Monthly Archives: September 2023

Lasciate ogne speranza

I would abandon all hope, but recall
that Dante Alighieri took his tour
in stride and, though he saw things that appall,
showed what a dauntless spirit can endure.
So even in a throng of souls impure,
or deemed so by a scribe who with his pen
enlisted them among the damned, a sure
foot in a stout shoe might emerge again
from Hell’s own rankest river, ring, and den.
So here we are, my friend, in deepest wood,
strange eyes fixed on us since we don’t know when,
and choosing to be elsewhere if we could.
We will not tremble. Nor will we turn back,
nor credit the injunction on the plaque.
 

Dan Campion‘s poems have appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). A selection of his poems was issued by the Ice Cube Press in July 2022: https://icecubepress.com/2021/10/01/a-playbill-for-sunset/

This is whence yellow is named,
this the hue by which all gold measured:
fair maiden, standing tip-toe tall in the green —
earthed flicker of heaven’s flame.

And then, of a sudden burst soft and cloud-
pale in wisdom’s white: thus impaled
by the last happy beams of the red west,
lit pure like a candle in its flashing death.

Love-seeds scatter on the wind; find
their given hold; take at a prayer’s pace.
And as the prairie ever tells, all
shall bloom which love has sown.

It was in ignorance I called them weeds;
though were my life but half as bright as these,
just think how sweet would be the legacy.

Tyler Rogness is learning to live on purpose. He loves deep words, old books, good stories, and his wonderful family who put up with his nonsense. His poems have appeared in the Agape Review, The Habit Portfolio, and the Amethyst Review; and more of his work can be found at awakingdragons.com.

Mortal 


How impossible to forget
in that late equatorial light 
on one lonely edge of the Pacific, 
those thousands of crabs
no bigger than thumbnails
who scurried away from our feet
as we walked across the sand, 
each step setting off a ripple,
a tide of tiny creatures
so afraid of us, even though we
had no intention to harm, 
and how you sought 
the sense of humility
the ocean provides, sought 
to surrender your worn, 
human self, and so let 
the dark waves take and toss you
among the fists of gneiss 
as I stood frozen on the beach, 
the Magnificent Frigatebirds
ushering you home.

Heather Swan‘s poems have appeared in such journals as Terrain, Minding Nature, Poet Lore, Phoebe, The Raleigh Review, Midwestern Gothic and Cold Mountain. She is the author of the poetry collection A Kinship with Ash (Terrapin Books), a finalist for the ASLE Book Award, and the chapbook The Edge of Damage ( Parallel Press), which won the Wisconsin Chapbook Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in Aeon, Belt, Catapult, Edge Effects, Emergence, ISLE, Minding Nature, and  The Learned Pig. Her book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field (Penn State Press) won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. She teaches environmental literature and writing in Madison at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Nirvana or Not
Every moment, the Zen priest said, can be nirvana or not.

Every moment after my sink drips
me awake at 4:37 a.m.
can be nirvana or not, I need

to know how much in me is a seed
of the suffering, how much to stomach
every moment, said the Tibetan priests
 
who set themselves afire
to feel free can be nirvana
the moment or not the fire
 
is lit on the Molotov wick nirvana
on the lips of Ukrainian priests
deep in bomb shelters offering
 
Eucharist as an old woman holds out a hand
of sunflower seeds, nirvana to the gun
of a young Russian soldier just like her son
 
or not the moment nirvana or not
my bright blue hyacinth sky extends
to an Afghan man who said nirvana
 
would be just a needle 
and thread for a moment
to mend his refugee clothes
 
as if sowing seeds from a global vault
where we saved them, nirvana, all of us
or not to stitch together what we’ve torn
 
and scorched to tack ourselves back
to each other every moment the Zen priest said
every moment can be nirvana.

Paige Gilchrist lives in Asheville, NC, where she writes poetry and teaches yoga. Her poems have appeared in Kakalak, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and The Great Smokies Review.

Descent into Orta San Giulio 
from the Sacro Monte di Orta

Winter trees bide
they gate
Orta’s Sacro Monte pathway,

branches, bared to pale bark,
lift death’s face.

Lean Francesco, in stone, overlooks.

His stick-crucifix 
held in cold air.

A first step it takes many
to sound out Francesco’s words 
chiseled at Chapel VI,

“go dear ones…announce peace and penance…
be patient…bless and thank everyone,”	 

just up Viale Frate Vento, 			 
the Avenue of Brother Wind.

