Monthly Archives: July 2023

Gratitude

Sparrows perch on the stone ledge
outside my window, looking in.

I watch them 
over the black bloom of espresso
 
flowering in a white ceramic cup 
that reads I heart New York.

The moon is a sliver of fingernail 
fading into morning.

Shortly all this will disappear.
I hold tight to everything:

birds, coffee, 
cup, New York, moon.

Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, ParisLitUp, Meniscus, Agenda, Gradivaand other journals. Her most recent book of poetry is EDGES.

Something Else I Didn’t Understand


The old woman with the raggedy hair
was waiting for me at the door of the church.
I had the key.  It was early, very cold.
I said no, and no again.  I can’t let you in.

When I came out later to look for her
she was sleeping against the wall, heaped up,
and we were told, never try to wake them.
They’re confused then, uncertain, as we all are,

as in the afternoon once when I woke up
from a nap and the sun was shining through
the window.  My eyes were blurry, out of focus,
and for a moment the green and yellow leaves 

of the trees outside sparkled like facets
of something else I didn’t understand.

Chris Anderson is a Catholic deacon in Corvallis, Oregon, and everything he writes comes out of his experiences as a deacon and out of his experiences of faith, and doubt.  He is also an emeritus professor of English at Oregon State University.  He has published a number of books, poetry and prose.   Love Calls Us Here is forthcoming from Wildhouse Press.

It Is


It is the singularity of black holes
a swarm of hummingbird hawk-moths 
the insatiable hunger of caterpillars
smile of a camel, song of a nightingale 
the moon frail as the edge of a fingernail –

It is dirty as a clam, economical as ants
dark as a pocket, convenient as money
nervous as a squirrel, close as a box turtle 
an ostentation of peacocks, a siege of herons –

It is hardy as grass, fragile as a tiger
words sleeping between the covers of a book
a fanatic hiding his doubt, a sceptic his faith –

It is an unkindness of ravens, an exaltation of larks
the spitefulness of philanthropists, a plague of poets –

It is none of the above.

Shanta Acharya’s latest poetry collections are What Survives Is The Singing (2020), Imagine: New and Selected Poems (2017), Dreams That Spell The Light (2010). Her doctoral study, The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson, was published in 2001 and her novel, A World Elsewhere, in 2015. www.shanta-acharya.com

Suspensions

                                                                            
Solids held by liquid & that itself kept in by glass,
a sweet vial of light buffed by air, dust tracings, another elixir,
is living still as hues fused.

So the milky way floats, echoes of an opera welling,
the bands of touch gone up by elements
to keep reformation slow but there.

So our gestures are colors also there with manatee-preciousness
in the deep belly breathing us so we may breathe back.

This is a prayer, riddle of love, heart like a walnut,
& we, hoarding squirrels, we who could stoop
into bastard-hostility, the polish of spite hewing knives agleam.

Kindness keeps us from such, kindness wild as our greenhouses,
our wash lines, all the particular chores beating normalcy,
beating tenderness on in a tried & true rhyme
in this glass of existence.
 

Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer.  Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online.  Recently his work has appeared in CROW NAME, WORDPEACE and Duck Duck Mongoose. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum – The Chroma Museum (weebly.com)

Altar


She bought it online on a whim,
The one bulky item I insisted on keeping.
A glass topped wooden table, 
Delicate mosaic tiles encased underneath.

I’ve filled it full of rocks from far away beaches,
Pigeon feathers tied up with kestrels,
No less beautiful for being grey.
Statues of Aphrodite, Thoth and Bast,
Ready to be consulted on matters of cosmic importance.

Object by object I add to her temple.
My crystals, 
My essentials oils,
My witching tools,
My “hippie nonsense”
I keep this space sacred.
Remember all she taught me about bigger picture love,
The sound of the universe throbbing in my heart.

There’s no superstition in this ritual,
It makes perfect sense to me,
Keeping the mind out of what it can’t comprehend.
This absolute present moment,
This honouring of ancient nature,
Among the thick grey carpet and the whirring radiator.

This temple gleams with all the ground's colour,
Takes me out of time into an older world,
When talismans were found in the dirt rather than scrolled down,
And we knew how to respect death. 

A piece of coral she found in the desert in Egypt,
A non descript stone I plucked from the Fairy Pools on the Isle of Skye,
After asking permission.
A note she wrote for me in a women’s workshop,
“I wish you true friendship, true love, prosperity”
These are the treasures you can throw in when I burn.
The rest of the house only spews her absence back at me,
Tells you nothing about our shared passions.
The rest of the house can gather dust,
And go to hell. 

