Spring 2024
Spring 2024
The 2024 edition of Relief listens attentively to the exposed and human heartbeat in every story and, in turn, the story that echoes alongside every heartbeat. Smith’s “Big John, Mary, and the Ruby of Great Price” fuses the whimsical with the familiar human spirit, cleverly mapping where the two overlap while Warnock’s “Musings In a Cathedral” sings with the violence and loss that writes all of our stories. Brooks’ poem, “Unmade,” hums with hope, begging us to remember even the stories left untold. All remind us why we must return to stories and, occasionally, be haunted by them. We are honored to sit with you, old and new readers, in the heartbeats of these stories.
Poetry
Angela Arnold
Image
Bethany Besteman
Summer Baptism
Nicole Bird
Baptized by Earthquake
Michael Brooks
Unmade
J Carraher
Pleading the Blood
Michael Dechane
Upbringing
Amy Devine
My year of rejection
Chris Duffy
The String
Madelyn Garner
Ode to the Earth
That Mystery Beneath Mystery
Anne Gerard
Matins
Jessica Goodfellow
Hand-held History of Everything
Mejiro: Japanese White-Eye
Evan Gurney
Diviner
Psalm to the MRI Machine
Patricia L. Hamilton
Vashti, Resting
Carrie Heimer
A Few Dark Clouds
This Song, for Example, Will Not Be Loud
We Put Novelty Sunglasses on the Baby
Emily Kingery
The Second Coming
Laurie Klein
I’m lurking, again
Arah Ko
Miracle
Gary Lark
Jesus
Amy Lindquist
Pontoon Disposal
A Whale’s Worth
Michael Lyle
Every Third Word Jesus
D.S. Martin
Poem Arising from a Line by Herbert
Riff on Traherne
Alicia McCartney
Eve
Gaudete Sunday
William Miller
Mary Ann
My Neighbor is a Demonologist
Devon Miller-Dugan
Opia
Brandon James O’Neil
An El Greco Triptych
Paul J. Pastor
The Sower
Under the Perseids
David J.S. Pickering
I’ve Come from the Future to Tell You This
Moira Pirsch
Da Ai
Tiny Markers
Kimberly Ann Priest
The Stone that the Builders Rejected
Daniel A. Rabuzzi
The State of Heaven
Patty Seyburn
The Mouth of the Earth
Tablets: Take One
Kimbol Soques
after Mark 6:48
Marjorie Stelmach
Better Skies
Black on Black
The Last Engravings
John Allen Taylor
Inheritance
Picking Quince in the Old Poet’s Garden
Cynthia R. Wallace
Crossing
Psalm 73
Diana Woodcock
The Trick Is
Joshua Wren
Observation
Creative Nonfiction
Melinda J. Combs
Stardust
Tiffany Farr
Gladness
Melissa Kuipers
The Easy Part
Elina Kumra
Two Stems
Hoshea Miller
An Incomplete List of Everything I’ve Ever Put My Autistic Faith In
Heather M. Surls
Yet I Will Rejoice
Kesha Richman Warnock
Musings in a Cathedral
Jerah Winn
Hill Rollers
Fiction
Randy Smith
Big John, Mary, and the Ruby of Great Price
Melvin Sterne
The Rope