Monthly Archives: April 2022

Bardo


Spare me the music

the thrill of waiting is enough

in some corner     dreaming

in a shadow     pulsing

the softness in a mare’s eye

moth skin and wing

bleating for love

the tick and tick arising

in each soul suspended

I walk with closed eyes

into the roar of dawn

Scott Elder lives in France. His work has mostly appeared in the UK and Ireland. A debut pamphlet, Breaking Away, was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2015, his first collection, Part of the Dark, by Dempsey&Windle 2017 (UK), and the second, My Hotel, is forthcoming in Salmon Poetry 2023 (Ireland).   Website: https://www.scottelder.co.uk/

The Sacred Self

I
There goes sleep, in its nightshirt
and slippers down the path
that never deviates from its one true
purpose of remembering. It doesn’t matter
that each call goes unanswered, that
the canyon opens to allow
anyone inside but
nobody may leave once the birds there
have befriended them. When a song
comes echoing along
the gravel trail, it is to announce the obvious
with men hearing only
what they want to hear. Meanwhile,
the eye in Heaven winks
and rock spirits
raise their voices to say this is here, this
is now. Never mind
what stays hidden behind the screens
and thorns; this is where
history comes awake
and speaks only in the present tense.
 
II
Barefoot down the slopes and wearing
heavy boots back up, the night
burrows into the mountain and twists
in its sleep while the earth with one eye open
dreams itself awake. Tonight
will stretch from end to end along
the stony path from sunset’s crumbling edge
to the saguaros standing guard against
the city; chilled to the core
and determined
to hold the high ground in the name
of nature. Solstice is a cold night
when owls awaken and follow
darkness’ scent while moonlight
snags on a thorn, and no image
survives of the claw
that cut the silence open.
 
III
The moon turns out its silver lining
at the darkest hour
the night can draw
from its catalog of mysteries and threats.
And while the mountain moves
ever closer to dawn
with its eyes shielded
the sky holds its breath. Along the ridgeline
first light signals time
returning to the slopes and the arroyos
where memories find
a quiet place to hide from what
they have done. They’re saddled up
and riding now, along
the wash to where they disappear
into the still pond that contains
all pain. Look hard along
the winding path: they’ve gone too far
to ever come back and be
recognized. To ever find
the scene of their creation.
 
IV
The water’s on its back but smiling
at the sky today, host
to winter’s folded wings. The walkway
leading here peels itself away
from the left sole and the right at the pace
of injuries healing. It’s that time
in the morning when
the mountain has surrendered
to the light, and the light has unsheathed itself
with no regrets. Up there
at the peak the view goes all the way
back to better times and worse
ones. They run together
in the clouds now: a splash of sunshine
and a red-tail rising
where memories fly against gravity.
 
V
The bird came down to drink
an ambulance’s siren from the air; it spread
its wings to shield
the scene from sunlight.
As often as it flew with nothing to invite
it to descend, one moment split
apart and everything that time revealed
lay spread out on
the morning’s road. It circled
patiently. Its plumage shone
as the broad wings tipped to left
and right and
held fate in the balance.
The clocks showed hours and minutes
but no signs
of what occurred. No memory
had come to roost
once the panic was dispersed.
Everybody left the scene
for traffic to resume, but in
the spaces in between the slow cars
and the fast, the bird came down with its
ungainly posture and red
face to clean
away the final traces. Then
it rose in a state of grace
toward the waiting sky.

David Chorlton is a European and longtime resident of Phoenix. He loves the desert and avoids complaining about the heat! He paints from time to time and writes consistently, with a short book, The Inner Mountain, about the nearby desert mountain park in poetry and paintings (Cholla Needles Press), with another recent publication, Unmapped Worlds from FutureCycle Press.

The Wise and Foolish Virgins


Grab a lamp. Off we go.
Here’s our secret:

We are all wise.
We go not to meet the bridegroom

but to avoid him altogether,
for a woman needs a man

like a fish needs a camel. 
We will talk among ourselves 

about the taste of wine, 
sharing the bottle, 

the price of oil, 
and the lamp that helps us see ahead

in the moonless dark.
We gather on the edge of the city

where we will not be followed
 by clownish men orating

scripture and sin. One day
we will outnumber them. 

Our laughter perfumes the desert,
and the dust from our sandals

will choke all predators
as we return to our rooms

and scribble our verses 
well past midnight.

Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, ParisLitUp, Meniscus, Agenda, Gradiva and other journals. Her most recent book of poetry is Edges.

Sestina for Seventy
 
Summoning grit to face this winter chore:
though I would rather sip hot tea, I’ll choose
the January wind and snow, divide
my comforts from a rougher, fiercer side—
so while the northwest wind hurls cold abuse,
determination thrusts me out the door.
 
