Monthly Archives: August 2021

The Maker, The Mudskipper
 
What is a prayer, exactly?
Because I want to let the definition
include the sculptor
 
with dried clay crusting over
his chin and cheeks as he fashions
pieces on his pottery wheel.
 
Let prayer be the picking
of clay from the fold of skin
between the thumb and forefinger.
 
Let it include the clay
the sculptor kneads and molds,
and draws out into cylinders,
 
his smoothing and scraping out
of the skin and tall dorsal of his
beloved, the pulling and rolling of eyes
 
set together atop its head,
squat and slick as intended,
and the feet, I mean the fins—mean
 
the feet—he, the sculptor, shapes
from the body with which to set it loose
upon dry land, to walk, then swim
 
off into the lapping waves while he,
the sculptor, spins another to accompany it.
Let prayer be the snap of life
 
wave-tossed against the ocean rocks.

William Littlejohn-Oram received a degree in Fiction from the University of Houston and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Poetry from Texas Tech University. He often makes people uncomfortable in social interactions, doesn’t know what to say most of the time, and can currently be found in Lubbock, TX, wearing brightly colored shoes. His work is forthcoming in Inkwell Journal.

Ship of Fools

You know I don't really belong here.
This planet is a prison ship – a trap for fools.
The game, the task: To decode love.
And when we die we get trucked off
To be verified, marked, dis-assembled, checked
– And then all the failures get sent back.

Perhaps I got it right last time,
Actually cracked the code and it was so great!
Could be, I volunteered to come back, show the rest;
Begged, pleaded, offered no baggage,
Had the nerve to queue-jump perhaps
– What an errant fool!

Clive Donovan devotes himself full-time to poetry and has published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Fenland Poetry Journal, Neon Lit. Journal, Prole, Sentinel Lit. Quarterly and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, U.K. quite close to the river Dart. His debut collection will be published by Leaf by Leaf in November 2021.  

Questions Never Really Answered at the Awards Dinner 

Where am I? 

An easy one for starters. I had just walked into the four-star hotel, the cocktail hour for our annual awards dinner in full swing. The cast of marketers didn’t change much from year to year, and neither did the details: suits, dresses, a tux or two, plates of liver wrapped in bacon, slosh of beverages amid a roar of chatter—how’s business, what’s the next big thing, did you hear about X she’s working at Y now, have you got anything up for awards this year. 

If you’re a marketer in our city, this is what you do. You gather at this awards dinner “to honor the best marketing campaigns of the past twelve months.” I can recite that mission statement like it was yesterday instead of fifteen years ago, when on that night the questions came and I started leaving it all behind.

What am I doing here?

Another easy question, in most years anyway. Where the hell else would I be? If you’re a marketer in our city, this is what you do. 

That was before my second visit to the monastery. 

My first visit, on a brilliant spring Sunday, happened at the prodding of two friends who’d gone there for years. They adored worshiping in the chapel and thought I might too. It has all the elements beloved by Catholics (like my friends) and Episcopalians (like me)—soaring arches, dark hardwood, rosette window, monks in cowls, prayer books, hymns, chants. Beautiful, to be sure. But beautiful was not what came to mind ten minutes after we found our seats. What came to mind was home. 

Why are these awards such an honor?

Any of the revelers could have told you. In advertising, the part of marketing I inhabited, many awards shows are about dazzle—the clever campaign that thrills industry insiders and maybe consumers too. Not this show. This show celebrated results, the kind that roll off marketers’ tongues in fluent jargon: number of impressions, click-throughs, eyeballs.

Any of the revelers could have told you. But not me, not that year. Without warning, my mind drew a blank. Only the questions kept coming. 

Why are awards so important? Why is marketing so important? Why are marketers always in a rush?

And they kept coming without a wisp of an answer. I knew the standard replies, but as soon as I entered the hotel they faded into pallid versions of themselves.

Marketers don’t live in an answerless world. There are always data—demographics, target audience size, consumer trends—and the time between question and answer had better be short, because clients and bosses are waiting. After years in marketing, that demand had baked itself into me. Which made the absence of answers feel disorienting, like a medical event about to strike. 

What is happening to me? 

The monastery wasn’t just about monks. It also welcomed associates: average folks who live a version of the monks’ lives but in their own homes, adapted to their own routines. Associates commit to a Rule of Life—a set of principles, values, and practices—just like the monks do. So they pray and meditate and read sacred texts and take part in retreats at the monastery, but they also go to their jobs and mow their lawns and some of them attend awards dinners. Their Rule (if they’re like me) becomes a framework for going deeper, way deeper, into medieval mystics and Zen masters and all manner of things, drawing them ever closer to Spirit. I’d heard about this years before I ever laid eyes on the monastery, and the word associate had smoldered just behind my solar plexus, awaiting its chance. 

