Ruminate Magazine: Faith in Literature and Art

Reverie. I like just saying the word and how people ask you to repeat it, as if they aren’t sure it’s a real word or there are too many vowels for just three consonants. The staff here at RUMINATE also really likes this word, which is why we wanted to explore it and its daydreamyness, selecting it as the theme for this issue.

Laurie Klein
Peace Dreams of a Body

A ten-fingered womb
bears down, centering
clay on the kicked
wheel, the overlapped
palms birthing a venerable
means to contain,
to conserve or carry—as in
urn. Or bowl. As in the first
jars, luring nomads
to settle. One can
shoulder only so much.

Karsten Piper
The Flute of All Your Sorrows

Do you remember as a child
considering the sounds—
how many flutes would overwhelm
a trumpet? Could drown
the bash of a kettledrum?

by Marcy Campbell

*The following is an excerpt from Ascension 

There was a moment, thrust into the night sky as he was, that Bowen
felt closer to heaven than to earth. He believed the perfect place for suicide was
at the top of the Ferris wheel at the Oakland County Fair, and he finalized his
decision, thinking that this act, juxtaposed with the neon atmosphere of the fair,
would add a touch of irony to his life’s story. Irony wasn’t much, but it was something.
     Bowen imagined the newspaper reporters. They would wonder how a man
could commit such a desperate act amid such exuberance. In searching for an
answer, they would surely comment on his size, trying to determine if he had
passed the 300-pound mark, a “Guess Your Weight” game that the carnival barkers
would have been eager to play. The reporters might assume that depression
over his weight had led to his death, and some would reprimand themselves for
such a hasty conclusion. After all, outward appearances don’t always contain the
truth about a person, a lesson Bowen’s parents and other well-meaning adults
tried to teach him when he was a child. But, he recalled how those same adults
often forgot the lesson themselves.

                                                                    Jeff Foster. Pretty Things. Manipulated digital image.