Monthly Archives: June 2024

The pomegranate


God directs your attention to the prison of the heart
its doorways gummed with impossibility

to the atom of a thought in which conjecture 
& punishment wrestle for advantage 

to great anguish locked in a small room
to a storm trapped under glass & burnt by its own lightning 

to great anguish but also the great wonders 
to the Perseids buzzing with light in the hive of the sky  

to pyramids pressed from the flesh of the desert 
to the breath of electricity caught in the ear of a conch shell 

to decades of prayer clustered in the fist of a pomegranate 
each more pierced with sweetness than the last

to the anguish of impossibility & wonder
the charge of it

Mathew Lyons is based in East London. His poems have appeared in Bad Lilies, The Interpreter’s House, Reliquiae and Under the Radar, among others.

A Large and Unexpected Statue of Anubis

I saw you and my knees gave way. 
I think it was in the V&A, I almost fell; your majesty a shock. 
(All strong men should have jackal heads.)
My bones demanded that I worship you,
Each cell was heavy with your praise. 
O black divinity.
O weigher of hearts. 
I knew myself your supplicant; your slave in thrall. 
But I was modern. I stood tall, but quaking:
Stillness brought by shame,
Trained to refuse such adoration, my mind whispering your name;
Whispering it still, as softly as a kiss. 
O jackal god, O more than dog,  
O beautiful unknown Anubis. 

I am three thousand years too late to be your acolyte.
I shall never witness jackals scratching open shallow graves at night.
Devouring what they find. Becoming you. 
I wish that I had felt the floor beneath my palms and bones. 
The weight of your authority, the pull of earth; your realm below. 
Down through ages and discoveries, 
Back to the believed, the known. 
I yearned to fall, but I stood still; disobedient but not free,
Listening to the world, and not your majesty. 
A statue myself, pinioned, there I was:
Girl refusing her impulse to venerate an ancient god.
Regretfully declining there to worship recklessly,
For I was with my mother,
And still Catholic in name at least. 

Now I hunt you, seek your face
In museums with Egyptian rooms, 
And cases of old gods. 
Sometimes you appear as you did that day, 
Striding like a man towards his own.
Other times you are most doglike;
On your haunches in Stockholm,
Misplaced by the staircase, 

Almost in disguise. 
But I could see you. I was not surprised. 
In engravings you lie outstretched, 
With always that strength in your rigid neck. 
Never does your muzzle rest upon your paws, never do you doze.
You, lord of darkness and the endless sleep, are lively in repose. 

The diastole is half the heartbeat still; the pause is part of life. 
You come to weigh and hold the heart.
(Anubis, judge it light!)
Beyond the visible life of earth you are the gatekeeper, 
The strict companion of birth. 
Another time I will bring down my lips
To the cold black stone of your feet or claws,
Then make a shrine to you at home.
Bring you fruits and flowers and perfumed oil. 
Burn incense. Light the gloom with candles. 
Their gold will throw circles, bright collars on the walls. 
Anubis, you are a living god to me. 
I come now with bowed head and upraised heart. 
I worship thee.

Liz Kendall works as a Shiatsu and massage practitioner and Tai Chi Qigong teacher. Her poetry has been published by Candlestick Press and The Hedgehog Poetry Press. Liz has collaborated with an artist and ethnobotanist on the forthcoming book Meet Us and Eat Us: Food plants from around the world, which explores biodiversity through poetry, prose, and fine art photography. Her website is https://theedgeofthewoods.uk and she is on Twitter/X and Facebook @rowansarered. 

Cruz de Ferro
             30 April 2022

We awoke before dawn and climbed the mountain track in the dark.
Light had broken by the time we reached the mound:
a pile of rocks left over the years by the pilgrims before us,
a pole rising from its heart, an iron cross at the top.

People broke apart to sit alone on the dewy grass.
No one spoke. Even the merriest there were silent.

I thought back to the week before when we ate
at long wooden tables, after passing
round a candle and speaking about why
we had chosen this pilgrimage. No one at that table
was there for God, but even those who walked
only to joke and drink with new friends were respectful
and spoke a few words. Here at the cross it is the same.
The dawn is too quiet for laughter. Someone near me is crying.

It is tradition to leave something here. So, one by one
we climb the mound, lay down a rock or memento, touch
the cross, and go on. I write myself a letter to leave folded
under a stone, carrying the words away within me.

I love and have loved and will love.
That is okay. It may sometimes hurt –
                       I think of a boy somewhere on the road ahead,
                       with bright blue eyes that will never look twice
                       at me
– but it will not kill me. Far from it –
                       I think of his smile when I told him so.
                       He didn’t take my hand but I didn’t need
                       him to. He had met my eye
– it will make me more alive day by day.

This journey is remaking me. I have never breathed so deep before.
One day, perhaps, I will step into a holy space
without bending it – but not today.

I pull on my rucksack again, and walk on.
The sun is up now. This is all I believe in
 – this, right here.

Finlay Worrallo is a queer cross-arts writer studying Modern Languages at Newcastle University. He writes poetry, prose and scripts, and his work is published in VIBE, Queerlings, 14, the Braag’s speculative fiction chapbook Unfurl: Portrait of Another World, and the Emma Press’ anthology Dragons of the Prime: Poems about Dinosaurs.

Steve Mueske is a music producer and the author of A Mnemonic for Desire and Slower than Stars. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, Water~Stone Review, Cream City Review, The Pinch Journal, The Normal School, Jet Fuel Review, Thrush, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. 