Though I falter in penance,
peace mumbled beyond me,  	
  
I walk back down a stony path  
with loosened heart humming 
every
one.

Retired librarian Alan Bern is an award-winning author with three books of poetry and has a hybrid memoir forthcoming from UNCOLLECTED PRESS. He is an exhibited/published photographer and performs with dancer/choreograhper Lucinda Weaver and with musicians from Composing Together. Lines & Faces, his press with artist/printer Robert Woods, linesandfaces.com.

Annie Diamond is an Ashkenazi Jewish poet living and working in Chicago. She has been awarded fellowships by MacDowell, Luminarts Cultural Foundation, The Lighthouse Works, and Boston University, where she earned her MFA in 2017. Her poems appear and are forthcoming in No Tokens, Yemassee, Modern Language Studies, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere.

Address to Humility


Humility, you bobble-head doll
you laughingstock of Wall Street
grit in the slick gears of progress

Here you pop up on this quiet rise above the hyper city 
like a bowing monk 
passing out lifesaver donuts

Humility, I just climbed a very steep hill for you
I am breathless 
sitting on a crumbling stump

the clover all green in happy heart shapes
at my feet
and a tree I don’t know the genus of is beside me

vertical strips of bark peeling down
in tendrils
accepting the order of its kind

Humility, you appear as confounding as this rusty can
decaying on the trail
All forms and falls apart it says

Please help me reach your proffered hand
while I feel some degree of thirst
a slight peekaboo of readiness

Jean Biegun’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and art exhibits. In 2022, her chapbook Hitchhikers to Eden was published, she received a Pushcart Prize nomination and the Christine Award for Best Prose Poem of 2021 (Easter Iowa Review). Work has been in Amethyst Review, Soul-Lit, As Above So Below, Time of Singing and other spiritual poetry journals.

Devotional Grove


I. Antiqua 

 
Old Pin Oak, 
rucked in grey, 
your youth bleeds through you: 
covered in spring’s velvet leaflets 
and cloaked in their mist of pale-pink silver. 
Promise, Old Tree, keeper of years, 
to prove our belief; 
stand there for the new life to come.

Attend.


II. Cogitare

Consider, Tree of Holly, antique symbol,
that in fact, you do yield:

to robins who flock to your foliage, 
evade your spikes, 
and gorge on ripened berries till they’re sated.

Impressed by this apologue
I google your types:
the holly as shelter, breath-giver.

Putting down my phone, 
towards you I walk,
stripped and storiless.  

O Bearer of the analogic,
consider my neediness,
and through your bounty heal and challenge me.

Assent.


III. Custodes

Cedars so tall,
your watchfulness here
beside our door
subdues all fear.
Over this roof
grow side by side
to shade and guard, 
to brace and bide.

Praise them.


IV. Alta

Lofty White Pine
you pierce the tree line. 
Tallest your crown’s claim.  
Your needles strive, to touch the sky --
to thread, so it seems, the welkin.
Cast down your cones, our cheerful boon,
And express for us steadfastness --
so we also may be steadfast for others.
And teach us to value altitude
that is pruned of all arrogance:

Content. 

V. Domini
The holders of the house labored in the garden
-- and trees rooted in their verdant terrace. 
How the Black Cherry seeds itself:
-- May we bloom where we are planted, come the Spring. 
And the Beech spread its crown – 
-- and overshadowed them.  
Leaf for them, you scattered seedlings of change
-- that they may be blown away by the plenitude of chance.

Flourish, we exhort our sweet Earth (though her bounty unsettles us); that we, to whom the diversity of Life, her gift, is revealed through its decline, will by our delight and shame, be fired with an ardor for this undertaking – to serve her wild caprice.   

Consent.

Mia Schilling Grogan is an Associate Professor of English at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia.  She is a medievalist, who publishes in the areas of hagiography and women’s spiritual writing. Her poems have appeared in America, Presence, First Things, The Windhover, and Ekstasis among other journals.  

