Monthly Archives: August 2023

Cathedral view
June 2020
 
A chaplain came while I was on 3B,
the Orthopaedics ward. “Hi there!” he smiled
upon us all, the fractured – femur, knee,
a wrist, an ankle, pained and slightly wild.
We managed to respond, a wave, a nod;
he said he’d only come to let us know
that he was here, could visit, pray to God
with us or chat. We thanked him, watched him go
on sturdy legs towards the next-door bay
where one man had been roaring through the night
until the morphine hushed him. “You okay?”
we heard the chaplain ask, his tone still light;
no answer, yet. Day 1 is always rough,
just getting through the hours. But on Day 2,
perhaps some chat. We broken ones are tough,
and 3B has a nice cathedral view.
 

Felicity Teague is a poet from Pittville, a suburb of Cheltenham, UK. She has had inflammatory arthritis since she was 12 yet is able to work from home as a copywriter and copyeditor, with her foremost interests including health and social care. Her poetry features regularly in the Spotlight of The HyperTexts; she has also been published by The Mighty, Snakeskin, The Ekphrastic Review, The Dirigible Balloon, Pulsebeat, Lighten Up Online and a local Morris dancing group. In December 2022, she published a small collection of poems, From Pittville to Paradise. Other interests include art, film, and photography.

A Pilgrim’s Thirst

      
 
My heart thirsts for a pilgrim’s river,
its promise of sweet crossings

undisturbed by the sorrows
that shape the water’s edge.

Perhaps there is still a thanksgiving song,
a festival of hope

to redeem the promise life held at birth,
a promise still visible

as butterflies play in the wind
and lilacs open once again.

Each night I pray that I too
might wake

to embrace the gifts that open
in the morning light.
                  

Michael S. Glaser served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004-2009. He is a Professor Emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.  A recipient of the Homer Dodge Endowed Award for Excellence in Teaching and Loyola College’s  Andrew White Medal for contributions to the intellectual and artistic life in Maryland, Glaser has edited four collections of poetry including, with Kevin Young, the Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, (BOA editions, 2012).  He has published eight volumes of his own poems, most recently The Threshold of Light (2019) and Elemental Things (2023).   Glaser also served on The Board of the Maryland Humanities Council.  He writes book reviews for The Friends Journal and now lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina with his wife Kathleen who facilitates retreats for Parker Palmer’s Courage and Renewal network.    More at   http://www.michaelglaser.com

Artifacts Rattle in the Closet of Academia


the sum total is shrouded by the cleft sliced
into one asteroid midway through the roller
derby match at the center of a galaxy.  feats
define our cosmos.  a space rich in frontiers
should make room for a probe into whether

a vacuum inside seminar rooms exists to be
filled.  one scholar asserted energy may not
be birthed nor will it vanish.  yet, an outlier
weighs on balance.  what set alight the first
spark?  a glow-up added enough sweep and

reach to string out cosmic handiwork across
a canvas of nothing.  test if the sense of awe
zips ahead of logic.  our star hugs the planet,
a goldilocks loops perfectly baked and never
too frosty.  atomic winds cannot strip a rock

of green growth.  the whirl of its iron-plated
nickel core whips up the shield in which this
flyer for useful design waltzes.  still, it is not
settled how the dust on a globe breathes.  we
reach for the coattails of infinity with further

study into patterns.  such a master class airs
the way of sunbeams looked on as slow, but
so bent on brilliance.  the multicolored bang
retells a vow to outshine every reflection on 
imitation gold oversold by the silvery moon.
 

Tonya Patrice Jordan is a poet, writer, and retired surgeon from New Jersey.  She is the author of Knowing Sunshine, a collection of poems and one short story.  Some of her poems can be read in The Halcyone Literary Review, Linden Avenue Literary Magazine, and Peace Poems, an anthology compiled for NJ Peace Action.  One of her stories was a semifinalist in Ruminate Magazine’s 2015 short story contest.  She recently completed her first science fiction novel.  The first short screenplay she wrote is currently in post-production.

Eyam


There is a window
            in a church
where fractured daylight
                              streams
through a ring of roses

there is a boy
          handing a tailor
          a sack of cloth
infested with plague-fleas.

On a hill
in a circle
                 a smattering of graves
Alice. Ann. William. Elizabeth.
John. Oner.
All buried
                  within eight days.

On the edge
of a village
                    sits a boundary stone
there to mark the gateway
between life
                      and beyond
six holes
like eyes in a button

watching from purgatory

a place where suffering
will only bring you
                                   suffering
but will maybe
one day
set you
             free



Eyam is a small village in Derbyshire which took important measures during the bubonic plague in the 17th Century

Eve Chancellor is an English Teacher in Manchester. Her poems have been published online and in multiple literary magazines, including: Acropolis Journal, Dream Catcher, Hyacinth Review and Seaside Gothic. Her poem ‘Two Girls on a Greyhound’ was the Ink, Sweat and Tears pick off the month, March 2023. Her short stories are featured on East of the Weband in journals, such as The Ghastling. Twitter: @eve_madelaine

Antidote 

On this jeweled journey,
the sheep kiss me on the mouth.

