Monthly Archives: December 2023

New Year’s Eve after the Holiday Away


The intermittent bark
of the collie next door,
Alexa playing Dvorak, Mahler.

Her takeout order called in:
Chicken Marsala.
The Chianti open and breathing.

For dessert, the easy chair.
Louise Erdrich’s 
“The Night Watchman”
waits on the end table.

Enter now the thermostat,
dipping from 68 to 60 to 55 to 49.

Enter her furnace ––
1987’s ironman without a pulse ––
her blood pressure, sole heat source.

Enter the emergency technician
just arrived from the heating company.
His clangs in the basement nailing
dollar signs on the cold walls.

Enter Martha, sister of Mary,
approaching from a corner
out of Luke’s gospel,*
apron speckled with flour,
a loaf still in the oven.
Solo cook, dishwasher,
Martha nods, knowing 

this woman lacks the company
of the Divine in the flesh.
Knows this woman
can’t hear Him telling her
none of this will matter.
	    	
*Luke 10:38-42	

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.

The rabbis taught:  Four entered pardes.  Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Another, and Rabbi Akiva.  One looked and died; one looked and went mad; one looked and aspostasized; and one entered in peace and departed in peace.  –Tosefta Hagigah 2:2 (with variations in the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud) 


1.
Four Entered Pardes

The journey took place in the study house
what comes next always comes later
madness, death, infirmities of age and hard living

First we went
we answered the seven riddles 
passed through the seven portals 
of the seven heavens etc
we knocked, entered 
stood, looked—the poet’s peeked is wrong—
we looked boldly. 
Was it Ezekiel’s flaming chariot we saw? 
Whatever.  We had come with a question: one God or many?
Akiva saw one.  I saw many. 
Azzai and Zoma, first timers, were bedazzled.

Like those who watch Fox and those who don’t
What you see is always what you already know.
You have brought it with you.  

2.
Questions for Another whose questions led astray:

What was the point of stepping into
the alleyways of Galilee
banish boys from their books 
sending them to learn 
practical skills rather than ideals
dreary dailiness in place of spiritual highs—

What could be more public than to 
mount your horse on the Sabbath
ride beyond the boundaries of the city 
into the hills of Galil—  

Was it to wish your dark despair on the world?

3. 

Zoma whose mind shattered 
on seeing the flaming chariot 
in flight like light
moving in every direction at once
never turning back
so that if he called, screamed even
wait for me, wait—
his cry—given physics—could travel 
only at the steady speed of slow sound
like the scream that emerged from that painting
and never reached God’s ears.


4.
#Another

About Another whom
the demagogues of 
the synagogues 
officially othered 
not for the usual separation 
that makes dehumanization possible. 

This othering erased a given name to
replace with a non-name 
now renowned for 
the dangers of Gnosis 
for the worst of what can happen. 
 
Worse than the 
ecstatic death of Zoma the 
madness of Azzai 
was this loss of faith
Another’s fate.
  
They needed a handle to
use as reference to
give deference to 
what everyone agreed was high learning:

Hashtag Another 
whose disciples continued walking behind him to benefit from his brilliance

Hashtag Another 
whose story served as warning about the dangers of asking the wrong questions  

Hashtag Another who inspired a poem, a novel, a series

Hashtag Another, the title of this song. 

In death, a disciple’s cloak claimed 
Another’s body for Jewish burial 
making sense of this ending.


5.  Four Women Enter PaRDes

Four women entered PaRDeS
considered the infamous chariot
the flaming wheels 
the fire-breathing dragons & tigers –

A hot rod? Peshat wondered. 
Where have we seen that before? Derash asked.
Mad Max, Peshat answered.  

Remez and Sod were already moving on  
toward the mystery they’d come for 
the story of creation.

Peshat & Derash hurried after. 

Pearl Abraham is the author of, most recently, American Taliban (Random House) and The Seventh Beggar (Riverhead, semi-finalist, Koret Intl).  Animal Voices, Mineral  Hum, a collection of stories in progress, was shortlisted for the 2018 McCarthy Prize in.short fiction.    

A Pew in the Forest



High on a mountaintop where few ever go, 
the autumnal forest rises in splendor  
like a cathedral accepting all kinds of seekers
inside its ancient pillars of trees pointed 
heavenward. And in a small nave of arched 
branches, I listen to the bird-choristers. 

The woodland incense of acorn drifts 
above the crunch of leaves, both whispered 
like prayers for the transcendence of being, 
and I know without a doubt something holy 
is afloat and afoot in this ephemeral space 
that will not look quite the same tomorrow. 

