Monthly Archives: January 2023

Holy Basil
 
 
I notice the young holy basil, 
delicate,
 
with its two shiny leaves 
like tiny elephant ears.
 
I ask it, why we live—
then leave it for a day
and come back.
 
Then leave it for a day
and come back.
 
Without directly answering the question:
            
each day 
I watch it grow.

Ahrend Torrey is the author of Bird City, American Eye (Pinyon Publishing, 2022) and Small Blue Harbor (Poetry Box Select, 2019). His work has appeared in storySouth, The Greensboro Review, and The Perch (a journal of the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, a program of the Yale School of Medicine), among others. He earned his MA/MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and is a recipient of the Etruscan Prize awarded by Etruscan Press. He lives in Chicago with his husband Jonathan, their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova, and Purl their cat. 

Bridge of Souls
                                      
 I.
As I leaned over the railing of the Millbrook Bridge
to contemplate the rusty water and the witchy leaves below,

reflections shone on the leaves, where they lay like clotted roe.
A man, sporting a wreath of silvery hair, approached.

His gait was halting, but his blue eyes danced. At first, 
he walked by; then he stopped, turned around, and asked

What are you looking at?

I’m watching the water and the way the light 
ripples copper and blue across the leaves below.

Oh, he called out, You’re doing it just for your soul!
Yes, I replied, happily surprised that he knew.

I presumed you were sent by the town 
to check on the quality of the Millbrook’s water.
                                    
 II.
It’s the soul that interests me. Now, toward the end
of my life, my view is rapidly expanding, like a brook 

in spring, playing its rushing  rhythms over the rocks 
and roots below. I now have time to know who I am

before I go. I count the time in moments now. Just to “be” 
is thrilling, and to see what’s around me, and who. 

III.
 I felt that with you, just now, he said. 

And I felt it with you.
        
I’ve come to know that doing without being was not fully living. 
All of my “doing” years brought me little peace.

And now I must go. I wished the old soul good-speed, 
and then slowly, he turned, and disappeared from view.

I returned to my place on the bridge, 
      back to the brook and the light, 
      and to the copper and the blue.

                                        
                                   

Susan R. Page lives in Concord, MA. She began writing poetry in a Lesley University workshop with Elizabeth McKim and Judith Steinbergh, and in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry Writing Seminar at Harvard. She is currently a member of Not the Rodeo Poets writing group. Her poetry has been published in The Cumberland Review and Amelia.

To Be Fed



I saw him in the grocery line lay down 
a can of beans, a loaf of bread, some milk.
I paid his bill, a total of two dollars.

And now we walk apart in winter twilight,
my dog with me and he alone, our food 
in knapsacks—mine, full, yet feels hollow still.

I should have given him my pears, imagining
how round and sweet they would have tasted
in his cardboard lean-to near the river.

I walk past geese out gleaning tattered cornfields. 
Measured, ordered, land is parceled, owned.
In their migrations, “in” and “out” are moot; 

the remnant fields for them are for surcease, 
for the gathering of some meager sustenance,
since they, as do the multitudes, must eat.

In the falling dark and cold their barking builds,
and then they lift, the pull itself ineffable
inside a wild cacophony of calls.

I stop. My dog continues down the road.
As snow begins to fall, I stand and listen
to them fade into the feathery gray.

I turn for home but feel a gnawing hunger 
to be desperate in the landscape, too, half- 
alive, in search of scattered seeds, of rising 

high enough to get my bearings, somewhere,  
seeing far below those men—me, him—
the geese, the dog, all looking for a place

to rest our wings and heads and hearts, to eat
our cache of bitter food, to deem ourselves 
as beautiful. And finally, to be fed.

Brian Palmer is intrigued with and often writes about the vital and undeniable intersections of our physical, mental, and spiritual lives. His poetry has appeared in various journals including Expansive Poetry Online, Bristlecone, The Society of Classical Poets, and The Lyric.

