Monthly Archives: February 2023

Mary Magdalen Seated Before a Mirror

After Georges de La Tour, Penitent Magdalen, 1640



                        1.

Beneath the wood 
ran lines of water,
cutting across the root.

The wood had rotted;
it broke off in her hand,
splintery like a clod of earth,
crawling, and beneath her hand
the sharp running blades –
her dry, soundless weeping,
her solitude.


                        2.

She knew that she had fallen:
the cold descent 
a jewel of knowledge 
placed upon her.

Close by was the little dresser
with its oval glass, oblique,
discreet in dust – 
unwilling to embarrass her.

The dresser in a child’s size;
she had to fold herself up to be near it,
to trace with her finger the oval,
the old view.  The first.

She placed her fingers on the surface:
here; here.
She bent forward, turned her head
to the sliding impossible image,
the eyelash, the whole, the furnished room:
now it is there.

                        3.

To her flesh was laid the edge of the knife,
division of eternity.

The skin was lifted away.
Veils fluttered,
unresisting the edge that caught, lifted,
found easily the quick fraying,
the edge everywhere at once,
the separation at first schematic
along the warp and the weft,
then from each point
equal motion in all directions was possible,
all outwards,
the veil lifted: torn, adrift, smoke.

The muscles of the body lay exposed,
bound in curving sheaves,
braided into one another at the narrow end;
the sheaves of the reed boat journeying,
at every point at the crossing
of descending lunar spears,
and the horizontal breaking 
of silver multitudes
of blades cutting the water.

Braided around the globe of the eye,
the cavity of the mouth,
locked fingers of the open hand,
down the neck, across the shoulders,
the breast, the belly, the arms
and the thighs and the lower legs,
all the limbs and parts,
locked fingers drawn tight,
then loosening, 
rising to curve,
then drawn, twisted tight, 
drawn down.

What word, what step,
what composed and thoughtful gesture
was possible,
drawn from the locked knot of fingers
blind, groping to open and close, 
unclenched, mute?

And the slashed triangle,
slashed like the backbone of a fish,
slashed like the locked, interwoven edges
of the sheaf?

                          4.

To the veil, the reed boat, the sheaf,
from the mirror, the water, the wood,
a candle approached,
as flame, and light.

Cynthia Sowers was a Senior Lecturer at the Residential College of the University of Michigan. Until her retirement in 2019, she developed and taught interdisciplinary courses for the Arts and Ideas in the Humanities Program. Her past teaching and current creative activity are centered on the engagement of literature and the visual arts.  She has published poetry, drawings and paintings in The Solum Journal (2020; 2021) and poetry in Amethyst Review (2021).  She has published a short story, “A Trap to Catch the Earth,” in The Carolina Quarterly (Spring/Summer 2021).

Jacob

The night I fled my father and brother
I came to a certain place at sundown.
I used a stone for my pillow and shelter
and while I slept the curtain of the sky
was lifted and I saw steps climbing up
to heaven and a face carved out of fire
fashioning a Temple. And my face glowed
from God and the angels of God who stood
over me, and I blessed the place when I woke,
the place where the future was folded up
and put beneath my head as a pillow.
And God’s voice and God’s visions pursued me,
they rattled like the fruit and leaves of the
almond tree, and peace were not on those lips.

The night before I met my brother again
I was alone with someone at that river,
and we wrestled through our strength on the ground
and we rose up to heaven and continued
to scuffle there, until both our bodies
glowed and he wrenched my leg into a limp,
and adorned me with a new name – Israel.
And he did not tell me I would find peace,
he did not say there would simply be love,
he did not simply say “sons and daughters,”
but he did say, “You will always see the
morning others hoped to keep from you.
Your stubbornness will never cease, your words,
your families, no more than this blue river.”

I was marked by all my family’s stories
I was marked by this wrestler in God’s skin
I was marked by what God did to my body,
making it whole with injury and strangeness.
I will die with sons and grandsons around me
and all of Egypt will be led beyond
the Jordan to mourn my body’s return
to those who made pilgrimage before me.
My years have been bright in enormous struggle,
in vivid love, injustice, and mercy.
Let the world worship every obvious
power and glory, and leave me alone
with silence and exile, the gathering
of my sparks, with God’s slow accumulation.

Tim Miller‘s books include the poetry collection Bone Antler Stone (High Window Press), and the long narrative poem, To the House of the Sun (S4N Books). He is online at wordandsilence.com, and can be heard on the poetry and mythology podcast Human Voices Wake Us.

The Nine Ways of St. Dominic


She made her prayers arrows and fired them forth 
from the bent bow of her heart, from the curve
of her need where she nocked each shaft on sinews
redly supple and listened for the fletches'
sizzle in flight.  She wanted to pierce heaven
with the sharpened ardor of her entreaty.

