God is a Catfish from the White River in Martin County, Indiana

and we would eat
Him on Summer Sundays
after Mass. Sometimes
we would eat Him
on the lawn of His own house
as the sun shone through
the sycamore leaves,
creating its own stained
glass on the grass
beneath our feet. We named our

biggest county festival after Him,
the CATFISH FESTIVAL.
And we would walk up
and down the main street to
look at the vendors selling knives,
quartz figurines, and paintings
of the American West, even
though we were smack dab
in the middle of it. Up the road

and around the corner
is the bridge where men
fished for Him, the biggest
of the summer meant
bragging rights for the
year. Some would be
mounted, others were soon
fried and fed to those
finishing games of softball
in the park. When night came,

we would sit in a truck
bed or on the hood of a
car, still warm from
the July sun. The grease
from the feast of Him
earlier in the day still
on our fingertips and
lips. Around us,
fireworks of all kinds,
but towards the heavens was
where our eyes would
always end up. We would inch
our hands closer to each
other, in hopes that they would
meet. If even briefly, we would
live off that touch for
weeks. We would make plans

or the next day. We would tell
ourselves that this was
the rest of our lives. In the
morning, we would know what
we were going to eat that day.

This piece was featured in Volume 4. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Invocation

Kingsessing in Southwest Philadelphia is a low country of porches and brick. A long green edge where Cobbs Creek keeps the seasons and the city sets its weight down. It is trolley bells and bus sighs, damp cellar air, snow that turns the street into a white ledger and summer that writes itself in hydrants. It is rowhouse cornices and hand-painted signs and the iron geometry of fire escapes. It is the smell of bread at dawn and hot brake pads at noon and rain lifting the dust off asphalt in the evening. Kingsessing is corner glass and barber mirrors, a library cool as a sanctuary, a ball thudding on varnished wood, a church basement that knows fifty recipes for mercy. It is stoops—the first step, the second step, the last—with chairs set out like commandments and gossip folded small as a prayer. It is aunties with sun hats and boys with scabbed knees and girls with jump ropes thwacking time. It is names printed on envelopes and on shirts and on the backs of jerseys, and it is the other names, the ones you earn: Ms., Coach, Cuz, Deacon, Nurse. It is the slow code of nods on a morning sidewalk. It is the place under the El where the pigeons keep their own parliament. It is a crossing guard’s raised palm and a bus kneeling and a driver who waits longer than he has to. Kingsessing is a rulebook and a rumor and a promise made on the corner; it is a notice taped to a door and a hand that takes the tape down. It is rent due, and it is someone sliding an envelope across a table, and it is thanks left like change on the table. It is the long light on Baltimore Avenue and the straight run of 52nd where commerce speaks in neon, with half the letters missing. And Kingsessing is its people, which is to say it is the sound they make together when a siren passes and no one you love is in it. It is the patience at a red light when the street is empty. It is the small work of keeping: a sweep, a saltshaker, a knock, a name. It is a neighborhood that outlasts its weather, and it is the weather that teaches the neighborhood how.

This piece was featured in Volume 4. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.