Cashmere

Balls of goat hair 
from Outer Mongolia
bagged up in my closet
fine thread unknotted
in hand-rolled skeins

Bright earth colors of supple cashmere
personal favorites
green for vibrant growing things,
 white for scudding clouds
blue for summer sky

Heirlooms knitted, complex designs
with vigilantly counted stitches,
given freely away— 
delicate christening robes,
yards of sweaters and vests

I cradle blue, green, and white
envisioning cashmere comforts
that I will knit for myself
when I am ready

Poet Victoria Crawford lives in Thailand  now, but has spent a good portion of her life teaching and writing in the Middle and Far East.  Her poems have appeared in journals such as Pensive Stories, The Muse, and Pacific Poetry.   

Back in St. Jude’s Room 

Kneeling beneath the patterned bronze slats
spaced with holes that imitate the rags 
of the saint’s clothes, his arms raised forever
frozen in God’s time over wicks yet untried 
by hope and over the walls of jagged brick 
blessed and polished dark marble and dark 
corners seen when shadows are opened
by flickering candlelight, there is only the 
candlelight here. The secular remains 
on the outside, the war, movements, 
domestic violence, television reruns. 
We pray for Danny Coscarelli, my cousin
to return safely from Viet Nam, for Dad’s 
soul, for the neighbors, aunts. Mom prays 
for our teachers, for co-workers who orbit long 
in our hearts, Mom counting on her rosary 
silently while I whisper to our Father and Mary’s 
prayer only a few times, only have a few I 
have to say and then fall silent as the rosary sorting 
continues near the movement of light and smoke. 
Leaving again through doorframes into 
outside, then the car, and passing 
lawns where the sun shines 
we drive home, cross the highway 
but the silence has followed, 
swallowed the small talk, with us not to speak 
of all this again, understand the passing of
field and lawns and houses with opened 
garage doors stand changed and drawn on 
along the silence after morning.

Thomas Allbaugh‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Amethyst Review, Whale Road Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, and a number of other venues. His chapbook of poems, The View from January, was published in 2020 by Kelsay Books. He has also published a collection of short stories and a novel. 

The Garden 


Sweat trickles down my temples. 
I sit in dirt pulling up chickweed and crabgrass  
 
one weed at a time. A full bed awaits, but I’m in no rush. 
Pushing my trowel under the surface, I loosen dirt around roots,  
 
give space for my hand to gently pull the next weed,  
shake off excess dirt and add to my pail.  
 
Under a green leaf, a lady bug startles:  
rich soil also home for my tiny neighbor. 
 
A gnat buzzes my glasses, a fly tries to land on my arm.  
I watch it hover, arms and back lazy with heat. 
 
I build an altar of two gray stones stacked next to the agave 
on the edge of the bed, like Jacob did centuries before. 
 
I bless the cypress for its gift of shade.  
Marking this moment, I inhale  
 
the dampness of turned soil, sink my hand  
back into dark brown earth. 

Margaret Anne Kean received her BA in British/American Literature from Scripps College and her MFA from Antioch University/Los Angeles. Her chapbook collection, Cleaving the Clouds, was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and her work has appeared in various journals including Eunoia Review, San Antonio Review, EcoTheoReview, and Tupelo Quarterly.   

wind-riffle through the leafy green

while
i read

of 
neutrinos

sifting

through
the net

of me--

drift-galaxy

breath
hue

Melanie Green‘s most recent book of poetry, A Long, Wide Stretch of Calm, was published by The Poetry Box, of Beaverton, Oregon, USA. Her poems explore the numinous, an appreciation of nature, and living with chronic illness.

Cristo Redentor
          jazz by Donald Byrd
 
A haunting chorale
laced with sonorous chords
leads me through winding hills
to deliver me
into the narrow valley
that holds Westphalia,
where a church spire high on a hill
rises from surrounding trees to be seen
by all who pass on the highway
below, both wayward and devout.
 
As I leave that steeple behind,
Donald Byrd’s trumpet,
slow, and almost sultry, moves in,
dances with those voices,
and Duke Pearson’s piano teases,
seems to offer a revelation.
 
Rich Fountain lies just down the road,
waits to follow suit, its church
again totally obscured above me, 
save the lines of its spire
rising above the trees.
 
When the road from there
opens to a wide valley,
I almost expect to see
Sugarloaf Mountain on the horizon
with the arms of Christ the Redeemer
opened wide, expecting me to come home.
 
Once baptized,
that boat long since capsized,
I still know all the rituals,
mouth the words at weddings
and funerals, though I know
they’ll never be uttered at mine.
 
As if knowing that ship has sailed,
trumpet, piano, and chorale
fade into the distance
as I head down the road to Belle.
 

 
Ken Gierke writes primarily in free verse and haiku. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming both in print and online in such places as Amethyst Review, As It Ought to Be Magazine, Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Breakfast, and Silver Birch Press. Glass Awash, his first collection of poetry, was published by Spartan Press in 2022. His poetry collection, Heron Spirit, was published in April 2024.  His website: https://rivrvlogr.com/
 

almond blossoms

After the cold's unblunted knife,
a tenuous gracility
resembling a linen coif
is tangled on the almond tree.

Help me to stand as nude of line
where the sky nailed my summering,
as starkly witnessed as this sign
the year hammered on nothing --

as mute a token as this maimed,
unapprehending winter tree.
A dark menorah, till enflamed
with white-intense fragility.

Isabel Chenot has loved and practiced poetry for as long as she can remember. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in various places — most lately Ekstasis, Shotglass Journal, Vita Poetica. She writes regularly for Story Warren. Some of her poems are collected in The Joseph Tree, available from Wiseblood books.