Rachel Hoskins

Recent WORK

The Days of Silence and Flame
Inkwell

HIRAETH IS A WELSH WORD I learned recently with no English equivalent. Roughly translated, it refers to a deep longing, a homesickness for what is irretrievably gone. Like my father’s fraying skin. His hands, his arms, his face unravel like threads under too much friction, caught by a gale, pulled by the strictures of time. I try to catch them as they unfurl. I try to keep them together. Like scotch taping a shredded flag, there is no putting them back. There is no making him whole again, my fraying father. READ

Writing from both sides of the economic divide
The Christian Century

When she was a child, Sarah Smarsh’s dad started foaming at the mouth in the emergency room. To make ends meet, he had taken a second job transporting industrial chemicals in a truck that, it turns out, was leaking toxic fumes. His experience, among others her family endured as rural, working-­class Americans, highlights the plight of those whose welfare has too often been compromised or overlooked. “We were starved for someone to even feign to care about us,” she writes in Bone of the Bone. READ

Bearing Weight
Ginosko Literary Journal

A tiny cross lies in the cubby next to my car's gear shift. By "tiny," I mean miniature. It is scarcely longer than an inch. A Christ figure equally as diminutive rests with arms stretched and knees bent fixed to its staff. A priest on pilgrimage gave me this small crucifix in Jerusalem in the Church of Saint Peter in Gallicantu as a prayer for my body. He said it carried the weight of being blessed by Pope John Paul II. READ

Double Vision
The Christian Century

The first time I saw double is beyond my recollection. “Her left eye is too strong,” a doctor told my parents when I was four years old. “It’s blinding her right. It has to be corrected.” Making a small incision in the conjunctiva of my bulb, the ophthalmologist reached the offending muscle and partially detached it. After surgery, I wore a patch like a pirate and my vision blurred for days. When it cleared, instead of a world split in two, I saw one.

Vision is a highly complex sense. The mechanical and neurological components of the eyes and brain work together to produce sight in a delicate dance of light absorption and translation from rods and cones. READ