My African Father
 
I sleep and wake and still he does not rise,
my African Father, with those uncanny eyes
not brown, not silver, but like a storm at dawn,
forever changing hue -and moving on.
Three days have toiled with rain and fog and wind
and have not torn them off— and even now
the fitful storm unfolds, a little thinned
and gray and twisted up like sheets right now,
but still, it won't quite let me wake from this,
the loss of him. I sleep and know that dreams
will be the only place where I can speak
to him: In every drop of rain, a kiss;
in every broken shaft of light, the gleams
that came from loving eyes; in the physique
of leather coats that gusts of time can press
and mold around my chest, his strongest love,
embrace, and faith. But still each moment grows
inexorably farther from the next,
and spring, it must arrive, but nonetheless
these gusts of rain contrive to make that love
a tragic grasp. My fingers try to close
around the grief, and bodily perplexed
as time slides through my hands, I can't let go.
But ever-gentle time extends my fist,
my fingers, thumb, and grasp, and waking once
again, you're gone. You're gone. We cannot trade
our tears for life- the sacrifice is not
accepted here. Though wakefullnesses grow
between the fitful dreams that they untwist
we weep the more for love, but more than once
we've had the thought: By grief is love betrayed?
Shall tears condemn our joy? Why should we not
rejoice? He's passed into a world improved
infinitely on our own. I know, I know
and now that time has stroked my hand some more,
I wonder is this selfishness alone?
No! Unjustly that depraves the name
of love. And Jesus wept. It's not a sin.
and now the further time's caress has moved
my hand and brushed my bangs, the more the glow
within his smile flashes out, the more
the deep inside his swollen heart is shown,
and yet the more it's somehow not the same.
How soft his eyes once stirred and how his chin,
his humble half-tucked chin and smile, approved
of me, how stress would vanish in his shrug
and spreading arms that greet me with a hug.
 
But waking startled- sleep had come again-
his face departs again, and now his hand,
that he can only take into the dream again.
It starts again! –Despite the spring's demand.
Abba, my African father, abba-bee!
You really were a part of me and now
that you have been cut off— because that part
of me's been amputated— I can see
simple things that none can disavow.
The amputation hurts! It's not for art,
philosophy, or selfish things we cry:
the amputation hurts! The only piece
remaining lives in memory and prayer,
and what the mortal amputation brings
are aches and burns and phantom pain. We cry,
surprised, when some familiar times release
these hollow chills again, when maybe they're
set off at night by wind in leaves that sings
as he once did, or by a bible verse,
like Jesus wept. The amputation hurts!
But faithful time still stretches on and three
more days have passed. I wake and rise and still
he does not come. He won't return from there,
my African Father— Quite the reverse,
one day I'll go to him. For now, the shirts
and ties must still be ironed, guests must be
attended to, and Martha might just still
need help; and anyway, where is Mary, where?
The funeral's not until tomorrow. Wait.
The clock extends the space between our tears
and so our mortal contemplations spin
unchanged, unchecked until at last, it’s time:
the funeral’s here and we’re all standing by
the empty- Look, his son! I recognize
my brother-in-law with ease. But grief can’t wait.
The women rush the pit and it appears,
as moments teeter past, that they might go
down too. He weeps and holds them back, and time,
it too, holds back. The rain. Just now. Goodbye.
And so my father passes on, his eyes
in every thunderstorm that fades at dawn
forever changing you -and moving on.
 

Daniel Kemper is an unaccomplished man. He has walked The Bridge of No Return across the Sachong, and returned. He’s carried an acolyte’s cross at dawn and heard poetry at The Gates of Hell at midnight (Rodin Gardens). He’s touched the bones of Dinkenesh (“Lucy”) and climbed Masada at Dawn. He’s been How Berkeley Can You Be and walked the Pamlico Sound barefoot. He’s brought two children into the world and taken his father out of it. He’s written when there was no one he could tell and he writes now to bring out things of value and to engage and embrace all those who are doing the same.

Review at the Gate

I was looking at an angel.  A live white-winged, white-robed angel, standing in front of me, a closed golden gate behind, a few white cotton-ball clouds above with bright rays of sun shining through.

Yesterday I experienced a massive stroke in my apartment.  I didn’t die immediately.  It took a while, actually, but since I lived alone and it was impossible for me to move or speak, I had remained sprawled out on my floor until I died.  Now I was standing in front of an angel.

“Do you want to say anything before we begin?” the angel asked.

I swallowed and looked down.  I was still wearing the same clothes from my last day.  That struck me as odd, although really, how was I supposed to know what was odd and what wasn’t?

I looked at the angel and my new surroundings.  “This all seems a bit, um, corny, no?”

“What did you expect?” the angel replied.  “You’ve read the Bible.  Doesn’t the Bible describe it just like this?”