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Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee;
All things pass:
God never changes.
Patience attains
All that it strives for.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.
 —St.  Theresa of Avila, 16th century

At Woolworth’s 
my mother bought 

two yards of wide,
red satin ribbon,
 
parsed it into six 
inch lengths, 

pinked a crown
on the top of each,

sheared an alpine slope
at the bottoms, 

fed them one by one 
into the roller 

of our portable 
Smith-Corona.

Letter by letter, 
fingering each key

like beads 
of a rosary, 

she imprinted 
the saint’s prayer 

and handed the ribbons out  
like benedictions. 

Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee…

I found solace 
in the words;

saw in Theresa 
a sister in renouncement;

and times 
would even weep 

at being addressed, 
so tenderly, as thee.   

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.  

An Appropriate Violence 
 
We’re all alone, at home, and drinking data. 
The Wi-Fi fuels our drunk cacophony 
Of beeps and buzzes, warning rings and dings, 
And “like” alerts. The clamor builds and breaks 
Our focus. Frenzied noise destroys our words 
And interrupts our day into a city 
Of disconnected hours where thoughts and minutes 
Are next-door strangers. Quick and cold, we look 
Away, we lock the doors and draw the curtains. 
 
Inside the noise, we never have to think 
Or feel a drought, the desert’s calling voice. 
We can ignore the quiet’s seeking thirst by 
Feeding our poverty a noisy glut. 
We send away the silent invitation. 
 
But when the power’s out, the silence sings 
And stops the subtle hum of house. Our screens 
Fall dark, black mirrors that can’t connect. And so 
We gaze into a vague familiar hint 
Of mystery somewhere beyond our reach. 
 
We’re lured to desert solitude where time 
And thoughts collect, reflect mirage, and ripple 
Thirst for a purpose. Here, we struggle. Here 
We crack our will and face temptation. Seeking 
Just like Elijah: listening to wind, 
To earth, to fire, and lastly to the still 
Small voice of violent tenderness, the hush 
That opens hearts to let the truth sink in. 
 
This is a privileged time, the desert hour, 
Where we are ground, where we are crushed, where we 
Rend hearts with whispers in the wilderness. 

Maura H. Harrison is a poetry student in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. She lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia. 

Advisement

The barrenness spurs me to scratch a glim of His grace. 
This cloudiness is quieter than crevices my calm dwells
in: propinquity inspires new lines and natty stanzas. 

Every footpad has a back story: like him, we’re innocent 
of our chapters in the cosmic omnibus. Someone else is 
in queue: this is the core of continuity.

Sanjeev Sethi has authored seven books of poetry. His latest is Wrappings in Bespoke (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK, August 2022). He has been published in over thirty countries. His poems have found a home in more than 400 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He is the recipient of the Ethos Literary Award 2022. He is the joint-winner of Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Twitter @sanjeevpoems3 || Instagram sanjeevsethipoems

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Timothy Berrigan works in adult and community literacy at the Brooklyn Public Library. His work has appeared in Columbia Journal, The Maine Review, The Perch, SPECTRA, The Scores, SPAM Zine, and elsewhere. He lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. 

How it Began 
 
Voice entered earth 1.5 billion years ago 
through cilia, a foundation for life’s awareness 
for sound waves. 
 
Before that, the roar of thunder, turning tides, 
wind howling its music across mountains 
and plains had no audience. 
 
Sometimes on a walk far away from roads 
and human contact you catch it, 
that feeling of being the first to hear. 

Cilia (or stereocilia) are hair cells found in the inner ear. They respond to fluid motion in animals and humans for various functions, including hearing and balance.

Heather Walker is a London-based writer of poetry and short fiction. She often writes about the human connection with earth. Her work has appeared in several anthologies as well as Ink Sweat & Tears, Visual Verse, Seaborne and Popshop.

Thankyou

small life in half darkness, 
tasting leaves, 	sweeter sweet decay
as the swollen morning opens, parts
of myself. I have given every 	one		over in sleep

to this healing, poetry the edge
of me, the only shape left hanging on my hollow,
I try to braid as I braid long hair in the dark.
Just like my mother, I have longed to be 

what I already am. This redness
a fire I’ve known better 	with my fast tongue than 
any other quickness.

Until this morning. 
I have been emptied. 

