Monthly Archives: December 2019

Girl at the Window

I’ve had my share of sad
stories, who hasn’t?
Even now I see her still, that young girl
kneeling on a stool by the window,
watching always watching lonely longing
unseen unnoticed her knees growing numb.

But today living brave
like the tireless hummingbird
that’s what I want, that
little marvel of energy whose
fragility belies its fierceness.
Everywhere I see effortless life
emerge into what it was meant to be,
like the crocus that blooms purple
brilliance even in desolate snow,
a spectacle unspectacular to itself.

Who am I then to mourn that lost girl
unknowingly growing wings of freedom?
I want remnants of the past to be
soaked clean in the stream of Love
that runs gently through my life.
A new story then will write itself.
Girl at the window, innocent curious tender.
Why not say there was a garden in her heart,
a gentle bud of love waiting to blossom,
a little Buddha in training sitting in silence,
loved never lost but like a newborn star
not yet able to realize its own radiance.

 

Marilyn Grant taught Creative Writing at Cerritos College, CA, where she was an adjunct professor of English, and journal writing workshops for Orange County Hospice nurses.  Roger Housden, a published author, was her teacher for a memoir writing course, and she is a member of Writers4Writers in Orange County, CA.  She recently joined a nationwide group of spiritual seekers called “We Awakening Circle.”

Poetry

Poetry was my first door to the spirit.
Not religion. Not music. Not even the moon
with its silver immolations.
Though I never believed in magic
or even the accidental spark of grace,
you couldn’t say I wasn’t blessed
or the recipient of blessings.
I traced my lineage back
through the library’s darkened shelves
until I became pure image.
My heart forfeited its horses
for the measureless road.
I found twilight in my pockets.
I waited for the drip of beatitude
on my fevered tongue.

 

Seth Jani lives in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). Their work has appeared in Chiron Review, The Comstock Review, Psaltery & Lyre and Pretty Owl Poetry, among others. Their full-length collection, Night Fable, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2018.  More about them and their work can be found at www.sethjani.com.

Listening

I

Sitting on a fallen tree over the river,
I heard the thin, ancient sound
Of a cricket moving its wings.

II

I couldn’t spot him from the branch
I was sitting on. He never moved
Because the song never changed.

III

I decided to stay there a while.
Huge mosquitoes hovered around me.
Only the cricket was invisible.

 

Clayton Arble is a poet from Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Dolmen

– Gavrinis, France

Arcs and arrows flicker in torchlight,
chipped deep into granite and quartz.
Cautionary tale, psalm, intercession to the gods,
or an accounting perhaps of days and the earth’s
trembling here, the hard bargains of water and rock.

Meaning has been lost, though the makers were
tapping so loud to be heard. We still misunderstand:
instruction misread, word misconstrued, and deed.
Hands flap empty signs, or they mean too much.

Our babble still builds a rickety tower,
and we come no closer to god.
This may be a grave where the dead are led,
bones melt back to soil. Or is it a birth passage:
from this dark mouth might a new god rush forth?

 

Marilyn McCabe‘s work has garnered her an Orlando Prize from A Room of Her Own, the Hilary Tham Capital Collection contest award from The Word Works resulting in publication of her book of poems Perpetual Motion, and two artist grants from the New York State Council on the Arts. Her second book of poems, Glass Factory, was published in 2016. Her poems and videopoetry have been published in a variety of print and online literary magazines. She blogs about writing and reading at Owrite:marilynonaroll.wordpress.com.

Assynt

No longer allied to the wind’s assault, the rain
relents, declaring an overdue cease-fire with
the stoical rocks, the exhausted dunes of peat.

It will be a fleeting peace; a window for the
sheepish light to soften into, a mere candle-flash
in the silence, but just enough for you to call

negotiations with the moment, take a brace
of deliberate, steadying breaths before noticing
yourself again, a fresh mark on an ancient canvas.

 

Robert Ford‘s poetry has appeared in print and online publications in the UK, US and elsewhere, including The Interpreter’s House, Brittle Star, Butcher’s Dog and San Pedro River Review. More of his work can be found at https://wezzlehead.wordpress.com/

Unbound

He came to me mid-afternoon,
a frosty day, the sunshine weak,
twig filtered light, skeletal branch,
bare bones undressed, the awkward joints
not camouflaged, thick foliage.

