Monthly Archives: August 2022

Wisconsin Barn, Sunday Morning


They are talking about the Church of Saint John
	Coltrane on NPR.
You wouldn’t like how they play A Love
	Supreme in the background
Like crickets, 
	like atmosphere.

I stop at the barn on the way
	back from getting the paper, 
Roll down the window, watch the flycatcher
	sit on the wire, dart along the roof,
Come back again.

After you died we took your Coltrane collection 
	to the public library. I had never heard 
Saint John and yet somehow I knew
	I knew if we had dropped the box
In the middle of the street, there would have been no
	stopping the music, ever,
Ever.


We have been to church. Light in the indigo
	riffs on the Epistle
Makes psalms out of milkweed,
	makes this waste place 
A parable.

If there is an old barn somewhere in Coltrane
	any sun-loved red elegance
Any steel roof elated with light, any timbered 
	vault like a cathedral where
The Irrepressible slides in 
	sideways through every hallowed interval

Hides you, surprises you, well
	you would know.

Somewhere at the Church of Saint John
	they are exalting in God.
A sax gives the sermon
	the flycatcher stitches	
A benediction in the bright air

You would understand.

Melaney Poli is an artist, writer, and Episcopalian nun. She is the author of the accidental book of poems You Teach Me Light: Slightly Dangerous Poems and an accidental novel, Playing a Part.

Three Haiku

A drop of dew forms
and an empty nest remains 
as the crane takes flight.

The singing bowls ring
announcing Buddha nature
a plum blossom blooms.

A night heron drinks
pure water from a blue shell
sanctity unfolds.

Caroline Reddy’s accepted and published work include poems in Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Clinch, Cacti-Fur, Star*line, Braided Way, Active Muse.org and Soul Lit.  In the fall of 2021, her poem A Sacred Dance was nominated for Best of The Net prize by Active Muse. 

Head in the Clouds



The cloud, so distant from me here,
on earth, on this wood of our deck,
on two feet, looking up.
I reel it in, and imagine 
droplets misting my face…
tears or shower; relief, renewal;
it's all there, in a white fluffy ball
changing semblance in winds 
that come from all directions.
Able to morph; adapt.
Can I be the cloud? May I 
take it as my cotton-filled pillow,  
tuck it under my head,
let muscles relax, 
and dream-visions come?
Resting on the cloud, 
I send thoughts up and away. 
It is near, and far; 
supportive, and sieve-like. 
I will bring cloud down, wrap it round,
wear it as a shawl, or skirt. I will twirl,
letting it take what shapes it may.
I’ll see how the cloud is holding me
today. I know there are days I laugh aloud; 
in some, feel enveloped by trepidation.          
Let me remember, while still free from shroud, 
to lift my gaze and not ignore. 
In that space and time, of each given day,
whichever season, let me adore, 
adore, adore.

Marjorie Moorhead writes from a river valley at the border of NH/VT. She is grateful to have found poetry as a language and community in which to ponder different facets of existence, such as survival, relationship, responsibility, faith. Much of her work can be accessed at https://marjoriewritespoetry.wordpress.com/places-you-can-see-my-work/

Dharma: Vision

Day. Night. Their shadows
creep up slowly as age. We
are not prophets; we do not

live in deserts, where there 
is no hope of rain. No; instead,

I live with you in an old house
deep in the woods, and seize
upon the harmless wild of your

eyes. My gaze sees but does 
not penetrate. Am I blind?

Perhaps. Beyond the woods, I face
the wide, unbroken sea, transfixed
by the horizon.
 

Christopher Kuhl earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and one in 
music composition, as well as two masters of music degrees and a PhD in 
Interdisciplinary Arts. He taught English at the Illinois Mathematics 
and Science Academy. He enjoys reading a wide array of literature, as 
well as philosophy and history.

