Stonework is published by Houghton College, a Christian liberal arts college located in New York’s rural Genesee Valley. Stonework seeks a diverse mix of mature and emerging voices in fellowship with the evangelical tradition. Published twice a year, the journal reflects the arts community at Houghton College where excellence in music, writing, and the visual arts has long been a distinctive.

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  • Issue 6
    Poetry by Paul Willis and Thom Satterlee. Fiction and interview with Lori Huth. Essay by James Wardwell, and student poets from Christian campuses.
  • Issue 5
    Poetry by Susanna Childress and Debra Rienstra. Fiction excerpt by Emilie Griffin. Art from Houghton's 2007 presidential inauguration and a forum on women writing.
  • Issue 4
    Matthew Roth--new poems. Diane Glancy--from One of Us and an interview. John Tatter-on gardens and poetry. The Landscapes of John Rhett. Stephen Woolsey--on the poetry of Jack Clemo. James Wardwell--on Herrick.
  • Issue 3
    Poetry by Julia Kasdorf, Robert Siegel and Sandra Duguid. Fiction by Tom Noyes. The portraits of Alieen Ortlip Shea. An anthology of Australian Poets
  • Issue 2
    Thom Satterlee - Poems from Burning Wycliff with an appreciation by David Perkins. Alison Gresik - new fiction and an interview. James Zoller - Poems from Living on the Floodplain.
  • Issue 1
    Luci Shaw — new poems with an appreciation by Eugene H. Peterson & Hugh Cook — new fiction and an interview

Monday, May 05, 2008

In the Byzantine Chapel Fresco Museum

~Rachel Alsdorf


1

This space is built to be a relic-box:

the fragments of a chapel sleeping here

in a perpetual twilight of gray sun,

benches of silk stone laid for worshipers.

Here, I could sit forever, hour on hour,

but twenty minutes from now it will close.

This chapel, after all, is a museum.


2

Oh God, where have you been for all these days?

You linger just beyond my whirring brain.

A thousand conversations never cease,

but those are spoken with myself, not you.

And if at last I lose myself in sleep,

your hands don't come to heal me even there.

Only your mother's face, half-turned away.


3

This summer's been all iconography.

I know what the lean, stern, bronze faces mean;

the strange angular hands; the color scheme.

Hodegetria—“she who shows the way”—

I love, but as a scholar loves a book.

I've never painted anything, and I

have never prayed except with words and words.


4

In Cyprus, once, the bandits cut Christ down

and packed his body secretly in crates,

and raped his mother while she stood at prayers.

The plaster wounds of both are bandaged now,

and they may calmly rule and intercede.

But only during listed viewing hours.

And no one dares to kiss the face of God.