Lorna Meehan lives in Birmingham and has been on the national performance poetry scene for many years. She has headlined various acclaimed nights such as Hit the Ode and Jawdance, toured with Apples and Snakes and performed at festivals like Glastonbury, Ledbury, Shambala and Moseley Folk. She starred in performance poetry theatre show News of the Word directed by Giovanni ‘Spoz’ Esposito, who she later collaborated with on Ten Letters, an intergenerational poetry show about Birmingham and was part of the Decadent Diva’s and the New October Poets collectives. She has autobiographical spoken word solo shows under her belt and her debut collection Caterpillar Soup is coming out in March with Verve Poetry Press.

Un-undead


The patient ground was ready 
to be changed again
by rain
that fell so fast it hadn’t a chance
to map a course,
so it explored.
Reflecting rivulets forked 
before headlights like lightening.
I imagined the Schuylkill river 
when it was young,
perhaps like this,
before it steadily dug its bed.
Crossing the bridge at 30th street,
the river runs under me, 
now straight and silted,
its cleared way set 
by the city around it.
Somewhere, around a bend,
I imagine it wild,
faced again with the constraints
that free us.
 

Edward Lees is an American who lives in London. During the day he works to help the environment and in the evenings he writes poetry if his daughters permit it.

Vertigo
Masaccio’s Madonna and Child with Angels 
 
 
Too little have I seen of subduing
particulars
 
by shadow. Too little have I seen 
how highlight 
 
beckons to highlight, how color is 
free to build 
 
kinship, how light’s consistent flow 
is compromised.  
 
Too much have I loved of bodies 
catching light, 
 
how the space they live in 
is our own – 
 
too little seen bright flesh 
enflame
 
the gold-work of the background.

Colin Jeffrey Morris lives and writes in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, Delmarva Review, Lily Poetry Review and descant.

Psalm for Simone Weil

From the highest heaven God throws a rope. Man either grasps it or not.
-	From the New York Notebooks of Simone Weil



Sir, what is humanity
that you pay such attention to us,
or men and women
that you let us love one another?

Words slide from you, dropping down
to where you stride
over glaciers and rocks
and down the icy walks of the sea,

trailing behind you a rope, my Friend,
that we can grasp
or at our choosing,
cast away.

Michael Cooney has published poetry in Badlands, Second Chance Lit, Bitter Oleander, Big Windows Review and other journals. His short stories have appeared recently in Sundial Magazine, Bandit Fiction and Cerasus and his novella The Witch Girl & The Wobbly was published by Running Wild Press in 2021. A second novella, A Good Catholic Girl, is scheduled for publication in 2023. Cooney has taught in public high schools and community colleges and currently facilitates a writing workshop with the New York Writers Coalition.

Cave of Brahman


Enter the clearing
of yourself. See beyond
seeing how far you reach.

Relax into your divine 
proportion. Held in the 
absolute arms 

of eternal amplification 
as you have longed to be held
as you have always been held.

Here where you pulse
your ocean of light
first empty the cup 

until there is no cup 
then rise high above
your own horizon.

Sage Cohen is the author of five books including the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World and the poetry guides Writing the Life Poetic and Write a Poem a Day. She offers information and inspiration for poets and writers at sagecohen.com.

Slow Work   

Quaking Aspen, Populus Tremuloides.
One, yet many, sprung from a single seed 

like the 80,000 year-old forest sprawling 
across a Utah plateau, the Trembling Giant.

Briefly emptied of fixed notions—who I am, 
you are, as cracked eggs spill yokes and 

stargazer lilies pollen, change (a word that 
can mean trouble) comes to us as storms 

do to fields. If forgiveness is a flower,
then mercy is the meadow it grows in.

With tears to see through and spit to name 
our pain (we are, after all, mostly water) and 

harrowed as thatched soil. Suppled, we may
welcome others, even our various selves. 

Rhett Watts is a member of the 4×4 poet and artist collaborative in Worcester and facilitates writing workshops in CT and MA. Her books are: Willing Suspension (Antrim House Books) and The Braiding (Kelsay Books). She won the Rane Arroyo chapbook contest for No Innocent Eye. Her work appears in Best Spiritual Writing 2000 and she has poems in journals including Canary, SWIMM, Spoon River Poetry, The Worcester Review, Sojourners Magazine, The Windhover, and many others.