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NEW IN THE TREE OF LIFE REVIEW
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First Communion
by Robbin Farr
FIRST BYLINES: In many respects it’s easier to publish an established, even an award-winning writer, than it is to publish someone for the first time.
The reason for this is simple. When a query or story crosses our desk by a known writer, we are usually familiar with their work, maybe personally familiar with the author. In other words, these authors have a head start in the publishing game.
Still, we cull through hundreds of submissions seeking that story, essay, comic, or poem by a writer — older or younger — who has a unique voice, and has yet to be published. In essence, we become partners with authors beginning their careers.
Most important, we seek to showcase new work that is provocative and beautiful, work that adds to the conversation between artists, scientists, essayists, columnists, bloggers, poets, and fiction writers who appear in the pages of Wild River Review.
Go for the mass has ended.
Thanks be to God.
The click of her shoes reflects unwavering stillness.
Statued saints stare from grottos. No miracles
today, merely customary transmigration of purified
souls — a moment of tumbled whiteness, the slosh
of holy water diluted detergent, sins sieved
heavenward through breaches in mortality.
She wished she could lift her white dress, a crinoline
nimbus, and sit on the marble floor, pressing her legs
against its cool veined surface, forgetting endless hours
of catechism and sibilant whispers of absolution
...in nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sanci
filtered through the confessional scrim.
Instead, walking through iron-belted doors of oak,
she squints into the sun
where her mother waits
with the Brownie camera.
Robbin Farr
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Robbin Farr recently completed a year sabbatical from teaching high school and explored life without
the ubiquitous mountain of papers to grade. After retrieving a few pages of incomprehensible poems
wisely hidden in the back of a cabinet, she set off for a workshop at a wholly organic, macrobiotic,
vegan retreat where she and fellow writers drank a lot of wine late at night. She is now, despite
the unbelieving retorts from relatives, writing poetry in an MFA program at Queens University of
Charlotte, which she insists is one of the four most meaningful events of her life.
ROBBIN FARR IN THIS EDITION:
FIRST BYLINES: Design
FIRST BYLINES: First Communion
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