“I guess so.”

“Well don’t blame me if you didn’t take the Bible at face value.  You should have.  It’s all literal.  You know the story of Noah and the flood?  It really happened just like that.  And the burning bush?  And the loaves and fishes?  And Lazarus coming back from the dead?  All literal.  You and your liberal society, so supposedly enlightened.  You like to say that the Bible is just a collection of myths, no different than the stories from ancient Greece or Rome.  Well, it’s not.”

I looked back down, not sure what to say.  If I really was where it seemed I was, I certainly was not going to start a theological argument with an angel.

The angel asked again, “Do you want to say anything before we begin?”  I shook my head.  “I bet you’re feeling a bit stupid now after scoffing at right-wing fundamentalists all your life.  Never expected that they’d be right, did you?”  I shook my head again.  It was becoming clear that, whatever this was, it probably was not going to go well for me.

“Ok, well this shouldn’t take too long,” the angel began.  “We don’t have to review your whole life, just a few select incidents will suffice.  Based on what I know about you, I think the end result is a given anyway.  But you know, protocol…”

I smiled.  It was an instinctive response.  “Why am I still in these clothes?” I blurted out suddenly.

“What should you be wearing?” the angel asked.

“I don’t know, it just seems strange to still be in these clothes.”

“I just review you.  I don’t dress you.  Any more questions?”  I shook my head.  “Ok then.  First incident.  January 1973.   You were seven years old, grocery shopping with your mom.  You used to go with her every Saturday.  Sometimes you would stop for French fries and gravy first, remember?  On the day we’re talking about, at the check-out, as she was taking everything out of the buggy, you stole a chocolate bar.  Put it in your pocket without anyone seeing.  When you got home, you went to your room and ate it and loved it.  Intellectually, even at seven years old, you knew it was wrong, and you never stole anything again.  But, at that moment in time, you were completely guilt free.  What are your thoughts?”

“I don’t know, it was just a chocolate bar.  Sure, I stole it and I knew it was wrong, but I was seven!  It was a whim, a stupid impulse.  All kids steal something at some point in their lives.”

“You broke a Commandment.  Thou shall not steal.”

I shrugged.  “I was seven,” I said again softly.

“You never felt guilt.”

“No.”

“Next incident.  March 1979.  You and a friend were walking to school.  It was your first year in high school and you were feeling somewhat arrogant.  You heard a voice from behind you.  It was another friend, not a close one, more of an acquaintance really, but still someone you had known for a while.  He yelled your name, said “Hey, wait for me”.  But instead of waiting, you and your other friend started to run away.  He obviously saw you but you didn’t care.  You felt cool.  When you finally saw him at school, you could see that he was upset.  But no one ever said a word about it.”

The angel stopped speaking, looking at me emotionlessly.  I stood in silence, uncomfortable.

“Any thoughts on this?

I hesitated.  “It was a mean thing to do.  For whatever it’s worth, I did feel bad about it later.  I’ve thought about it often, to be honest.  I actually think it may have affected how much I trusted people when I got older.  But still, we were teenagers.  Teenagers do stupid things.  Seems a bit of an over-reaction if the decision on my Eternity is based on how I ran away from someone when I was a teenager.”

“We’re not talking about any ultimate decisions on your Afterlife yet.  Don’t be so dramatic.  But do you know what happened to your friend because of that incident?” the angel asked.

“No.  I never saw him again after graduation.”

“Nothing happened.  It was totally irrelevant.  He’s living a happy and completely average middle-class life with a wife and kids, much more content than you ever were.”

“So that’s good, no?  It didn’t matter then.”

“You’re right.  For him, it didn’t matter.  But it could have mattered and that’s the point.  It could have traumatized him.  You were just lucky that your friend was mentally and emotionally mature and healthy.”

I shrugged again.  I was doing a lot of shrugging.

The angel’s wings fluttered slightly.   For whatever reason, I got the feeling that it was an involuntary reaction to being frustrated with me and our conversation.  “Your wings moved,” I said.

“April 1980.  You were working at your first job as a bus-boy at a restaurant.  Your supervisor didn’t like you at all and he made you miserable.  He made fun of you, spread rumours about you, even knocked you over once or twice while you were carrying trays of dishes.  You know who I’m talking about, right?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Do you want to tell me what you did to him?  Or would you like me to continue the story?”

