Spring 2023: An Issue of Liberty
Join us as we explore the issues of Life! In this issue you will find thoughts on history, Jesus, the prison system, motherhood, and plenty more!
Read MoreTag: Mack in Texas
The Saturday Morning Tee-Ball Hero
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … A little moppet scampers around the tee / Waving her plastic bat as a warrior’s sword / Or as a fairy-wand to magic the day / Her first-ever tee-ball lesson with Dad…
Read MoreWho Has Been Eating My Chair?
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Lawn chairs are for lawn-sitting quite at our ease / Soft summer evenings with a book and a glass / With birds and squirrels chittering away / Merrily over their supper of chicken scratch
Read MoreSend Them Your Dawn, O Lord
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … We repudiate Putin and all his works / And all his pomps and all his engines of death / And all his malignant servile orcs / Who crucify humanity with lies
Read MoreThe Shape of a Poem, the Shape of a Life
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Yes, they are awkward, those poems written in shapes / But if God writes our lives as poetry / Limned and formed for our continuation / We ask that He shape us with clarity and charity
Read MoreEverybody Writes a Poem About the Moon
Everybody writes about the moon / Often trying to force a balky rhyme / Along the continuum of spoon and croon / Which just won’t fill the bill, the quill, or the time
Read MoreWake Up, Back Yard!
Brave seedlings from last year’s sunflowers arise / Among the tiny wings of zinnia buds / And the pushy skunk cabbages who hang around / Like playground bullies who ought to go find jobs
Read MoreOn the Consumption of Art
But we do not consume a work of art / Sometimes we almost seem to marry it / Joining art in a sacrament of love / Beyond the velvet ropes of ownership
Read MoreDon’t Follow the Science
“Follow the science” is itself an unscientific expression, personifying science as a sort of cosmic Boy Scout troop leader or perhaps a soldier taking the point. It suggests that we should not follow our hearts (which is just as illogical), our music, our dreams, or anything else except science personified almost as a deity.
Read MoreAll Intelligence is Artificial
No, no, we are not banks of blinking lights / And random teletype-type taps and beeps / Like Patrick McGoohan’s educational General / Or George Jetson’s mainframe at Spacely Sprockets
Read MoreTreadmills, Exercise, Open Cars, Champagne, and Cigars
The panther-like litheness of my youth (cough) long ago expanded into the, oh, prosperous look of Chaucer’s merchant, and so I have gotten into the excellent but Calvinistic habit of, well, treading along a treadmill every day.
Read MorePeople of the Book
The Thought became Incarnate in Judaea / And thoughts become incarnate in the books we read / For thoughts are tabernacles of our hopes / Tents in the deserts of our wanderings
Read MoreFor Jack On His Birthday
In the long ago I was reading a book / (And doubtless thinking many brilliant thoughts) / Sitting in my car outside Our Lady’s Church / Waiting for some old-lady meeting to end
Read MoreCivilization Begins at the Barn
Barns are good. In our times of destruction and violence, the idea of raising a barn is a vote for civilization…
Read MoreMemphian Lamentation
Let us instead look within our fatal selves / With every resentment validating the Fall of Man / With every snub murdering Abel again / With every lie sentencing Christ to death
Read MoreWinter 2023: An Issue of Life
Join us as we explore the issues of Life! In this issue you will find poetry, two new stories, discussions of human dignity, and plenty more! Also, check out our photo contest entries on page six!
Read MoreDestry Rides Yet Again
One of the satellite channels programmed a weekend of Audie Murphy cowboy movies. In my youth these were a Saturday afternoon staple down at the Palace Theatre, of happy memory, and I was pleased to revisit Destry (1954).
Read MoreTolkien’s Shelob the Spider
A poisonous lump of flesh in malignant repose / Her lair all befouled with scraps of souls / In life sought out with her multiplex eyes / Her Sauron-eyes – it was the hopes that died first
Read MoreA Very Brief Review of When Books Went to War
…tyrants don’t want people thinking for themselves. Books are dangerous to bullies, whether they are Hitler, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Vlad the Bad Putin, Chairman Xi, or the Ms. Grundy down the street.
Read MoreThe Cat as an Argument Against the Concept of Evolution
On the sixth day God made the animals / The cat generally disapproved of the others / And in a superior fashion licked its paws / In the springtime shade of the very first oak
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LogoSophia Magazine 