Toor Dal wooden spoon

Dal Saves My Soul

“I made dal last night” might be the most unremarkable thing anyone can say because probably so did half a billion people in India alone. I made dal last night in Los Angeles because it rained as much in a day as the whole of last year, and I wanted more than comfort food.

photo of a book with a drawing of a pentagram and of Satan as a goat, burning in flames.

A Family That Prays Together

Hail Satan! I just joined The Satanic Temple, my 42-year-old daughter texted on a ‘till-that-point typical Wednesday. It stopped me right in the middle of my mid-morning channel surfing.
I thought I had let go of the concept of Satan around the same time I ditched the conservative Protestant faith I was raised in. Leaving the church hadn’t been difficult for me.

Jennifer M Phillips Headshot red coat black hat

Winter and After

Because all the birds do not fall

frozen from the trees,

and the squirrels do wake in time, most of them,

from their torpor, to the memory of nuts

under the snow lying inert for the whole bitter season;

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

My father never drank except at Christmastime, I’ve
never seen a brown bottle drain until I was seven, stayed
at my grandmother’s house and knew the skank smell of alcohol, in
winter where cigarette smoke looks ghostly, the
ash tray a black patch of night, he sat on the steps in front