Monthly Archives: June 2024

             I Ching 

                    I

                      A thread -
                         intuition
                         memories, ravelled by time


                    draws me on 
                      to synagogues
                         universities
                           to poetry


                       Not love
               which requires actual flesh
                    but something invisible
                       a small apocalypse
                           of learning


                       I cherish
                  these threads, collect them
                      they become part
                         of my tapestry
                            
                           but some grow cold
                              neglected, a bitterness
                                  like the sediment in wine


                                      II

                          No sign post
                      no billboard
                           no answer sheet 
                                to let me know how I did
              
                            no well-worn trail  
                       just the woods 
                          familiar
                            changing
                              thicker now                                   
                                 more overgrown
                            

                           the trees

                     sometimes up close 
                       blocking the sun
                         sometimes       a small clearing 
                              with a bit of a view


                      the exercise       
                            feels good
                                   the ruminations  
                                          keep me occupied


                     I think     I can find my way back -
                                over the rise           
                                                across the stream

                           Looking back 
                             can tell us 
                          who we were
                            for a while

                         Looking ahead
                       a game of chance 
                           with rules -
                                age
                              inspiration 
                               fatigue
                              opportunity
 

                        the flicker of light
                 when fate and aspiration 
                            collide

Zav Levinson studied English literature at McGill University and Université de Montréal (M.A., Études Anglaises).  A trained cabinetmaker, he ran the studio arts workshop for the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University for 33 years. He is poetry co-editor of JONAH magazine  and co-founder of the 2-Susan’s Poetry Circle.  His second chapbook, reverb, from Sky of Ink Press, was published in the fall of 2022. His poems have appeared most recently in Montreal Writes, Canadian Jewish News and Dreamers Magazine as well as in the QWF fundraising chapbook My Island, My City and in the 2 Susans Poetry Circle 6^th anniversary chapbook What Lasts.

How We Play Opposites

With a first look outside at a grey morning,
we betray our attitudes
toward contrasts and opposites: those 

in the majority probably on the side of light.

I have learned from nocturnal predators
something of the utility of darkness—

night makes it secure for them
to hunt without themselves being hunted.

Have come to understand

the play of opposites against
each other—in the ER coin-toss of triage,

at recess choosing sides.

If you see my eyes closed, Sundays, don’t
fault the dazzle of stained-glass,
or a brilliant illumination of the text—

I’ve conceded holy darkness equal time.

Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire.  Recent work appears in Red Eft Review, Wilderness House, Bookends Review, and The Windhover. His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications.  He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region Conservation Trust.

The Suffering of Others

So close, your eyes touch them
your ears hear their pleadings

but your legs cannot approach
nor your arms extend

your words falling futile at your feet
so close, so close.

You turn your eyes away—still
they crowd your silences, your headphones

awaken you at midnight
to tell you their nightmares till morning.

You pray for them—trying to ease your own pain
by handing them off to God, fate, history—

They do not go away, cannot, will not. And you know
for their sake and yours you must not ease your pain

but grasp it, examine it for the truth it reveals,
and draw it close to your heart

so close you can touch them, so close you can
send shock waves of love to the core of all being.

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry appears in Verse-Virtual, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Midwest Zen, Soul-Lit, and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). Father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.

Psalm with Pocket Stone and Door Key

I headache, I dry throat, I shallow breathe, 
my Witness, my Refuge, I am

one of you, locked in night smell
I go back over my footprints, comb grass
into comfort with my hands. I distort—
see eyes and mouths, spread & twist 
bodies worn inside out.
Walls weep and floors waver. 
I call myself
Scatter Moon, Brainling.
Look, see the exhaustion
of nails, unable to repent clawing. 
Once primroses grew from my fingers.

Ellen Devlin is the author of chapbooks Rita and Heavenly Bodies at the MET, both published by Cervena Barva Press. Her recent journal publications include: Beyond Words, 2023, Muleskinner Journal, 2023, Rock Paper, Poem, 2023, Westchester Review, 2023  She lives in Irvington, New York.

Fisher 

Not always as a dove. We often need
A seahawk, yes, the bonebreak bird
Of prey to fold his wings and drop with speed
Surpassing thought, to fall and thus to cede
The kingdom where his cry is sharply heard,

To plunge amid the weeds and murk as gray
As any grave. The breathless water seals
In triumph—till one feeder of the clay
Is slashed anew behind the gills, and yanked away
By some strange fish’s talons, until he feels

The specks and banks and schools he knew
Were muddy prologue to devouring grace,
And flight affords his shock-fixed eye the view
Of waters he had never known were blue
In homage to this heaven’s opened face.

It takes no eye so clear, as up he climbs
Where sun awaits and ether hazes wreathe
His form, to dream him in the world where time’s 
Hands fail, the world with which ours rhymes,
Healed of scars and newly taught to breathe.

Will Begley teaches, writes, and raises children in North Carolina. His poems and translations have appeared in journals including Dappled Things and The Road Not Taken.

When I have Penned My Final Thoughts 

When I
Have penned my final thoughts and left to meet
the sky,
don't organize my table; let the sheet,
the clipboard, and the cartridge pen lie there;
let them assume I've gone to get some air.

Don't switch
the desk lamp off. Its glow will reach me through
the pitch-
black, starry intrados, producing new
beliefs about a parted man's revival,
and say to me, "I'll wait till your arrival."

Should they
enquire about my absence of long years,
please say
to them that I am with The Pioneer
of verse, whose words can spawn a life and grow it;
He's guiding me to be a better poet.