Mom’s Puritan equation mandates use
of anything I scrape from plates. Her chore
carves virtue out of waste. And Dad’s divide
thrusts all forgiveness out the battered door,
responsibility the only grace he’d choose.
“Work more,” he’d growl, affection swept aside.
 
Bones from the night before are what I choose
as feast to carry past the wind-slammed door
and half across the icy field. My chore
will feed the tree-perched crows with scraps outside
where they delight in what I didn’t use
gorging on skin and fat. I will divide
 
my soul from past instructions, turn aside
the bitterness of past defeat. I’ll use
the sharp air of the storm as if the door
enabled me to frame my own divide,
hurling away what’s bitter—I can choose
to bear my blue amazement as no chore.
 
Be good, behave, be what my parents choose:
This route’s become a foolish, useless chore,
something that threatens to again divide
the joys I treasure, setting love aside
as if enjoyment had no higher use.
As if the rhyme were rope instead of door!
 
Then I declare, through wide-swung wind-blessed door,
let virtue topple loose. Why chafe with chore
when joy can be the wild storm that I choose,
its white amazement feathered for my use.
When every feather’s settled at my side
the warmth of new forgiveness will divide
 
the world that once my parents tried to choose
from one I’m building, word by word, outside:
oh grace of storm, inhaled; oh, open door. 

Beth Kanell lives in northeastern Vermont, with a mountain at her back and a river at her feet. She’s a published poet, novelist, historian, and memoirist, and shares her research and writing process at BethKanell.blogspot.com. 

What We Know, or Not


Through the mounds of drifted white
	a squirrel, perhaps, leaves its trail,
has leapt from hedge to tree
		then scrambled up the trunk
			to hang on a branch, or not,
daring itself to fall, then darts to sturdiness,
	sits with an acorn in near-human hands, 
		hunched like The Thinker before
			the downward scurry.	
Only conjecture.

Eons above, on a winter’s night, Orion
	searches for bits of stars that fell
		from his belt and became
			neutrinos or some-such
invisible particles. The glow of the Milky Way
	is lost in dark matter, which probably exists
		and could swallow everything whole at any moment,
			licking its lips, filling its dark belly
with nothingness. And through it all

the world keeps turning, stars keep spinning 
		in a cosmic sleight-of-hand, where
humans are pulled out of a hat like rabbits, or not,
		like a coin in the hand of a magician who tucks it 
	behind the ear of a child at a birthday party, when 
		tricks are applauded, tracks left
			on a snow-covered garden,
and we try to guess
		what is the truth.

Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, ParisLitUp, Meniscus, Agenda, Gradiva and other journals. Her most recent book of poetry is EDGES.

MaritaIn, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages


I see in you, poring and praying over images,
a charitable hermeneutic, art criticism 
as love of neighbour, that contemplation 
which alone reveals the true value of charity.
Careful attention paid to the particular work made, 
reception on that work’s own terms, naming the ways 
important human concerns – longings, laments, 
joys, failures, discontent – are active in the work 
and bear on you and me – us – today.
Giving yourself without reservation 
to all that demands your attention,
believing in the dignity of every 
natural activity, with which one knows 
through experience, integral humanism.
Throwing your heart into things like a dart 
or a rocket, seeing within the thing itself 
the flash of spiritual light where a glimpse of God 
shines out, a fleeting reality in which 
there flashes the slightest glimmer of love or beauty,
the call of love to which love alone responds, 
the invisceration of supernatural, boundless charity 
in the very exercise of poetic gift. A genuflection 
of thought in the presence of God; reason having 
warmth, movement, and generosity, just like the heart, 
reasoning that touches and moves 
when it begins in charity, 
intellectual charity.

(Based on: ‘Sister Wendy Beckett – A Reminiscence By Revd Jonathan Evens’, Artlyst, 2018; ‘Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism – Interview Revd Jonathan Evens’, Artlyst, 2018; and ‘The Story of Two Souls’, H. Bars & E. Jourdan ed, Fordham University Press, 1988)

Jonathan Evens is Associate Vicar for HeartEdge at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Through HeartEdge, a network of churches, he encourages congregations to engage with culture, compassion and commerce. He writes on the Arts for a range of publications including Artlyst, ArtWay and Church Times. He is co-author of ‘The Secret Chord,’ an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief. He blogs at Between: https://joninbetween.blogspot.com/

After All This

The earth was without form and an empty waste, and darkness was upon the face of the very great deep. The Spirit of God was brooding over the face of the waters.
—Genesis 1:2


In the midst of miracles
At this moment of sand
	The definitions and philosophies of stone
	The separation of bones and dust
	Of air from eyes
	The architecture of lungs in creatures and the lungs of earth.