But today, sunlight on stained-glass leaves 
pulses a reminder of the deep red lifeblood 
flowing through the roots of the Spirit,
linking me to all creatures, revealing also
the golden tone of gratitude that is fused 
to the breath of the earth if we notice it.

I hear the numinous wood-laced hymns 
rebound the flamboyant flutter of a truth, 
which I know I must accept here, even as I 
pine for the one who has departed from me—
the truth that each of us must pass through 
the autumn before living forever in spring.

As a pilgrim humbled by a need to wonder, 
I take my pew—this moss-covered log—
sheltered beneath an old oak that’s become 
my friend, and I embrace the communion, 
knowing deeply, even in loss and sorrow, 
the certitude that it is well with my soul.

Danita Dodson is a poet, educator, and literary scholar. She is the author of two books of poetry, Trailing the Azimuth (2021) and The Medicine Woods (2022). Her poems have also appeared in Salvation South and the Tennessee Voices Anthology. Dodson is a native of Sneedville, Tennessee (USA), where she hikes in the hills of her ancestors and explores local history connected to the wilderness. Read more at www.danitadodson.com.

The Coventry Carol				

Herod the king, in his raging,
Chargid he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All yonge children to slay 


a paper boat
on an ocean
the weight of a baby
in your arms

out of the night
come angels 
wise men
and the death squad

the dream
the nightmare 
happen in the dark
hinterland of Christmas

ruthless power
strikes fast
strikes all
Childermas

inside information
flight
exile and biding time
the strategies of the escapee

who never imitates
the warlord tactics
who lets the level in the desert cistern
rise slowly, over thirty years

knowing new men of might
will smash in
achieve the kill 
provoke the overflow

Angela Graham is from Northern Ireland. In Wales she has had a long career as a film maker. She now divides the year between both places. Her collection of poetry, Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere was published by Seren Books in 2022 and her collection of short stories, A City Burning in 2020.

Slowness

Thankfulness overspills from the gold
Rim and royal purple of this day’s low
Dawning. On the din of not yet un-
Differentiated clamor of clouds stray
Marbling streaks. None of it could be
Eyed head-on, no scald for nakedly
Receiving day, almost before it’s so
Launched. Slowness becomes our
Dictum.

G. E. Schwartz, former senior researcher for the New York State Assembly, lives on the banks of the Genesee River, Upstate New York. He is the author of Only Others Are (LEGIBLE PRESS), THINKING IN TONGUES (Hank’s Loose Gravel Press), Odd Fish (Argotist Press), Murmurations (Foothills Press), and The Very Light We Reach for (LEGIBLE PRESS), and has work in or forthcoming in Dappled Things, America Magazine, Dakota Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly, Comstock Review, Talisman, etc.

Offering

I scan the shoreline, shuffling in and out of waves, 
sifting through shell fragments. I spot one, 
wrapped in a wad of purple kelp—a sand dollar—
whole, crisp, chalk white in a gray-brown array 
of crushed conchs, chipped edges, holes and half cockles. 
My finger traces the smooth, sloped surface. 
Five slits surround five gray petals with perfect 
radial symmetry. I imagine fashioning an ornament—
soaking it in a bucket of bleach, slipping a ribbon 
through the top slit—or slathering it with paint, 
setting it on my bookshelf in a delicate silver stand. 
When I return to the boat, my hands cup several sand dollars, 
sun-warmed, stacked in my palm. I toss all but one 
to the foaming waves. The sea swallows, obliged.

Evangeline Sanders is an MFA student at the University of Alabama and a graduate of Clemson University, where she received degrees in psychology and Spanish. Her poetry chapbook, Flight of the Quetzal, was published with Finishing Line Press in November 2023. Evangeline’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in several literary journals, both print and online, including Sky Island Journal and Delta Poetry Review. Much of her current work engages with biblical themes and the natural world. She teaches undergraduate English classes and serves as an Assistant Editor for the Black Warrior Review in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Cathedral 

Beautiful the light, the glass.  
Easy to forget once the 
sanctuary empties, all 
those dynamics of art: light 
throwing shifting colors 
that flicker over faces 
raised in song and praise.  

Not the same praise as sunrise 
or bird song, or even the 
turtle’s head, breaking the pond’s 
surface as he scrabbles up 
the side of the fallen log
to bask in reflected heat,
stretching himself up to warm
in summer’s blaze of sun.