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from India. He resides in Assam with his parents. His poems have appeared in The Society of Classical Poets, Fevers of the Mind, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Westward Quarterly, Dreich, The Hypertexts, among others, and some of his poems are forthcoming in Willow Review and Ekstasis, to name a few.

Equinox

Gazing through the window at the hint of dawn,
so many months since I've seen this sacred hour.
The house quiet, the bird under his blanket,
an occasional chirrup and settling of feathers.
The dog asleep on the sofa next door, her chin
curled to meet the stretch of her paws.
The creak of my husband shifting in bed, 
my space cooling beneath the duvet.
The birdfeeder is prepped for breakfast, 
its gentle sway an invitation to nesting blue tits, 
our solitary robin and the ever-present pigeons
who wait yawning to be fed like cuckoos.
Down by the pond a heron stares past 
its own reflection at the stirrings of morning.
I should open the door, run out there
with flailing arms to save the drowsy frogs
but it seems wrong to intervene, 
to interrupt this quiet morning prayer,
so I stay put, my hand on an empty cup,
shoulders stiff with last night's vivid dreams,
waiting for the rumble and click of the kettle
to usher in the safety of the risen sun.

 

Lisa Bristow’s poetry has been published in the Thomas Merton Journal, We are Not Shadows by Folkways Press, What the Eye Sees by Arachne Press, Kosmeo Mag and Faith, Hope and Fiction. She lives on the edge of the Peak District in England with her husband and rescue dog.

Leonard Cohen Sang to Me at Dawn 				      
 
The dream was thrilling, until
he stopped singing and, 
like a Zen Master 
presenting 
a koan, 
he declared, Song of praise. 
I will think on that, I thought. 
Then he added—in a voice clear as ringing bells, reflective as still water 
—Sing! Sing a song of praise.
I tried to protest, in my sleep-dream
paralysis, tried to say: I. Can’t. Sing.
 
But I was not the woman who could
say no to Leonard Cohen. I started 
weeping, told him that life and
world of late were unholy and unfit 
for any song or praise, for reasons I chose 
not to enumerate. In the dream he knew
anyway. Into the lifting light of the 
morning, Leonard Cohen

vanished, leaving trails of irony, throaty laughter, 
a smell like moldy feathers, and some eerie words
that echoed like a shameful scolding from a god
I used to know who loved the broken:
What else is there to sing of 
 if not the unholy holy? 
 
As I awoke, I heard myself singing:
O planet spinning green and blue.
O mother mine, her touch.
O fathers, in their time.
O muscles in my legs and arms. 
O lovers and children.
O ancestors, friends.
O nurse. 
O holy ones.
All who will have carried me
To the finish line. 
Ahead of time, 
I sing your praises.

Connie Johnstone was found by poetry writing in 2021.  In her other lives she wrote a novel, The Legend of Olivia Cosmos Montevideo (Atlantic Monthly Press); edited an anthology, I’ve Always Meant to Tell You (Pocket Books); was professor of English and chair of creative writing at American River College; changed careers and was a Hospice Chaplain with Kaiser Permanente, used Narrative Therapy, became a witness to others’ stories. Her degrees include MFA from Bennington College and MTS from Harvard Divinity School. She lives and writes in Davis, California. 

Proselytism

I suppose I subscribed
to the religion 
of childhood,
an age of strawberries
cut by a mother’s tongue
and skinned knees
deemed holy
in their destruction 

It was slow at first,
but I was welcomed to the priesthood
as I pressed 
the empty luck of sidewalk pennies
to my palms 
and I was baptized 
by an August heat
that wrapped its fruit-stained fingers
across my eyes and asked 
if I could feel 
the sun pooling at my feet,
tasting my skin
with a gentle thirst

but when the preachers came to my door
preaching a renewed girlhood,
I couldn’t slip so easily into the past
with memory’s resuscitation,
a push on her chest
and the touch of her lips to mine,
a breath
a resurrection

because what am I if not an obsessive creature 
bound to belief

who didn’t need a repeat,
but a chance
to let her tired body find its way 
to the earth
and watch the moon consume itself
anew

Cate Latimer is a poet from Portland, Oregon. She is a first-year at Brown University studying English and Urban Studies and the founder and publisher at Stepping Stone Publishing, a student-focused publishing company. Her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

Marlene M. Tartaglione is an artist whose creativity manifests poetry, children’s literature, the visual arts. She was born & raised in New York City. Ms. Tartaglione believes art & compassionate action are one, a powerful tool for positive social change:  Her work gives voice to social justice, spiritual transcendence  & environmental issues. Ms. Tartaglione’s writing has appeared in literary presses both nationally & abroad (i.e. The Hong Kong Review, Canada’s Dreamers Creative Writing, the Wind Journal, Cholla Needles, & The Chronogram; also, in publications of New York University & The Cooper Union, among others).

Ms. Tartaglione has been awarded four poetry prizes, her work presented at venues such as the Brooklyn Museum, New York Cultural Center, New Federal Theater, The Society for Ethical Culture, as well as the New York Book Fair. Both Ms. Tartaglione’s  writing & artwork are cited in archives at the University of Buffalo in Buffalo, New York; her poetry & children’s stories, profiled in lectures at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. Published in Hatch-Billops’ Black History annual, Artist & Influence, Ms. Tartaglione’s poems are now part of their permanent collection endowed to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her M.B.A. studies at NYU focused largely on the literature of Early Childhood as well as documentary film. Ms. Tartaglione also holds a B.F. A. from the Cooper Union, where she studied poetry with eminent scholar, poet & educator, Dr. Brian Swann.