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He says they’re memoirs, but I’m onto him. The Anthropocene Reviewed is more like a collection of sermons.

Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger exposes the misogyny within the restaurant industry.

If Herbert Howells hadn’t held a tune
in his ear as bombs kept falling on London,
if he hadn’t argued with himself—like
or as?—and come up with a tie (both),
if he hadn’t let his melody make more
of his awkward choice than the psalmist’s point,
we wouldn’t have the flowing rhythm of “Like as
the Hart” to carry us now, or occasion for our choir
to stop rehearsing and hear a pastor
muse that the ancients followed the hart (the heart)
which could sense unseen water (a diviner)

She enters the cottage to find
The corpse laid out for burial,
The family waiting for her to eat
The fresh-baked bread placed
On the body.

Hungry perhaps—the work pays
Little, and she is poor—she chews
And swallows greed, lust, rage,
Taking on sin so the soul slips
Free to rise to heaven, purified.

But what, I wonder, does she feel?
Is it just a job for her, or something
More, a sacred act, so that when
She takes the bread, all that binds her
Falls away.

Almost 1,200 years of Eastern Christian culture are represented in this tinted drypoint by Milen Litchkov. In small, richly detailed prints on biblical themes, the Bulgarian graphic artist pays homage to the illuminators of ancient Gospel manuscripts and the miniaturist iconographers of his Balkan homeland, which converted to Christianity in the ninth century, adding his own humorous touches of contemporary caricature.

Her complex portraits reveal an alchemy of desire, pain, power, and weakness.

On the mountain, it’s not necessary to say anything—
to decide what you and I might become.

Here the sun sets for only a moment,
thick cloud of fire and ash

all the oranges and reds we haven’t invented yet—
and the sound of the wind too loud

for human ears to hear.

But holy the smoke, the quaking, the desire
to ascend—to hear the voice that speaks only

in silence.

You can’t paint this, though you will try—
the canvas and birds—the words that are meant to hint,