Monthly Archives: May 2023

Sattva at Large


The door said “Shekinah, 
Inc.” I started to knock but
heard “come” there you
sat behind a big desk 
cascade of yellow hair
like desert hyacinth 
turned upside-down, 
coral-colored long 
tunic matching the 
rose in your left hand
— were you writing 
with it, like pink quill
whose feathers had 
ascended, spiraled,
bloomed? “Enfin!”
your eyes smiled a
blue I was so close to
recognizing. “Your
training is complete”
which was good as I
was 70 and out of work
“What’s my position?”
“Sitting standing walking”
eyes blossomed wider like
smile, I could see wisps
of white floating across
them you put down the
stem “Your title,” lids
blinked like years “I
like to name the poem
last” you slide a folder 
across with imprint
of round glasses and
a scar white-outed in
coral and blue I open
it; calligraphy combining 
Obrigado font and Ben
Zion reads
        Sattva at Large
“Salary?” I ask
“Taken care of” and 
then I realized the entire 
earth of your eyes




Wayne-Daniel Berard, PhD, is an educator, poet, writer, shaman, and sage. An adoptee and former Franciscan seminarian, his adoption search led to the discovery and embrace of his Jewishness. Wayne-Daniel is a Peace Chaplain, an interfaith clergy person, and former college chaplain. He publishes broadly in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. His latest books of poetry include the full-length Art of Enlightenment and a chapbook Little Ghosts on Castle Floors, poems informed by the Potterverse, both with Kelsay Books. He is the co-founding editor of Soul-Lit, an online journal of spiritual poetry (www.soul-lit.com). Wayne-Daniel lives in Mansfield, MA with his wife, The Lovely Christine.  

For Dorothy, From Will 

Like a householder at winter dusk, pulling down
one blind then another, are you on some time
table I cannot comprehend shuttered within
warm against the onset of change? Are you captive 
inside the bright casket of a failing brain, 
or am I prisoner, shut outside in this night’s 
long slow advance? You seem lighter than before, 
unburdened by memory and habit, you sing 
still but the quavery voice, off key, that I hear
is not what you are listening to. What do you hear 
now, here now, beside me? Close by but out of reach, 
as you wait between the worlds, do you hear glory 
rolling through on golden clouds, inside, outside, is 
that untranslated joy the threshold where we meet?

Diana Durham is the author of four poetry collections: Sea of Glass, To the End of the Night, Between Two Worlds and Labyrinth; the novel The Curve of the Land and two nonfiction books: The Return of King Arthur and Coherent Self, Coherent World: a new synthesis of Myth, Metaphysics & Bohm’s Implicate Order.

Awakening
 
Every day, I  witness new blossoms in the park.
The day before, it was a black cat meditating by the pond,
Unperturbed by the shifting drapery of the sun.
 
Yesterday, I saw the water waltzing
To the tune of the breeze,
Oblivious to prying eyes.
 
Today I saw the ancient Willows,
Twinkling under the golden light,
Heads bowed in gratitude.
 
At long last, I took out the forsaken trowel,
And ploughed the fallow tract of the soul,
Hoping for Cadmium Yellow blossoms to peep out, someday.

Moonmoon Chowdhury is a poet and writer. Her works have appeared  in Borderless journal, Tell Me Your Story, A second cup of tea by The Hive Publishers, Sylvia magazine, The Pine Cone Review, Sonic Boom Journal, and more. She is currently based in Amsterdam. 

Tuesday's Child
                                  Tuesday’s child is full of grace.
                                  —from a nursery rhyme


You can’t trust words, even the quietest,
To catch the calm of orchids in the sun:
Soft yellows, centers flecks of pink and rose,
Transfixed by light in perfect equipoise.
Orchids, I mean, that now don’t look their best,
That look unbowed but now the least bit wan
Like children whom adults have long ill used,
Like the nine-year-old—small, silent—years ago—
I saw, spending his childhood locked inside
The nearby School for Boys.
                                               The sun’s flood tide
Poured down that Tuesday morning he refused
To answer, told a guard his wordless no—
The guard who’d flung him, sleeping, into midair, 
From bed to impact with the floor of the dorm,
Who’d laughed until the other boys became
Tormentors too, who’d asked his goddamn name.
Glory—through high, thick windows—summer glare—
Shone in his wide child’s eyes and held him firm.

Charles Hughes has published two books of poems, The Evening Sky (2020) and Cave Art (2014), both from Wiseblood Books. His poems have appeared in the Alabama Literary Review, America, The Christian Century, the Iron Horse Literary Review, Literary Matters, the Saint Katherine Review, and elsewhere. He worked for over 30 years as a lawyer and lives in the Chicago area with his wife.

Ode to My Digitaria (Crabgrass)


Lavish yourself across
the wooden bucket, flourish
as you cover every inch
of the circle of cracked earth
that nourishes and helps you grow
on your stout stems into the hot air
and light where you flare out
like a dancer, finger-like leaves
velvet to the touch.
You defy the lack of rain
and you are the last of intense green
to remain until the autumn frost
finds you but maybe not
the small part of yourself
pushing forth from the crack
in the bottom of the bucket.

Janet Krauss, who has two books of poetry published, Borrowed Scenery, Yuganta Press, and Through the Trees of Autumn, Spartina Press, has recently retired from teaching English at Fairfield University. Her mission is to help and guide Bridgeport’s  young children through her teaching creative writing, leading book clubs and reading to and engaging a kindergarten class. As a poet, she co-directs the poetry program of the Black Rock Art Guild.

Thalassic Hymn


I am a shell cast off from You, the main—
I had no choice.
Lift me from the crashing surf,
and give me voice. 