Of Others


some put in what I would leave out, the rest
leave out the things that I put in. You’ll get,
I promise you, no sins gone unconfessed,
no propaganda, homily, or bet
on how to get to heaven—nor to win
a two-way trip to hell to see the sights.
You might imagine me on onionskin,
your own verse reading through beneath stray lines;
it’s only my faint marks upon the page
that let you see your own words quite so clear,
and even listen as their tones assuage
your pain. But you’re unhurt? Then have no fear.
I’ll merely dot your i’s and cross your t’s.
I wish to put you perfectly at ease.

Dan Campion‘s poems have appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). A selection of his poems was issued by the Ice Cube Press in July 2022: https://icecubepress.com/2021/10/01/a-playbill-for-sunset/

a field in england

 
you can trust our concealed conversations:
we have been growing your bodies for years.
 
pour yourself another cup of bitter. stir
honey in, to smooth out the beating.
 
so. here it is, our golden teaching: 
 
you will not be cured of your loneliness,
your longing – deep, incapable
 
of communion with stars. there will
always be a surface, a distance from

and a distance within.
 
you do not need to eavesdrop on others –
they too: incapable of salvaging. they too:

clueless when it comes to being.
 
here is the plan: 
 
when you are finished exploring 
alternatives, and each route leading you 
 
back here; when you are done jolting,
jerking a panic of splashes, and realise
 
that you can breathe, being a fish – 

then, you will begin to learn something. 
although we must warn you: at first,
 
learning does not feel like learning. 

Lorelei Bacht is a poetic experiment, a beautifully broken body, and a mother to two young children. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beir Bua, Dodging the Rain, The Madrigal, Briefly Zine, The Selkie, Green Ink Poetry, streecake, Marble Poetry, and elsewhere. She is also on Instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter @bachtlorelei

The Kaleidoscope

Susan Wilson lives in East London, UK and began writing poetry after her mother died in 2017. That loss opened the door to inspiration. She has been published by Lucy Writers, Snakeskin, Runcible Spoon, Dreich, Areopagus, Streetcake, Rue Scribe and Amethyst Review and her debut chapbook is I Couldn’t Write to Save Her Life (Dreich, 2021).

Last Day on Earth as a Human


Kneel in the spaces that you walked all over,
Today somehow sacred.
Steal a glimpse at faces
You somehow made silent strangers of.
Look at the sea,
Just look at the sea
And wonder how you never really did.

Forgive anyone who crossed you,
It takes courage.
Remember what you will not miss.
The prison of the late body,
The early release of souls.
The perfect sky.

Algo is from Ireland. In self imposed self isolation, Algo only wears black and enjoys studying the school of Austrian Economics, reading comic books and meditating. Algo once thought he was a nihilist but now believes in something higher.

Fingerprints of Ether


ice crystals reflect thoughts; prayers
as they unfold, as if contemplating--
like a still pond reflects the sky

& each snowflake is unique
like a fingerprint of ether

now that I know this
I have yet another reason
to give thanks to water

as if existence itself 
celebrates its affirmation
 
& I wonder if
when we dream
do the waters of our bodies
dream with us?

Fern Golden (they/them or she/hers) is a Dena’ina Athabaskan artist from Alaska. Their writing navigates the confluences of culture and language, ecology and belonging, chronic illness, and healing.  

Hunger 

I awake with a new hunger this morning, one that can’t be satiated with food.  It is an emptiness hollowed out in me like a quarry.  The way the vast stillness of space swallows any sound.  I get up and make coffee, the kitchen still quiet in the predawn darkness.  It is a large cup, and after drinking it, I feel like an inland sea.  I notice a ship sailing through the horizon of my ribs; it is filled with blue horses, the kind that you might find in a Chagall painting.  Surrounded by them on the beach, I look for apples to offer, but the horses lead me to a pasture where they graze.  Not sure what to do, I watch in silence until one of them nudges me.  I look up and see the sun rising like a mosaic and, for a moment, feel myself becoming stained glass.  

in the desert
the long search
for mana

Keith Polette has published poems in both print and online journals.  His book of haibun, pilgrimage, received the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award in 2021.