A Tidings of Magpies

  Baby Girl Found by Francette Cerulli He found her wrapped in a brown towel Beside the highway department dumpster. She was so cold she was blue, so new her umbilical stump still drooped softly from her belly like the limp stem of some fantastic fruit. He picked her up in his huge gloved highway department hands and carried her to his truck. Inside the cab he turned on the light, peeled the damp towel from her body and held her under the blast of the truck heater. Giant midwife bent over her in the frozen morning, He watched for the smallest sign. It was her second birth.

Scary Movies by Kim Addonizio Today the cloud shapes are terrifying, and I keep expecting some enormous black-and-white B-movie Cyclops to appear at the edge of the horizon, to come striding over the ocean and drag me from my kitchen to the deep cave that flickered into my young brain one Saturday at the Baronet Theater where I sat helpless between my older brothers, pumped up on candy and horror—that cave, the litter of human bones gnawed on and flung toward the entrance, I can smell their stench as clearly as the bacon fat from breakfast. This is how it feels to lose it— not sanity, I mean, but whatever it is that helps you get up in the morning and actually leave the house on those days when it seems like death in his brown uniform is cruising his panel truck of packages through your neighborhood. I think of a friend's voice on her answering machine— Hi, I'm not here— the morning of her funeral, the calls filling up the tape and the ma...

by Terence Winch Father Cahir kept us holy. He smoked cigars in the confessional. He had a distracted air about him, as though he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do next. I don't remember what he taught. History, probably. It was his liberal attitude as a confessor that made him a legend. No matter what you confessed to, he always barked out the same penance: "Three Hail Marys and a Good Act of Contrition. Next!" So we tested this leniency, confessing to rape, murder, burglary. Cahir paid no attention. He knew we were a bunch of high school punks. Puffing his cigar, he'd issue his standard penance and absolve all sins, real or imagined, with godlike aloofness, his vast indifference to or total acceptance of the darkness within the human soul exactly how I hope the deity regards us. Take forgiveness any way you can get it. please note: photo by two stout monks on flickr

They need me.

Some horrific misalignment of the stars and my schedule has me working 2 Sundays in a row. I can see we may have some shoppers stopping by. See you Monday.

Survival by Sri Chinmoy I am not dreaming Of a hope-victory-life. I am just dreaming Of a hope-survival-life. One of our patients returned to our unit today to say hello, unrecognizable in her own clothes and walking without assistance. Her father could not stop smiling. She looked a little befuddled at all the fuss. She remembers nothing of her 8 day stay and that's just fine. She may be able to go back to school in the spring. She may need to stay out the year. Either way, she has a future waiting for her and we could not be happier as we send her towards it.