What is left is Thankyou. As I swallow & swallow
it brims my body with warmth, with salt
the most frustrating & forceful are elementally 	submerged
underneath it’s eclipse. 

I walk to the window, unsure of where to put my hands
now that I am oceans of Thankyou. The pinkening hills.

My words survive as small dark seeds
& are buried. 
I have little to say.

Aiyana Masla is the author of the chapbook Stone Fruit (Bottlecap Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Cordella Press, the West Trestle Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Vagabond City Poetry, Rogue Agent Journal, and as a part of the collection So Many Ways to Draw a Ghost. Based in Brooklyn, New York, she is an interdisciplinary artist and an anti bias educator. More of her work can be found at www.AiyanaMasla.com

THE SYMEON PROPOSITION
St. Symeon Stylites, A.D. 389 - A.D. 459.

Symeon Stylites, the elder, the most famous of the pillar saints, lived about 30 miles or a twelve hours' ride from Antakya, Syria in the mountains. There he made his home for forty-two years
on successively higher columns, the last one sixty-six feet tall.
 
Telanissos, Syria.  March, A.D. 459
 
 
I.  after
 
Thighbone to heaven...
and I am climbing,
even in the huddled light of nightwings,
skyward.
 
As far away as "now" you will want details.
As close as "then" they came curiously staring,
pointing, seeking.
You must somehow see particulars as irrelevant.
That is the message: neither noun,
nor verb, nor adjective, but preposition;
and in the disposition is everything.
 
Balanced precipitously, purposely,
you may take me too seriously, finding fun,
my message intolerable.
This pillar I built beginning with an outcrop
of rock, pulpit to the distant valley; the rocks
rolled heavenward, mortar and trowel working
a circular ascension, the sand path wrapping its way
around the whole.  That was the beginning.
 
You desire to know the miraculous;
I shall resist your temptation.
 
II.  inside
 
Grained, concentric around the radiant purpose,
purposing, in the narrowing of years,
mined of purpose, scoriaceous in the wound’s flesh,
I serve to heal, leaving the escutcheon of my memory
as gift.
 
There is no reason to begin in the preface
in order to arrive.  The possibility is alive
even in the preposterous preposition.
 
III.  about
 
So what, you will say, if the fellow has climbed
a furlong to heaven?  An excited ecstatic,
you will think, worth only the view. 
It was a small decision, a few feet at first:
the preposition disposed;
yet in fervor, the heart spills its abundance and
is enlarged.
 
Running away from or toward,
I needed to be with you but not with you:
reachable but out of reach.  In your day,
I would make the tabloids as astral figure,
a supernal lightning rod.
 
You want to know details:
how I ate, slept, whether my bowels churned,
as if it matters.
 
You think I knew everything wrapped
in ethereal haze, the sugared hush
of sanctity.
 
I knew nothing.
 
IV.  beyond
 
Behind my squared patio,
balustrade against the winds,
a canyon gorge.  There stone cliffs
shadow the swift river, green with minerals,
that flows joining the Orontes, joining the sea.
 
In my view, the sweep of fields:
the soft first blossoms in apricot orchards;
rivulets filled with the last snows melting,
overflowing shallow banks,
washing the world; and nearer yet,
an olive grove, leaves, green-gray, then
Midas silver in the breeze.
And always an outline of mountains,
the muted colors, an irregular tapestry:
background, a gray furze; highlights in mauve, 
green, ocher, punctuated occasionally
with clusters of dark fir.
 
To the southeast, Antioch spreading
across the plain into sprawling suburbs,
winding around the river, winding its way.
 
And the people, every afternoon
I see the people, begging for healing, begging.
 
And I see the stalwart line held steadfast
by my penance.
 
V.  despite
 
And how was I fed and what did I eat?
My table's fortune was supplied.
Imagine:
St. Anthony's raven offering a surprised berry;
a gull, inland from the sea, bearing a flopping fish;
a peasant wife raising, at sunset, a wicker basket
filled with apricots or manna from the carob tree.
 