In a sky 
	A universe, stuffed full of everything
At the beginning of love
	Of oneness
Just one moment ago.

Filling, filling, filling,

Stars and void
Molecules and sound,
The everything hidden inside everything, part of everything,
Connected in one way or another to everything else. 
	Pretend
	People that do not look like you 
	Are not like you.

Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Pinyon, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. His book, November Reconsideredwas published by Cirque Press. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, the annual Salem Poetry Festival, and was a 2020 nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate. 

Leftover Miracles

My mouth is narrow.
I cannot open it wide enough
to feast on all that a day offers.

Example: today
the sky is a sinkhole
writing in watercolor
which the crows are circling
(those slicked, stern critics)

there are eleven new roses
swathed around sticks
like tufts of pink cotton
almost too sweet

and a man stops
to tug a bit
on his daughters jacket
and answer why
for the seventh time 

he nearly misses
the shuffling bus
on which everyone notices
each other
and pretends not to

on which two women 
will tell him, what a sweet
child, and he will glance
at another man’s newspaper
surreptitiously.

Onion skins waft
their way into everything
a promise of tomorrow’s 
bounty, and the handprints
climbing up the walls
like a prayer.

And one mother holds
a sick child close 
to her breast, incarnate
Madonna of the one
resting in the corner.

Anything 
could be
ahead -

tiny fingers 
iridescent with suds
wild mornings
that suddenly grow still
the steel blade of hope
knifing its way through
a kind of despair

it is too much
to chew;
I am gulping 
the world down whole
I am managing
only the crumbs 
the leftover miracles
piled into baskets 
(nothing is wasted
after all, keep the
big meals for the ones
with larger stomachs)

I am watching the world 
break open and multiply 
before my very eyes.

Jenna K Funkhouser is a poet and author living in Portland, Oregon, always trying to cross through the membrane of the sacred surrounding us. Her poetry has recently been published by Geez Magazine, the Saint Katherine Review, Ekphrastic Review, and As It Ought To Be, among others.

Orpheus. Cerberus. Charon.

…und wussten nicht mehr von der leichten Leier
RM Rilke, Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes

I’d never thought to turn my song to any earthly purpose.
The singing always seemed to rise from somewhere else,
outside the tidy universe that swirled about my self-possession.

I’d hauled this dangling lyre through all the careless hours
like a birthmark, like last night’s dream or a surplus limb,
its cargo loose as air, swinging like a garment with my step.

But now it is the heavy place my fingers find, this empty hand
that reaches for my vanished bride, this instrument I never knew,
and never sought and never saw as instrumental ‘til today,

until beside this river into darkness, where love lies unaware,
and where the pathway plunges dimly on the distant bank,
the one-way road where every footfall signals dread but mine,

the fearful baying pauses and a twisted boatman dips his fatal oar
to fetch me over, waiting, living, at the shore.

DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. His work has appeared in Neologism, Consilience Journal, PoeticaMagazine and The Jewish Literary Journal, and is forthcoming in Tar River, Innisfree and The Deronda Review.

His Way 


Sitting on our flat tar roof
like a library lion, 
he was big as a raccoon
and striped, too, 
but without a mask. 

There were no trees, 
no ladders, no porch crannies 
granting access to our roof.
Still, the cat was there,
at roof-edge 
observing the street below.  

I let him in the rug-shaking door.  
At eight, I fancied myself 
a cat charmer, 
able to entice a feline 
with a slow, swaying finger 
held just a whiff 
from its nose.   

This cat showed no interest
in such a ploy. 

But when I sat 
on the edge of the bed,
suddenly 
he was on my lap— 
so large he overlapped my lap— 
purring.  

I tested the cat.  
Lifted him off me,  
stood up, 
walked around.
There was no clinging to my legs,
no fawning head rubs, 
no ingratiation. 
When I sat down, 
at once he settled again 
on my lap. 

I think this must be
what it is to meet the Buddha.
Appearing unaccountably 
and without fanfare. 
An absence of disdain 
and of neediness.
A presence 
encompassing
and yet 
without claim.  

I was eight. I knew this cat 
was not looking for a home.  
I led him downstairs,
opened the front door, 
watched him go on his way.  

Rita Moe’s poetry has appeared in Water~Stone, Poet Lore, Slipstream, and other literary journals. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Sins & Disciplines and Findley Place; A Street, a Ballpark, a Neighborhood.  She has two grown sons and lives with her husband in Roseville, Minnesota.