That chance came on my second visit, a retreat this time. Three days of solitude, a bit of talk with the monks and guests, and at the end a decision: apply to become an associate, yes or no. Most people think of retreats as islets of bliss, but this one turned into a crucible. The hours of solitude dredged up every flaw and heartbreak and insecurity I have never faced, let alone resolved. Home is famous for this, when you think about it: not just dredging up your shit but giving you shelter to look at it all. 

Most people would flee in horror, but the smolder persisted. It was a couple of weeks after I applied for associateship that I went to the awards dinner and was struck dumb.

Who is asking all these questions?        

An emperor once posed a similar question during a conversation with Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen in China. “What is the first principle of the holy teaching of Buddhism?” the emperor asked.

“Vast emptiness,” Bodhidharma replied. “Nothing holy.”

“Then who are you, standing here in front of me?”

“I don’t know.”

I can tell you who I am, more or less, fifteen years after the dinner. I am an ex-marketer. I am someone who writes essays and helps a few seekers find God in their lives and prays and meditates and practices Zen as well as Christianity and earns next to nothing. Meanwhile, my old colleagues produce their next campaign and earn results and reap the rewards.

But on the night of that dinner, as I stood apart scanning the crowd for people to schmooze, I had the same answer as Bodhidharma to the same question. I don’t know. All I knew were the questions themselves, stopping me cold as I looked at all those people whom I knew so well and who—until that moment—had known me too.  

#  #  #

A spiritual director, bigender person, and quasi-hermit, John Backman writes about ancient spirituality and the unexpected ways it collides with postmodern life. This includes personal essays in Catapult, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Tiferet Journal, Amethyst Review, and Sufi Journal, among other places. Last year John was named a top 10 creative nonfiction finalist in the Wild Atlantic Writing Awards. 

Bracelet Cuddles


Here in the west
we wear spirited beaded bracelets 
twisted about one another
like a nursing baby and its mother.

Selenite for clarity
clear quartz for energy
rose quartz for love and peace
smokey quartz to clear blocked energy
hematite for grounding
and amethyst for calm and intuition.

These rocks of support, nurture
Buddhist types like me—
bundles of positivity through profound darkness—
all reminders of our interconnectedness.

The art of compassion and giving:
ticket to our hopes and dreams,
as we split open prayer books
during this pandemic-induced boredom.

We then wander through new age stores
for bracelets and stones
and to soak up the calm only Buddha
can bestow on our hungry souls.

Diana Raab is a memoirist, poet, blogger, and author of ten books and over 1000 articles and poems.  She blogs for Psychology Today, The Wisdom Daily and Thrive Global. Her latest book is Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Program for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life. Visit her at: dianaraab.com.

Green Lacewing

He’s floating
in the rain barrel
and though I lift him
out on a leaf to dry,
he doesn’t revive.

Finely made, his
trim pale body,
his sheer veined wings
immune to the breeze,
the long slender feelers,

the legs poised to leap.
He falls and is lost in the grass
for the robin to find.
His meek brown eyes didn’t see me,
but I saw him.

Ruth Holzer’s poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Connecticut River Review, Slant, Blue Unicornand THEMA, and in other journals and anthologies the U.S. and abroad. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, sheis the author of five chapbooks, most recently A Face in the Crowd (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Why We’re Here (Presa Press, 2019)

Julian of Norwich Leads Yoga

Settling before us skirts tucked
wool-shrouded legs folded
lotus blossoms.
 
She knows isolation—this one—anchored
within stone walls that block nothing—source, death
 even a hazelnut gets through. She brings
 
palms to center & we follow
moving mountain
pose to warrior one.
 
She explains, All will be well—
God said that, not me
while we wait legs trembling
 
until she lets us slide downward
dog arch up to cobra
straining serpents.
 
Hope is a stone we toss
into a deep question
& wait for a sound.
 
We fall to happy baby & she says
So I stretched, held those words
 like breathing.
 
We fumble into easy pose—not her,
 our lady of supple, reminding us
Now inhale now exhale now
 
again for a long dream of nows
until the muscles give.

Sylvia Karman’s work has appeared in Delmarva Review, Blueline, and Writing the Land, among others. She lives in the Adirondack mountains of New York and in central Maryland where she hikes and writes for the love of the journey. You can visit her at www.sylviakarman.com .

Elegy to the Serenity Prayer

God, grant me the serenity to accept the 
things I cannot change, courage to 
change the things I can, and 
wisdom to know the difference.

But I am no Solomon. And right now, I 
        have none of the answers. Lightning strikes 
                scar every cell, a tornado wrecking
                havoc in my stomach. My body a
        bomb just waiting to go off. 

I am a muse. I am God in these skies.
        Nothing will control me, 
        much less this body of mine.
                I grasp immortality in
                my right hand, turn
                back the clock, 
                        twist the jagged edge
                        that is the end.
        Who ever said the worst could happen?

