Spring 2019
Spring 2019
Relief’s 2019 issue is packed with new poems by some of our favorite voices—Nicholas Samaras, Natasha Oladokun, Linda Mills Woolsey, Daniel Tobin, and many others. CNF offerings include Nelle Smith’s complicated tribute to her native Ohio; lyric examinations of faith, suffering, and loss by Kyle Minor and Ann Weikers; and the stunning debut of Kaylen Dwyer. Our fiction moves from the Middle East to the hills of West Virginia to the California desert of G.E. Kittredge’s “Thy Cell Will Teach Thee All,” in which a burned out rocker attempts to write the ending to his own story. Kelcey Parker Ervick adds Relief’s first full-color graphic narrative, a gorgeous meditation on Nabokov, butterflies, and the coming of age of an artist.
Daniel Bowman, Jr.
From the Editor's Desk
Poetry
Devon Balwit
Upokeimenon
Tropes
Aaron Brown
Hymn
Thom Caraway
angle of repose
Prophecy for 3 a.m.
Three Incantations for Spring
Todd Copeland
Glimpsed
Maryann Corbett
A Vision of St. Polycarp, Martyr, as Bartender
Sacred Art & Architectural Salvage, Inc.
Kristina Erny
Portrait: David
Landscape: Victoria Park Community Center
Marci Rae Johnson
Topography of Tears
Entertaining Angels Unaware
Marjorie Maddox
Without Ceasing
Susanna Mayer
Holy Orders
Cast Away
Linda Mills Woolsey
Traveler’s Advisory
Saturday at the Gallery
Natasha Oladokun
I Asked God for the Moon
Daye Phillippo
Bicycling the Backroads After Supper
Gossip
Richard Prins
Prospect Park
Elizabeth Sackett
Fire
Nicholas Samaras
God Shuffled His Feet
Holy
Shannon St. Armand
The Burial, Post-Miscarriage
Becoming Catholic, Post-Miscarriage
Bill Stadick
Syndrome Psalm
Jack Stewart
St. Jerome Translates
The Shape of the Cold
Jen Stewart Fueston
To the guest who broke
a wine glass at my party
Daniel Tobin
From Where Moth and Rust Consume
Larval
Jeremiah Webster
The Solemn Sea
Mischa Willett
Echo Chamber
Braceleted and Bare
Creative Nonfiction
Kaylen Dwyer
At the Edge of the Astrosphere
Kyle Minor
Bluetongued
Nelle Smith
Ohio, Ohio, Ohio
Ann Weikers
Annunciation
Fiction
Chris Harold
Big Game
G.E. Kittredge
Thy Cell Will Teach Thee All
Heather M. Surls
The Life You’ve Got
Comics
Kelcey Parker Ervick
Speak, Butterfly