Mackinnon
Afternoon in Cartago
Lee’s Angels: A History
D.S. Martin
Angel of Revolution
Response to Rilke
Chloe Martinez
At Red Bucket Equine Rescue, Chino Hills, CA
Repoussé: Mandala of the Burn Victims
Megan McDermott
To Jesus, After You Let My Brother Die
Devon Miller-Duggan
Kuebiko
Scabulous
Angie Crea O’Neal
Empty Nesting
Notes on Deism
James Owens
Breach
Inukshuks
Sunrise over the Last Cheap Rooming House in Saskatoon
Kimberly Ann Priest
a needle is found protruding from a bone
holy ground
Nathan Spoon
A Lunch break poem
Jen Stewart Fueston
Purity Culture
Helena Sullivan
Apostrophe to Saint Peter at Mont-Saint-Michel
Ode on the Chemical Plant
On the End
Emmanuel Terrell
Lemonade
Daniel Tobin
Intervals
Brian Volck
A Würzburg Crucifix
Egypt
Lawrence Wray
The Icon Painter’s Sister
Creative Nonfiction
Marie Curran
We Tried to Bring Resurrection
Jonathan McGregor
Poetic Theodicies
Dana VanderLugt
On Loop
Natalie Vestin
The Breast of a Little Bird
Fiction
William Cass
Warm You Up
C.K. Dawson
Worship
Kevin Duffy
The Following Fields
Sally Thomas
The Owl in the Tree
Anna Trujillo
Summit
Comic
Joshua Kemble
The Park