Sometimes I wonder what it 
        will finally be like to fly. To taste July
                on my lips,
        my rage condensing into
            hurricanes in the sky.
                To hell with it.
        Finally, I will not be burned.

Finally, I’ve seen the light.
        There’s a reason why we can’t fly.
                There is too much holding us down.
        The weight of the world is too much
        for our shoulders to carry.
        But gravity will soon become a filibuster inside
                this dawdling heart of mine.

But even if I try to rewrite my ending,
        nothing will change.
        I’ll close my eyes inevitably
                And give in to the unknown.
        I will chase this thing called denial
                and release.

And in an instant, I will lose it all.
        Lose the onyx bubbling into
                the crevices where
                my lips once were.
        Lose my bones,
                        solidifying into calcite
                in between my ribs.
        I will lose it all with 
                eyes open against the light.


Perhaps death is beauty
        in certainty. But again, 
I am no Solomon. 
                        And my moral quandaries will
                        never stray from home.

Ashlyn Roice is a junior at Mountain House High School in California. Her poetry has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and has been published in Defiant Magazine.

The Tongue of Taliesin


These rocks
		creigiau’r
		dw i wedi gofiwyd

I am holding in my memory
		creigiau’r gorwyd
		ar fy nhafod a ganed

What if they are from
the falling cliff-face
		creigiau’r
		yr afonydd gofiwyd

And not the tall mountains 
or the green valley?

Notes

creigiau’r – “the rocks”

dw i wedi gofiwyd – “I have remembered”

creigiau’r gorwyd – “the rocks sit”

ar fy nhafod a ganed – “on my tongue and sing”

creigiau’r – “the rocks”

yr afonydd gofiwyd – “remember the rivers”

Andie Davies (they/them) is a London based queer poet, where they are beginning their MA in Creative Writing. They run the student literary journal Roey Writes On and have been published in that journal and in the UniSlam 2020 Anthology. They perform at spoken word events and share their work @thepoetandie

Devotion
 
At fourteen, you are hypertensive, 
partially blind in one eye,
and suffer from dementia.
Your feline fur is grey 
like the underside of a salmon fillet,
and your body stretches
like a sling shot,
on my tapestry rug. 
 
I swoop down, burrow my face
in the moist heat of your tummy,
white as the cream from an éclair,
kiss the dusting of moth wings
between your eyes, trace the silver rings
that spiral your lanky tail,
while you expose a cage of tiger teeth 
with a huge nonchalant yawn; 
you are safe.
 
Birth anointed you in anxiety.
When we adopted you,
fear was your perfume.
You still startle, and flee
on white gloved paws,
like a snowshoe hare.
 
Evenings, you are a curl 
waiting on my office chair.
You chide me for the late hour,
and escort me down the hall to bed.
 
There, you stumble about
like a clumsy toddler, mewl 
like a cantankerous drunk, 
climb me like a jungle gym, 
up over my head,
down across my chest,
unceremoniously step 
into my soft abdomen,
and knead my doughy belly.
 
Finally, you settle.
My legs are pinned, 
and all night, we dance
in an intricate choreography
of slides and dips, 
because devotion asks 
how many more nights
until the next life comes
to teach us
what we still haven’t gotten right?
 
Praise for the once abandoned,
who love anyway,
who find gratitude in unremarkable days
and nights shared,
watching leaves fall, 
chasing shadows.
 
We lay in darkness,
etched by a winter moon.
Marbles roll in your throat.
I rub the paper membranes 
of your ear tips, frozen,
like tiny mountain peaks.
I stroke your silky fur, 
feel the bony vertebrae and spikes 
along your slender head and spine;
how frail and delicate we are.

 

Katherine Szpekman’s poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in: Waking up the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Crisis, Aromatica Poetica, Red Eft Review, Sky Island Journal, Chestnut Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Hiram Poetry Review, Rockvale Review, Connecticut Literary Anthology 2020, and others. She lives in Collinsville, Connecticut with her family, both human and furry.  

If you could have been here



we could have sipped elixir of sky 
in several shades of nightfall last evening.  
I won’t say blue or even indigo dye 
for those deep-sea toned waves of cloud
that floated over sun’s low gold.  

We could have been one, without talking, 
and seen the black-furred night sky 
steal in from the east, almost stalking, 
sleek belly flat to the ground, a power cat,
shoulders rippling for the pounce.

We could have seen winter-trees’ tiaras,
their enlaced limbs a black filigree 
delicate as sopranos’ high, high arias,
as ladies’ hands silhouetted, so many
long fingers reaching up, up: through fire.

We could have lifted our arms high 
and stretched our fingers and reached 
past tree-tops, clouds, moon, even sky
until we became all flame.

Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun.  She was born in the United States and lived there until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to England, where she now resides.  Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, The Windhover, The Ekphrastic Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Catholic Poetry Room, and other venues, both online and print.