Disciple of uncertainty,
he came in mood, confessional,
not by me judged, found-wanting creed –
surprised to find self-reassured,
as journeyed over common ground.

The judgement lies where judgement made –
for questions from enquiring mind
are threatening to black law book bound;
though word – unbind and let him go –
is theme of good news, lakeside-shared.

Stephen Kingsnorth, (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church (following the onset of Parkinson’s Disease), has had pieces accepted by Nine Muses Poetry; Voices Poetry; Eunoia Review; Runcible Spoon; Ink Sweat and Tears; The Poetry Village; Amethyst Review; Softblow Literary Journal; From the Edge; Soul Lit.; Sparks of Calliope; Gold Dust, The Seventh Quarry, Allegro & The Dawntreader Poetry Magazines. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/

After the Storm

After a sudden storm, when the viridescent
sky darkens and the limbs cease cracking,
a Christmas tree ornament gleams
near a giant limb dangling from a small tree.
I reach for the wayward bough, but am stopped
in my tracks. It is a rain-soaked hummingbird,
this tiny jewel. Frozen in place, we stare
at one another. Then a shock of emerald
and ruby, shiny with rainwater, mined
from a storybook, lifts little wings
and disappears over my roof.
For a moment, I wonder if I really saw it—
a celebration of everything bright and delicate
against a foreboding sky. Now I see it
in my mind’s eye and carry it with me,
a celebration, however tiny, of joy,
against my own foreboding sky.

Diane Elayne Dees’s chapbook, I Can’t Recall Exactly When I Died, is forthcoming from Clare Songbirds Publishing House; also forthcoming, from Kelsay Books, is her chapbook, Coronary Truth. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world (http://womenwhoserve.blogspot.com)

Moonrise
—after a photograph by Barbara Jabaily

Below the dam, the moon skips stones across
not a pond, but a reservoir where time is buried
along with the tops of cottonwoods to tangle
if you dive overboard.

Buried in layers of limestone that crumble
as you scale the top of a ridge is another sea
as I am of another sea where I gathered glass
rounded by the rush of waves

and the tumult of a river wanting to be let go
as I wiggled out of my mother’s arms
as soon as I could toddle across the sand
feet wobbling back and forth, side to side.

How I always craved an uneven surface thinking
I could walk to the set of a red sun on the bay
but here West, I put my foot into the reflection
across a lake as if now the moon is mine too.

 

Kyle Laws is based out of the Arts Alliance Studios Community in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.

Home Territory

(Reflecting on Painting: Rejection at Nazareth)

I wonder if he always
occupied the same synagogue seat,
his sabbath set in childhood,
as with a pew rental place.

Did he ever dig a rib
at some trilling cantor’s pitch,
or sigh along with longer psalms,
stifle his gaping mouth,
or muse on a protuberance,
beneath shaded eyes,
or at least imagine
the barley bread, the goat’s cheese,
or olives, dates waiting ahead?
Did legumes wander into legomenon,
surely that a normal course,
of wisdom, growing stature
beyond the early phase?
It was his custom, weekly,
poor exegesis, menu spare,
expositions that missed the mark,
old men ceasing to dream dreams.

But village lad home visits,
seated, sawdust spreads the scroll,
scans scripture, but stops short.
Curtailed, docked, the prophet pruned,
the custom passage trimmed,
defeat of enemies excised.
He had it seems overstepped the mark
by not reading so;
had the boy over-stretched himself,
ignored his father’s tools
and chiselled ideas well beyond
station of supposed son?

Not that we would recognise
less lection be our trade,
know such sins of omission
but they textually did;
so cliff-edging anger
so out-of-the-blue to us,
makes perfect sense to them.

 

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from Methodist Church ministry, has had pieces accepted by Nine Muses Poetry; Voices Poetry; Eunoia Review; Runcible Spoon; Ink Sweat and Tears; The Poetry Village; From the Edge; Gold Dust, The Seventh Quarry & Allegro Poetry Magazines. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/