Monthly Archives: June 2023

When Oak Leaves Shimmy in The Heath



I can’t forget the few
               confused green
               sprouts that brighten 
naked blueberry twigs – nor,

embodied by claret oak leaves 
               pinned to branchlets – 
               the body. Each suspended 
hand is brittle, erect 

and slick as tanned hide
               greased by sun.
               I see multitudes waving
to be noticed. I see

the starkness of drought.
               As each palm sways 
               with skeletal abandon, 
I think I see spirit –

or just wind – release,
               as if to counter 
               porosity of bone, 
stiffening flesh.
 
I don’t forget the frailty 
               of bodies, mine, yours –
               too soon to join  
beneficent ghosts passing

silently through houses, wafting 
               over gardens 
               or waiting, abashed, 
with the blueberries, for their turn.
 

Kathryn Weld’s full-length debut Afterimage, is forthcoming from Pine Row Press (Fall 23). Her poetry and prose appear in American Book Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Cortlandt Review; Midwest Quarterly, The Southeast Review, Stone Canoe, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook is Waking Light (Kattywompus Press 2019). She is Professor of Mathematics at Manhattan College.

Deepak Chopra Speaks Word Salad


Those who close their eyes to what seems
strange will never change their minds to find
what rises up in dreams unbidden.

The dead wander old middens where shells
and bones piled up are seen near old fire pits.
Specters dance between flames.

In sleep, the lid is off the pot of consciousness
and any hot idea is projected on the inside
of your eyelids, a screen you cannot ignore.

What’s there? Invite more.
For those who watch the stream of thought
and images that pass through the mind from ear

to ear or prick the eyes with fear of what might
come next: a message from the you inside the you
you know, another show, a vestige

of a wiser self you’ve denied.
Seize quantum consciousness.
There’s wisdom there for you to share. 
 

Joan Mazza is a retired medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops focused on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, The Nation, and other publications. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.

Rachel White (she/her) is an American-born poet and artist who lives and works on Kaurna land in South Australia. Her poetry has been featured in Kissing Dynamite and placed highly commended in the 2022 Woorilla Poetry Prize.  Her work also appears in Third Wednesday Magazine and Anti-Heroin Chic.

Hush


Is it by aging alone
that I landed in this
sparse, harsh forest,

where most branches are sharp,
all bark is sandpaper,
and even the birds.,
diligently practicing their scales,
can sometimes shake my equilibrium,
scrape my eardrums with their calls? 

Perhaps I’ve been led here
by my spirit animal, 
or my dead ancestors, 
or my inner crone,
because the time is nigh
to stand and receive 
my true names:

She Who is Now Highly Sensitive,
She Who Withers Without Solitude.

She Who Can’t Tolerate Crowds,
She For Whom The World is Too Loud.

She Who Craves a Private Island,
She Who Always Wants to Turn Down the TV.

I daydream of places 
called Whisper Town, Quietville,
Introversion Valley.

Is it a disorder, I wonder,
or the naturally 
wise reaction
to a world 
grown garishly turbulent,
jagged, obscene?

Melinda Coppola writes from a messy desk in small town Massachusetts, where her four cats often monitor her progress. She delights in mothering her complicated, enchanting daughter who defies easy description. Melinda’s work has appeared in many fine books and publications, most recently Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Willows Wept Review, Thimble Literary Magazine and One Art: A Journal of Poetry. 

Skipping Stones



Choosing requires some skill,
a flattish stone, smooth-sided
that can hit the water just right
and sail into the air, bounce
on the surface, skipping against
the liquid tension, going out
farther and farther until it
sinks out of sight, it’s full story
told. So it is with writing,
gathering words, sorting
out the rough-edged ones, those
with too much weight, that lack
proper aerodynamics, and then
lining up the best, tossing them out
with a keen precision,
hoping to fly the eye down
the lines, taking each word in,
over the full arc of true thought,
to where it will sink into
and lift the mind,
igniting fire
in the heart.

Stephen R. Clark is a writer who lives in Lansdale, PA with his wife, BethAnn, and their two rescue cats, Watson and Sherlock. His website is http://www.StephenRayClark.com. He is a member of the Evangelical Press Association and a regular contributor to the Christian Freelance Writers Network blog (tinyurl.com/cfwriters). 

Mother-to-Daughter

My dry swallow
as I remove your statue
of the Virgin from the dresser,
causes my ears to crackle.

She will be exiled to the basement,
aside your ceramic Pieta,
a bookmarked bible,
Pope John Paul II’s 8 x 10.

Stripped of all that was yours,
this bedroom where you slept
and prayed, will be ready 
for my chic upgrade,
un-convent remake;

but for the crucifix,
still hanging over the doorway, 
your crystal rosary,
no longer draping 
from Mary’s hands, 
but clutched in my palm.

Joan Bernard’s poetry has been published in The Main Street Rag, the Aurorean, Connecticut River Review, The North American Review, and others. She lives in Boston, MA and Thompson, CT.

