New Writing Engaging with the Sacred
thinking of Li Po and Du Fu while staring into a brook tracing shadows i pause to gaze at my reflection— this mirror moves
Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, zines, and online publications. He has published 13 chapbooks. He runs Between Shadows Press.
Kadesh
The word “Kadesh” means holiness, coming from the root for “sacred.”
The Israelites spent most of their 40 years desert
wilderness wandering in Kadesh, the place.
–Numbers 13 (paraphrased)
Perhaps there,
they dreamt of houses planted into the ground,
instead of living in tented camps;
they dreamt of tables overflowing with fruits and meats,
instead of just their daily manna rations;
they dreamt of the new lives they would start,
instead of just their desert wilderness wandering—
whenever they weren’t weeping and grumbling
and their “If only we had died in Egypt!” protests,
cursing Moses and murmuring against their Maker.
Perhaps there,
they were ground to dust,
molded into clay, shaped
by the Potter, thrown into
the furnace, and re-polished.
Perhaps, it was there that they
became the Chosen People
before being allowed in the land
flowing with milk and honey,
ready for more sandalless holy grounds.
Their process of becoming
worthy of holiness and sacredness—
where
the Israelites
became
the Israelites.
e placed first in KoreanAmericanStory’s 2021 Virtual ROAR Story Slam. She guest blogs for Backbones, promoting disability awareness. e is an attorney with a disability. She started a non-profit housing cooperative. e is writing a poetry collection from the perspective of a woman with a disability living in biblical times.
Owl Song To be fully present at the birth Or the death of someone is to be aware Of a transparent gate, unmoved right there In the center of the room. Neither its entrance nor exit contradict Its space, like the same gradient Of sky at dawn and dusk. Life and death, Day and night, circulate a gate. When this happens means As much as what. When can certainly be Mere coincidence, a randomness. When something happens does link A chain of events. When can feel Predetermined, even fated. Perhaps Most mysterious of all, when can seem To descend by way of some divine plan. How one interprets what happened when Is a most volatile power of human will.
Elder Gideon is the author of “Aegis of Waves” (Atmosphere, 2021) and co-author with Tau Malachi of “Gnosis of Guadalupe (EPS Press, 2017). He’s an alumnus of the 2021 Community of Writers, directed by Brenda Hillman and showing sculpture this fall with Verge Gallery’s Open Studio Tour in Sacramento.
The Gopis Circle With twilight’s approach we slip out the door, singing away the burdens of our days as we flee for the horizon. Our houses crumble behind us like dust, all of our dharmas become light as feathers, flying away on the tail of the wind. Our families fear for our lives, believing us to be lost, irresolute, vague, and unpredictable. They have never heard the sound of the name of Govinda. All night long we follow the sound of His name, drenched in His nectar, being done with all other things. The taste of His lila is all we remember now. It cuts through our bonds, easily like a child laughing, snipping away spools of ribbon.
Natalie Lester is a poet currently residing in Ithaca, NY. Her work has appeared in Poetic Sun, Spirit Fire Review, Eucalyptus & Rose, and Sparks of Calliope.
To Love the World is to Mother It
To carry it on your hips,
whisper to it creed
and sky, sing over it what got stuck
in our bones before time.
To love the world is to chant
the parable
of its birth, its lover,
its lost name tossed like a coin
into the sea, waiting to be retrieved.
To love the world
is to speak its hidden name,
preach over it what foxes and warblers
know in their blood.
How else do we become ourselves?
The Lord announces the word,
and the women who proclaim it are a mighty throng.
—Psalm 68:11
Abigail Carroll is author of Habitation of Wonder and A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim. Her poems have appeared in Sojourners, Christian Century, the Anglican Theological Review, Crab Orchard Review, and the anthologies How to Love the World and Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide. She serves as an arts pastor in Burlington, Vermont, and enjoys playing Celtic harp.
Ghazal: Remembering Dublin, 1964 When you ordered coal, and it arrived brought by horse and dray along the unswept streets, when a funeral passed by and people stood to watch and crossed themselves respectfully all down the street, when a queue of people blocked the pavements waiting for a church to open on the crowded streets because it was the day of “Blessing of the Throats” and God alone would know the germs that lurked in city streets. These are the details I recall, the reasons that I fell in love and treasured Dublin City’s streets.
Gill McEvoy won the 2015 Michael Marks Award for The First Telling (Happenstance Press). She is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her recent collection is Are You Listening? (Hedgehog Press 2020) and a “Selected” is forthcoming from Hedgehog Press in 2022.
Released Does it feel like you’ve given me a gift or a burden, in those final moments, when you’re released from yourself? Maybe all of life finds itself learning to survive amidst the oppressive joy of the infinite; conceding to a power that will not divide or diminish, relentless in its pursuit for wholeness. I think my problem, from the beginning, was not the fear of a barren universe but one so generative it consumes me completely.
Megan Ulrich lives with her husband and three sons in a charming little town in East Tennessee. She has recently found inspiration in writing about grief and the healing that comes from sharing our brokenness with others. You can find out more about Megan at her website www.Megan-Ulrich.com.
Tooth fairy St Bride’s day, the row of candles stand blessed, and the snowdrops, more haphazard yet still as full of cradled promise, wait under the moon outside your window as I, slipper footed swap first tooth for a single coin weighing much more than it should. Enamel, milk-like soft as your still-baby face with the gap which has opened up between us. Outside, blackbird breaks the snow’s silence and, deep within the hedgerow, a nest is already being built.
Alice Watson is a new poet, a priest, and a mother to young children based in Northamptonshire, England. She is inspired by the natural world and her faith. She has had work published in Earth and Altar and Dreich. She chats about faith, ministry, and feminism (amongst other things) on Twitter @alicelydiajoy.
Amethyst Review 