She had already tried prostration, flattened
herself—fitted sheet face down under slow
unblinking eye, the prickle of God's green 
grass an irritating mortification,
pressing a chaotic pattern in flesh 
of her cheek, forearm, and exposed stomach,

making her itch outside and in, the smell—
earthy dirtiness, growth—reminding her 
of her snaky lowliness.  She had wanted
forgiveness, notice, and something she could
not say even in cloister of her skull,
certainly not in the yard with the children 

at play around her.  She had bent before 
in adoration over these children,
each in its turn and all together, all
miracles beyond understanding.
She had held each one like an open book, 
like an offering entrusted to her,

each a wonder that grew in mystery.
She had felt each inside her and feels still
each so keenly that she must clasp her hands 
over her heart and clench her jaw.  She has
given herself more than once for each one,
spread her arms wide in universal sign

of welcome or surrender. She has made
an offering of herself, pelican 
mother.  She has stood back, her arms raised,
her palms out, the model of surprise 
or fear or thanks, her own heart awobble 
on unsteady legs, on first bike with wheels 

tilting, turning, rolling away, and then
returning, gratitude welling in her,
replacing the prayer she thought without saying.
Her children were her scripture, and she studied
them, each finger and nail, each hair she brushed
and braided, every smile and tear, each fold

of flesh or whorl of ear she washed and washed 
again.  These were the Rosary she worried
and treasured, the roses on which she prayed
and meditated, day and night, the joys 
beyond all number and prime, like starlings
wheeling as one according to God's will.

But now, as her children's lives turn from her 
in widening gyres, she presses her palms
together, raises them, stretching her arms
higher to lift her pleas to the right ear
of heaven.  She closes her eyes to the blank
blueness above and holds her breath and waits.

Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English, and now he tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and (maybe) enjoy. He has had a handful of poems published in Cimarron Review, Cobalt Review, English Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Poem, and other literary magazines.

Why I Wake up Early
 
I have eleven wild turkeys
that play and dance and eat all day.
Soon there will be turkey babies
who will learn the daily walks 
and rituals of their parents.
 
They pass by my red door without 
knocking, but I hear them all the same—
their cackle and, holy gods, how I envy 
their agility even when they are plump!
Oh, the joy they bring me to watch them free.
Do they have any cares, or is this what 
it means to belong to the Universe?
 
I rise to greet them each day. My heart 
pounds with concern when I do not see 
them at the expected time. I imagine the worst—
bears, foxes, humans… but before I can go on 
with my wretched thoughts, they show up. 
I do not wait for another sign to assure me that 
I, too, am loved somehow.

Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer from Uganda and assistant professor at UNC-Asheville. She has published three poetry books and her fourth poetry collection, The Animals of My Earth-School Institute, is forthcoming from Terrapin Books, 2023. Her prose, hybrids, and poems are published in Joyland, Shenandoah, The Cincinnati Review, andelsewhere.www.mildredbarya.com

Painting the View

. . . for holy theologians frequently liken that which is superessential and formless to fire.
                                                                  —Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite


River light on your mind,
the hunter’s snare of thoughts,
withdraws beneath a silver flock 
of wading birds with restless eyes.
What faultless day is long enough
for secret errands, flight unfolding,
signs left with a multitude
pale in shrouded winter mist?
I’ve known it all
through other eyes,
just as the artist on a cave wall
left a hint of that pure seeing
in the bull’s red ochre hair.

You speak of what the world misses,
sketched from dawn,
reflected from
our daily bread of hands and currents.

Unmoored branches floating free
with their seasoned shapeliness.

Throw your fire offering
to the water’s canopy.

Reviving now
a world in art,
tracing that primeval space
risks attracting fire trucks

alarmed by flames, by flames.

Charles Haddox lives in El Paso, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, and has family roots in both countries.  His work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. charleshaddox.wordpress.com

Prayer


Prayer is the siphon dipped into a well, 
the water suctioned up to revive the flowers, 
a bridge hanging over grief, a sleeping pill 
and the sleepless night’s aching tooth, the sour
taste of told lies, a pin-light in a mine,
the unrepentant’s agony of self-pity
in a waste of shame, a torch of knotty pine 
dazzling the eyes, a lock that’s hard to jimmy, 
fasting’s brother, sister of broken heart
beyond healing, an inarticulate groan 
of sorrow, earth and heaven achieving two-part
harmony, the lost child’s weeping for home,
a rope ladder dangling for the wary sinner, 
a garden that flowers only when you enter. 

J.S. Absher (www.js-absher-poetry.com ) is a poet and independent scholar. His fourth book of poetry, Skating Rough Ground, was published by Kelsay Books in 2022. His work has won awards from the NC Poetry Society, BYU Studies Quarterly, and the journal Dialogue, and has been nominated for three Pushcart prizes.