I didn’t say anything.  I felt the warm flush of shame on my face.

“I’ll continue then,” the angel said.  “One night, late in the shift, he was being particularly mean to you.  He had already tried to trip you once.  He had yelled at you in front of the other staff, called you an incompetent jerk.  He said he was going to get you fired.  And as he walked by after his tirade, he slapped you on the side of the head.  It didn’t hurt you but it was embarrassing and some of your co-workers laughed.  By the time you got home after work, you were furious.  Do you remember?”

I nodded.

“You didn’t sleep the entire night.  Thoughts were racing through your mind.  You had never been a vengeful person but you really wanted to get back at him somehow, right?  I’m being accurate with my description?”

“Yes, it’s accurate.”

“So you came up with a plan to shame him.  For the next three weeks, you went to work as if nothing had ever happened.  He still harassed you but you said nothing, you never complained and you didn’t react.  Since he saw that he wasn’t getting under your skin anymore, he actually calmed down and didn’t bother you as much.  He wasn’t getting any thrill because you weren’t reacting.  Still sounds right?”

I nodded and took a deep breath and exhaled.

“Once you felt that enough time had passed, you approached him.  It was at the end of a Friday night shift and you said you needed to tell him something.  He scoffed but you said it was serious so he humoured you and listened.  You told him that, a day or two after he had slapped you, you got a headache.  At first, it was mild, but it didn’t go away.  It just slowly kept getting worse, until finally you went to the doctor who did a quick examination and took a couple x-rays.  You told him that, the next day, the doctor had called you back and said you had to go to emergency immediately for more in-depth tests.  The x-rays had shown something odd.  Do you remember how he reacted to this?”

“He didn’t say anything.  But I knew he was getting nervous.  He was starting to look scared.”

“Exactly.  And you knew it and you could have stopped there.  But you kept going with your story.  You told him that you had just received the test results and they were as bad as they could be.  You said that, when he slapped you, it damaged some blood vessels in the side of your head.  A total fluke thing, the doctors said.  But it was irreparable.  The headaches would continue to get worse but the really bad news was that eventually the blood vessels would rupture.  You told him that the doctors gave you three more years to live, at the most, but that there was no way to know for sure.  Do you remember what happened next?”

“I made myself cry.”

“So clever.  It was a devious conclusion and a brilliant performance.  The perfect way to sell your lie.  He believed every word you said, the whole entire story.  The next day, you quit your job and he never saw you again.  It was quite the diabolical plan.  Ultimately ironic, too, when you think of it, since you actually did end up dying of a stroke which is caused by a burst blood vessel.  Funny how that worked out.”

The angel stopped speaking and looked at me.  I wasn’t sure if I should say anything.  There was a long gap of very uncomfortable silence.  Finally, the angel spoke again.

“Do you want to know the end result of your performance?  How it affected the rest of your co-worker’s life?”

“I guess so,” I replied.

“It was pivotal.  He never hit anyone again and the direction of his whole life changed.  He became a model citizen and a Christian minister.  The guilt and shame he felt because of what he thought he did to you changed everything.  He started searching for ways to make himself feel better and religion turned out to be the answer.  So he decided to make that his calling.  He works every day now trying to make other people feel better.  And it was all because of you.”

I didn’t know what to say.  It seemed that any response would be the wrong response.  The angel said nothing either.  Then I had a question.

“You know everything about me, right?”

“Of course.”

“So are we going to talk about anything else?  I mean, you know that I did worse things.”

“I know you did worse things, yes.  Do you want to talk about them?  Do you think there is a reason to talk about them?  You know what they are and I know what they are.  We can verbalize them if you want but, really, I don’t see the point.  As far as I’m concerned, my work with you is done.”  The angel started to turn away, wings fluttering softly.  The golden gate opened slightly.

“What do I do now?”  I asked.  “What happens now?”

The angel turned back and faced me and pointed a long delicate finger.  “Walk that way.”

“Where am I going?”

The angel showed no expression.  “You’ll know when you get there.”

Chris Klassen lives and writes in Toronto, Canada. After graduating from the University of Toronto and living for a year in France and England, he returned home and worked the majority of his career in print media. He is now living a semi-retired life. His stories have been published in Short Circuit, Unlikely Stories, Across the Margin, Fleas on the Dog, Vagabond City, Dark Winter, Literally Stories, Ghost City Review, The Raven Review and Close to the Bone.