Fresco Behind a Wooden Statue of St. Andrew

On the plastered wall of the sanctuary of Sant’Andrea in Orvieto, a strong young man in a green robe, red sleeves beneath, holds up a bloody sword.  As in so many frescoes of the Renaissance, his eyes and nose and mouth have been dissolved by time.  He is facing (if you can call it facing) a red-robed woman on his right.  Her eyes are exceedingly sharp.  She gestures toward him with one hand—a tight gesture—and holds the other over her heart.  The man, likewise, has placed his left hand, loosely, over his own heart.

Behind him, and to his left, an older couple lie tucked in bed, face-up.  Their heads rest on matching pillows.  The older man has a white beard, neatly trimmed, and he wears a green night cap that matches the young man’s robe in color.  The older woman wears a white head scarf, just like the woman who is standing.  The eyes of the couple in bed are closed.  Both of them are bleeding profusely from stab wounds in the neck.

If it were not in a church, and if Duncan had a wife in the play, the fresco would seem to mark the moment in which Macbeth says, “I have done the deed,” the moment in which Lady Macbeth receives the news in a fury of cold agitation.  But this must be the story of the martyrdom of some saint—of two saints.  Mr. and Mrs. Saint.  But what if the two are not married?  What if the woman in red is the wife and the woman in bed is the paramour, the man in green the hired assassin?  

I wish we could see the swordsman’s face.  Is he aghast at what he has done?  Relieved to have taken vengeance?  Simply glad to receive his pay?  St. Andrew might know, but his wooden statue has turned its back on all this sorry business.

We have to look farther afield, to the crucifix above the altar.  The very sad man hanging there, his face quite clear in its agonies, looks out across the nave and sees.  And bleeds.  And sees.  And bleeds.  And knows.  And what he knows is that the faceless man with the sword is the one who will become a saint.  Saint Julian.  He has just murdered his own parents, who had come on a surprise visit while he was hunting, and who were sleeping in his bed when he came back.  He has just murdered them because he thought he had found his wife cheating on him.  But now his wife arrives to tell him he was mistaken, he was wrong, and Julian is filled with remorse.  This is what the hanging man on the cross well knows.  And he knows that Julian—and his wife, as well—will spend the rest of their stricken lives helping the sick and giving shelter to the weary.  For a night of killing, years of care.  And at once and at last, Julian will be forgiven.  No longer seen in a fresco darkly, he will be known, and he will know.  He will receive his face.          

Paul Willis has published seven collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Somewhere to Follow (Slant Books, 2021).  Individual poems have appeared in Poetry, Christian Century, and Christianity and Literature.  He lives with his wife, Sharon, near the old mission in Santa Barbara, California.

Still Life with Canoe

I edged the canoe
along a quiet margin of the river
where the current slowed
almost to a standstill.

Immersed in the bright summer air,
breathing felt light,
body safe,
buoyed in the sturdy shell of the hull.

From a secret spot
in a steadfast tree on the wild bank,
a single chirp of unfinished birdsong
plucked the stillness.

My paddle laid across the gunwales
dripping slow glassy drops
into the clear shallows.
Water bugs moved like Jesus walking on the water.

There were no extravagant miracles that day.
Just the day itself,
alive and reckless 
with peace.

Charles Lewis writes poetry as a way of knowing and unknowing, as prayer and meditation, to share language and feeling, for fun, and because it’s necessary.

Vow to the Sea

Standing above the tide, it rolls below
Sand shifts, hurls
As we become the whole sea
Dunes, mountainside, the urban concrete
Brick, abandoned buildings
Become the whole, become it all, there
I vow myself to the sea
To the sound of falling
Waves, the roar of the avalanche
Of going out into the world
Each day a pledge
Astonished with the tide below
I stand above her crest, away from its foam
Seething to swirl ankles
Seething to weaken our toes clenched
Gripped in air, the sea rolls below
I stand above, still.

 

Deborah Jiang-Stein is a cross-genre writer, public speaker, collaborator, and founder of the unPrison Project, a nonprofit working to empower and inspire people in prison with hope, mentoring, and tools for life after prison. She is author of the memoir, Prison Baby, and has adapted her memoir for stage. Some of her publications credits include: Sun Dog: The Southeast Review Honorable Mention, World’s Best Short-Short Story; Two Worlds Walking, New Rivers Press; Paragraph Magazine; Printed Matter.

Golden Buddha Statue


Of course they dropped him: five tons
of statue, plaster, colored glass. 
Siddhartha fell. The stucco chipped, 

and gold shone through, like sun 
through clouds. Disrobed, his outer casing gone

after centuries of wear, protection.
Two hundred years of armor, chiseled away 
for the viewing pleasure of those dazzled by shiny things.

My teacher says we are all gold encased 
by persona. Can we love ourselves and each other 
as if we are all secretly solid gold? I want to love the plaster.

Ellen Orr is a teacher and writer currently based in Texas.