Hold me to Your hearing—
I am here to be Your earring—
and I will whisper, small and thin,
the distant echo of Your din,

The din that is Your beating blood. 
I am mute if you do not uphold me.
Hold me, please—enfold me.

Elijah Perseus Blumov is a poet, playwright, and creator of the poetry analysis podcast Versecraft (ohiopoetryassn.org/versecraft). 

Man of Faith
 
 
The world at my back, I lie
prone in a field in the only spot
trees refuse to block from view.
Blades of grass lean toward my body
to hold me in place. Then
I focus on the firmament,
all those gradients of blue
from edge to edge. Clouds drift
diagonally, bright bodies
clinging to their shadows.
I start to feel the bonds of gravity
snap loose, my stomach
floating free, then my head, dizzy,
a bubble drawn into the emptiness
before me. This is the feeling
of falling up, the rapture
of the body pulled to the heavens.
I used to be a boy in the wilderness,
always looking skyward. Now
I am a man of faith
who closes his eyes to come back
down to earth, which carries all my sorrow
through the vastness of space.
 
 

David B. Prather is the author of We Were Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing). His second collection will be published by Fernwood Press. His work has appeared in many print and online journals, including Prairie Schooner, Psaltery & Lyre, The Meadow, Cutleaf, Sheila-Na-Gig, etc. He studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory, and he studied writing at Warren Wilson College.

Barn Owl
 
Day morphs into night:
she awakens,
spreads her honey-dipped,
mottled wings,
reveals snowy underparts,
stretches her long toes,
clenches her sharp talons,
ready to forage
for small birds,
mice or voles.
 
But how joyous,
that of all the owls,
her heart-shaped face
is the most widespread. 

David Hanlon is a Welsh poet living in Cardiff. He is a Best of the Net nominee. You can find his work online in over 50 magazines, including Rust & Moth, Icefloe Press & Amethyst Review. His first chapbook Spectrum of Flight is available for purchase now at Animal Heart Press. You can follow him on twitter @davidhanlon13 and Instagram @welshpoetd

Glyphs

1.
You walk in heat, sun, deserts that will never prickle my skin.
I step lightly through rainy chill, early spring mornings.  
What do we know of ourselves or each other? 
Scratchings on surfaces.  All we can do:
follow dancing figures leading down beneath 
rocks, hidden glimpses of color, light, long-lost life. 

2.
We found our way deep into bone and muscle, 
heart and breath.   You knew me.  I felt you.  
We rose and we set.  Sun to moon.  Moon 
to sun.  Touch with stun.  Body in swoon.
We glowed and we shone.  Our glyphs 
dance in stone.  

3.
Mark me until your tracings grow indelible, 
images woven over and around sinews, tendons 
enwrapped with touch, every gesture, 
suggestion of my body singing your name.
Mark my words, sweet angel.
This is not the end of us.

4.
Go forward alone, strangers in familiar worlds, 
exiles from our hearts' home.  I heard you.  
You saw me.  We smiled and we shone.  
What took root has grown.  Glyphs go deep 
in stone.

Carole Greenfield grew up in Colombia and lives in New England, where she works with multilingual learners at a public elementary school.  Her work has appeared in such places as Eunoia Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, Amethyst Review and Dodging the Rain, among others.

Flogholeth 
 
Modrep Wenna guides blade to board, chops  
onions, sets aside tetti shredded into silos. Mesmerised  
by her elbows, I watch her firm back, hard- 
earned arms, the jeans too young for an aunt  
to wear; sewn-on patch says Country Music.  
The room is silent save the sound of knife  
on wood. Go, she says, play outside, calls  
for my cousin, who buries bodies of animals that thwart  
her care, ribs the earth with hollowed bones,  
beneath the skyward steep back garden. We leave  
the quiet behind, shield our pale faces from  
summer, climb steps, always steps – 94 to lane from dreksel – 
until the ceaseless crickets fill the air. Here our socks  
are swallowed by grass, skirts hemmed in wild flowers. The world  
is high now, level with the Downs and Chapel Ground. Beneath  
us neighbourly ships and ferries smack against the quay, the mordros  
silenced. I follow her clever finger across Fore Street, stepped  
terraces and lanes, houses thrown down like brewyon left  
for gulls. See over there? Our gorhengeugh built those nans yw pell.  
Stolid, proud, crowning the hill’s prow, a mariner’s homestead,  
hugged by cottages on each side. For his myrghes, she says,  
though I’m sure I hadn’t asked. Behind us, the sun drips  
to the island’s morrep where our parents’ cousins  
courted, took borrowed boats across the porth. Past  
the seven-spanned bridge, train tracks are shadowed, leading  
nowhere now. Above, the arch our hendas – a boy who once  
pilfered apples – dared to dance across, placed his faith 
in hobnail boots. I am unaware of this yet; I know it drekkli,  
when I’m grown. For now, it’s nearly teatime. We turn, our ancestors  
around us, voices caught in sails and nets, singing off  
the whaling house, and kerdhes the field back home. 

Helena Marie is drawn to loss, place and the beauty of the everyday. She is of part-Cornish descent and lives in Berkshire, UK. Currently studying for a Masters in Creative Writing, her work as found homes in several anthologies and online. 

Glossary of Cornish words: Flogholeth: childhood / Modrep: Aunt/Auntie / Wenna: old Cornish girl‘s name / tetti: potato / dreksel: doorway or threshold / mordros: the sound of the sea / gorhengeugh: great, great, great grandfather / nans yw pell: a long time ago / brewyon: crumbs / myrghes: daughters / morrep: beach or shore / porth: harbour /hendas: grandfather or ancestor / drekkli: later (an unspecified amount of time) / kerdhes: walk.