Shahada


أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّٰهُ
The Shahada


There is no god but God – 

			the very words
I was thinking early that February morning,
the day after I got my diagnosis.
And though those words didn’t actually cure my cancer,
they did shift reality enough 
to let a little divine light
in with the dawn. Nobody I know
gets up as early as I do. I like to believe
the universe is working like a mill wheel
when we’re not watching, and dawn is part of that.
And though my peace of mind may not depend
on the time of day, I am fond of the early morning –
it holds such promise. This universe we inhabit
propels us into the future according to its law.

The sand is like a living thing. Along 
the winding dunes, the windward and the lee
redraw their maps, and over them, as if
a mist, the sand is dancing. Walk awhile –
the sand shifts underfoot, and overhead,
the sun is high. Now, you can ride the sand:
you’ll gaze out at the endless dunes. A soul
might lose itself. Here, every grain you see
is placed just where it is, it is recorded.

Today, we walked the sands. And when we came
to sunset and the evening prayer, we sat
to break our fast. A man whirled on a stage.
We spoke of holy things and not so holy,
of those we’ve lost, of how life has its end.
A soul makes choices in the world: the world
is very large, and we are small in it.
Small as a distant star to light the night.
Small as a grain of sand the wind has caught.
 

John Claiborne Isbell taught French and German for many years in Indiana and Texas after his Ph.D. at Cambridge University. In 1996, he appeared in Who’s Who in the World. He has a new monograph, An Outline of Romanticism in the West, with Open Book Publishers, where it is available to download for free online. His first book of poetry, Allegro, came out in 2018. 

Can we go together?


If I can bring you into the light riding on the back of a rabbit
or tuck you up at night between the folds of her dewlap 
If I can describe how her nose works when following a sent trail
place your fingers on her cheeks to feel her teeth grind the fennel seeds she loves,
count her whiskers and measure the length of her ears with the palm of your hand.
If I can show you how she balances with her tail to listen
                                                                                            then we are begun.

If she makes you smile when she blinks and leaps
calls you with her tiny voice.
If she runs circles round you, enticing you to play
warns you of danger with her drum
                                                       then we are on our way.

If you can smell something essential in the soil 
hear the step of a human through your feet.
If you can feel the damp on your fur
taste the berry on your tongue.
If you inhale when someone you love comes close
carry the moon in your eye
                                           then there are no limits.
                                           

Ruth Gilchrist Home | Ruth Gilchrist (ruth-gilchrist.com) is a Scottish Book Trust live Author. She facilitates the Poetry Library Writing Mothers Group. Her award-winning Poems and Flash fiction have appeared in Federation of writers Scotland anthology as well as many others. Bird Brained is published by Publications (blackagnespress.co.uk)

After the rain


our small gathering trudged gravely 
through the drenched field.  It was burial-day 
and we were making for the cemetery, following a casket—
so small—borne only by the father.

It felt a trek as we trailed along.  Field’s brown, dead grass 
from last year, storm lashed, listing—stems broken, heads 
hung and old vine leaves streamed like the eyes of old Eve, 
mourning the divine intention.  At last, we reached 
the hole—so sheer, so deep to plant so small a seed, 
so black.

But what was happening? Early spring leaf, stalk, bark 
and bush seemed to spark as if they had thoughts, as if 
hollyhocks: as if they were spirited. Little bloomed, 
but what was there rose gladly with mauve 
and pink and gentian skirts—innocent, 
quirky and darling

and jarring—too alive for me. I felt mown by this scythe 
that was a baby. We knew what we had to do: we would 
put her to bed. First, the bedtime prayers, then 
cover her, tuck her in tenderly—oh, 
she was too named, too small, 
and far, far 
too real. 

Rain: starts, stops. 
Air: stillness, a glistening.
The sun: glints from rain-dropped leaf-buds.  
We pray. We kyrie. We hymn to our Mother-Father-God  
while the hallowing mother and father 
lay down their tiny girl, still-
born.  

Listen:  tree-swallows are calling a lullaby:
delicate alleluias.  

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. 

Gull

Perhaps mere cliché
yet her sighting still soothes
beneath sorrow's incision

here, as we gather to stand
over soil that will cradle
the casket's last calling.

Silver gull circles.

Somehow she knows -
she just knows.

When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and crochet. She volunteers in animal rescue tending to cat colonies. She walks with a birding group on Sundays through the neighborhood trails.  Her work has appeared in Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Amethyst Review, Spillwords and other wonderful places.Her latest collection is This water paint life, published by Origami Poems Project. She can be reached at veganflower00@gmail.com