The sun rises and falls
into the lake with a splash.

I weep the loss of light,
yearn for a sun-kissed evening

when the world is wonderous
and I am a wife of the universe,

conceived by the clouds,
birthing love that cannot burn out. 

Bethany Jarmul’s work has appeared in more than 50 literary magazines and been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Spiritual Literature. Her chapbook This Strange and Wonderful Existence is forthcoming from Bottlecap Press. Her chapbook Take Me Home is forthcoming from Belle Point Press. She earned first place in Women on Writing’s Q2 2022 & Q2 2023 essay contests. She lives near Pittsburgh. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on Twitter:@BethanyJarmul.

History in the Abbey

On the angelic figures literally defaced on Wymondham Abbey’s medieval font. 

Difficult sometimes
	to find history
inside the Abbey. History
	has been removed,
temporarily; sorry, history
	is not working at the moment.

Above your heads
	sometimes history 
is waiting, or you walk on it,
	without noticing. History
will have nothing to say
	about your visit.

And then sometimes
	in the great silences between visitors,
history comes close,
	with obliterated features
stares blindly 
	right into your face.	

Martin Caseley has published two collections of poetry with Stride publications, most recently A Sunday Map of the World (2000). More recently, his poetry has appeared on the Agenda website, and he regularly contributes essays and book reviews to PN Review, Agenda, The Countryman and the review 31 and International Times websites. He lives in Norfolk, not far from Norwich. 

On The Block Where God 
Does Not Exist 

on the block where God
does not exist 
God is everywhere 
scaffolding news stand 
sidewalk street
at the diner lingering 
over donut and coffee
watching the clothes
in the dryer spin
in the laundromat 
after midnight 
guitar and singing 
in the half-dark at the
bottom of the subway stair
blessing the sunday cornbread 
and greens and ringed hamhocks 
he stands on the bus
sometimes next to us
his fingers tracing the 
silver chair there on the
back porch in the rose sky
at dusk a great joy
curves up on his lips
his eyes alit like burning 
incense everywhere. 

Deborah A. Bennett is an American poet who was long-listed for The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award for 2023. Her work is spiritual in nature and inspired by her lifelong love of long walks through the city and in the wild.

altars

after Christian Wiman


beholding the void,
the dream unfolds as
magnificent-dark. i

know it only by its 
pulsations, passing like
a frottage of clouds, like

condensation in the air,
the psychological tug
of regress. i counted

the callings of a 
God-sized work,
remembered the bodies

falling, the voices clamouring
up and down the ceilings,
the chill of a darkened room.

from whose womb could such
ice come forth? enough to
silence the thin, thin fires, 

enough to make one 
repent in the dust,
repent in the ashes. 

here i built the altars
of word and song, lit
a candle, sensed the 

hovering of an inkling,
a hunch. i heard the 
water running over, the

water poured out like 
wrath, the water’s 
soliloquy always coming,

always careening, 
enveloping the winnowed
husk of faith. the princes

of Judah are like those 
who remove 
a landmark. coming 

back to the void, 
tremulous and still, 
i heard it: 

“let us walk backward
to our prayers.”

Jonathan Chan is a writer and editor. Born in New York to a Malaysian father and South Korean mother, he was raised in Singapore and educated at Cambridge and Yale Universities. He is the author of the poetry collection going home (Landmark, 2022) and Managing Editor of poetry.sg. He has recently been moved by the work of Ada Limón, Rowan Williams, and Mervin Mirapuri. More of his writing can be found at jonbcy.wordpress.com. 

Gold


Summer is ending, 
the light sharp
and silent.

Yesterday I rounded 
a curve
and everywhere

rivers of light
streamed around islets of fog,
white laced with gold

and the goldenrod
in the field below 
shining like sequins.

Trees on the ridge 
splintered the sky 
into stars.

I drove on –
wetlands wisping into air, 
swamp maples

touched with fire,
a brilliant goldfinch, singing, 
on a wire.
 

Lisken Van Pelt Dus teaches languages, writing, and martial arts in western Massachusetts. Her poetry can be found in many journals, including most recently Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Book of Matches, Split Rock Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and the Ekphrastic Review, and in anthologies such as the Crafty Poet Anthology Series, as well as in her book What We’re Made Of (2016). A new chapbook, Letters to my Dead, was released in 2022.

Fire Followers


Every dawn bluing 
above charred ridges,
a doom off napping. 

Every resting palm frond,
every unstruck match, 
every absent lightning bolt, 

a peace to be sipped 
like cool tangerine juice. 
Every blackened limb 

jabbing up from scorched 
oaks, walnuts, manzanitas, 
a middle finger to the galactic 

hunger of dragons. 
Every fallen ash, every brush 
of smoke, every molecule 

of water, a supplication to the buried 
seeds of old mothers. Every slender stalk
greening skyward, every leaf unfurling, 

every melon-red poppy flouncing out petals, 
the after light 
of flames.    

Elizabeth Kuelbs writes at the edge of a Los Angeles canyon. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Scientific American, Lily Poetry Review, Rust & Moth, and other publications. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her chapbooks include Little Victory and How to Clean Your Eyes. Visit her online at https://elizabethkuelbs.com/.