Sundays
Quite a row of them sitting there
Evangelical Sundays. Church hats,the feathered grace of women,their men in undertaker suits,hardened into dutiful Sundays.It scarcely rained, the sunabominable. Taxis shuttled themto Kingdom Halls, the woodenheaven, like my grandmother.The light in the Word. Every daythe light on the Word lengthensand I write into the earth,my forked-tongue peninsula,indifferent to the Pentecostalturn in the day, when hymnsscrape brass from the collectionplate, rotating rust and fewcoins; at its rim, a gauze of holywater, grandmother’s sweat or tears.
Feature Date
- September 18, 2018
Series
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Copyright © 2018 by Ishion Hutchinson
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
Fall 2018
New York, New York
Editor
Emily Stokes
Managing Editor
Kelly Deane McKinney
Poetry Editor
Srikanth Reddy
Since its founding 1953, The Paris Review has been America’s preeminent literary quarterly, dedicated to discovering the best new voices in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The Review’s renowned Writers at Work series of interviews is one of the great landmarks of world literature. Hailed by the New York Times as “the most remarkable interviewing project we possess,” the series received a George Polk Award and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. With the December 2016 redesign of the Review’s website, the complete digital archive of everything we’ve published since 1953 is available to subscribers. In November 2017, the Review gave voice to nearly sixty-five years of writing and interviews with the launch of its first-ever podcast, featuring a blend of classic stories and poems, vintage interview recordings, and new work and original readings by the best writers of our time.
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