It is a necessity to know?
One either consumes or is consumed.
I made the scarcer choice.  A fire
that burns through hunger, this choice;
mind and spirit freed from flesh,
for consider the apricot beneath whose soft,
textured fruit lies the heart—a stone with wings.
 
VI.  for
 
Dramatic action?  It was not missing:
 
the wayward bee, fat-pollened body,
exploring an anthered vase of lily, its velvet halls,
then flying, flowering the world;  
 
the antlered summer sky, flashes clashing
like invisible wills working their want;
 
the beetle moving slowly across
jagged rock, finding its way carefully,
leaving its green-bronze armor, vulnerable,
in its exertion,
as you are, as I was.
 
VII.  before
 
At the monastery I slept outside the gate for days,
begging, sure of my intention,
the dusty evenings embroidering my aspirations.
And when I would not go away,
they let me in.
 
I could offer everything, and
so I did.  I was suspect, watched, wondered at,
a prize circling the confines in a cage of straw.
Years leafed, unleafed the seasons.
Leaving community, leaving...
I chose a strange, stalagmite existence,
chaining myself at first with a leg iron,
later testing my courage in staying,
by cutting it free, bolstered only by my spirit's
plinth and plenty.
 
How ridiculous I must seem, irrelevant
in a world moving horizontally across time;
my standing on one leg; the heron, landing,
standing on one leg, too, eyes cast heavenward,
as if mocking me. Laughing, I understood. 
 
VIII.  into
 
Always in my cyclopedic eye, Antioch:
I saw ships laden with cloves and cinnamon,
coriander and fennel, sailing from her river port
to Alexandria, Athens, Rome.
 
I saw the baths—
solarium, tepidarium, frigidarium—
sleek bodies resting in the ease of leisure
rubbed with unguents, and perfumes.
 
Saw the goldsmiths hammering effigies
that rivaled those of Ephesus,
the butchers, the wine merchants;
saw the sailors following hearts incised
on marble markers—mappings
to languid prostitutes.
 
Saw the splendors of a Dionysian feast
articulated in mosaics, busy with beasts
and garlands and grinning satyrs.
Saw the Temple of Hecate,
its jasper steps, a descent to the cavernous
and polished rooms of Hell; and
I have chosen, as missile of reversal,
an ascension, further and future,
beseeching with proximity.
 
Saw before dawn, the 14th of September,
in the bluing of the wind, Antioch crumbling
around its uneasy ground, the quarter,
Ostrakine, destroyed,
the island palace, Diocletian's palace,
with the Tetrapylon of Elephants collapsing;
the colonnades, the baths, the clepsydra,
trick and trickle of time, all destroyed;
the city ablaze in its newly-shaped destruction.
 
I heard the intercessions;
I saw the dispossessed, the weary.
 
IX.  from
 
Pillow and pillory,
my pillar became an arrow finding aim,
became a focus for affection.
 
Obelisk oblation,
from my vertiginous vantage,
opening a window on verity,
I, like a frail needle,
am magnetized to wonder.
 
X.  toward
 
Attendant, ardent, I
await the briared rose
that climbs the cliff of summer;
await the hovering cloud, apricot and orchid,
announcement of magnificent presence;
await the horizontal journey, the side-wise severing,
that begins after, ends with expectation.
 
XI.  until
 
Visible bell, temple of fleche and flesh,
burning wick on my great candle:
syllable and sign
for all who come to hear, to see—
for you, deep down drawn to upward,
I offer the preposition,
the apricot.
 
Observe my groaning
who, in diametrical dissonance,
falling found the rhyme's lay,
failing found the strength of slight;
held them, orb to the world,
and felled
the cedar gates of heaven's court.
 

 
 

Ann Power is a retired faculty member from the University of Alabama.  She enjoys writing historical sketches as well as poems based in the kingdoms of magical realism.  Her work has appeared in: Spillway, Gargoyle Magazine, The Birmingham Poetry Review, The American Poetry Journal, Dappled Things, Caveat Lector, The Copperfield Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Loch Raven Review, Amethyst Review, and other journals. In addition, Ann’s poem, “Ice Palace” (The Copperfield Review) was nominated for Best of the Net in Poetry for 2021.