But it’s the best I can do 
stretching up toward this glory
in houses of stone, steel, glass.
By grace, maybe close enough.

K.L. Johnston is an author, poet, and photographer whose work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, anthologies, and travel journals as well as a photo illustrated book of meditations.  She holds a degree in English and Communications from the University of South Carolina and her wide-ranging interests contribute to her writing and art.  Her work explores the connections of humanity with the physical, spiritual, and liminal places she has stumbled into in her travels and in her own back yard.   She devotes her unscheduled time to writing and satisfying her curiosity about people and this planet. You can find out more by visiting her Facebook page “A Written World”.

What the Stars Want To Tell Us

The stars, a rowdy, cheerful crowd,
ran to their places, prompt to the call,
and how they sing! since then,
a nightly choir.
Only the comets, their slow tears,
betray the sorrow underneath that steadfastness
for haven’t they seen it all?
− what we do down here,
warping the darkness that they love
into sly coverts for our filthiness.
Poor stars. Don’t grudge them their reprieve
each year, when their paragon, 
their Star of stars, leader of kings,
sets out once more and triumphs,
finds his place, finding the child,
perfect as every new-born.
Here! the Star declares to each of us,
Surely you see – surely – that you
are a Child Awaited,
arrived, naked and beloved, and you,
gift-bearer of nothing,
can stoop under the lintel,
step clean through the needle’s eye.

Angela Graham is from Northern Ireland. In Wales she has had a long career as a film maker. She now divides the year between both places. Her collection of poetry, Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere was published by Seren Books in 2022 and her collection of short stories, A City Burning in 2020.

Winter Solstice 

Dawn brushes pink skies.
Birdbath is hard as iron. 
Feathered and furred critters 
peek from bushes and evergreens.   
A squirrel digs through snow dust. 
Deck cap rails frost glazed. 
Bird bowl frozen—a sparrow
perches on the edge
eying a rival’s reflection—
pecks at it, flits away. 
I study the spectacle from my kitchen nest.
They’ll fend without my help. Always have.  
Too damn cold to step to the porch for birdseed.

The radio plays In The Bleak Mid-Winter . . . 
I sigh, open the sliding-glass door. Breath fogs.
I grab birdseed, step down treacherous stairs,  
pour trails of seed on the cap rails, and fill
a bowl with warm water. All is silent as a stone. 
Dashing up, close the door, and soon a Tit lands, 
feasts and a Yellow Finch joins. They scatter when
a gluttonous Jay lands, promenades and primps until
an alpha crow alights—Jay zooms to a distant yard.  
I burst the door open; the crow vanishes in chilly haze.  
A Cardinal scavenges for a few last sunflower seeds.
 “If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.”

Peter Venable has written sacred and secular verse for many decades. He’s appeared in Ancient Paths, Prairie Messenger, The Christian Century, The Merton Seasonal, Windhover, and forthcoming in Soul-Lit. He is a septuagenarian, happily married, “Poppy” to two granddaughters, a Christ follower, and volunteers at a prison camp. His Jesus Through A Poet’s Lens is available at Amazon. He is at petervenable.com and on FB.

Journeying

Of course I wasn’t there.

But I know that there was a shift in the universe
that shafted into this world and its understandings.

You can give me a hundred reasons for believing otherwise.

Sensible reasons.

Rational reasons.

I enjoy the turning of the earth at the winter solstice,
when the dark begins to be defeated
and the planet edges back to the light again.

I can see how you would feel there is nothing 
more mysterious going on.

I stand at the top of the cold hill on
the edge of the Pennines.
Stare at the same stars as you do
knowing that their shining is because they 
have been burnt up to a crisp 
and the news of planetary passing is still
coming through to us. 

Quite straightforward.

But as I let the hugeness of that understanding
sink into my being,
I try to settle myself into listening …
leaning in towards the asking of the question.

It is uncomfortable to me 
to live in a desert darkness of believing in nothing
whilst ignoring the hunched figures on camels
driving hard towards Bethlehem 
guided by the brightness of a single lode star

that I can see too.


Viv Longley has been writing for her own pleasure since she was a child.  Later in life she undertook an MA in Creative Writing at The Open University, specialising in poetry. As well as having one collection (Tally Sheet, Currock Press, 2021) she is undertaking a number of collaborative publications, notably, Daughters of Thyme. She is also preparing a second collection of her own and a number of essays – the latter to be called I am in a Hurry. 'Now nearing my 80’s, you just never know how much time you have left!'