Monthly Archives: July 2024

Munificence: A Prayer Poem

The earth breaks open—
steaming like biscuits—
and the sunrise bestows
a rich mystic kiss.
The great ribbon unfurls
and we are enfolded,
joined surely together,
a vivid embrace.
Oh, God of our mothers,
our siblings, 
our sons-in-law,
Guardian of the shepherd,
the hillock, the lamb.
Lord of our longings,
our artistry, honesty.
Set the day’s table
with just what we need.
We are grateful 
for your vigilance.
We are thankful
for the very air.

Kathleen Brewin Lewis grew up among the moss-draped oaks of Savannah, Georgia, eighteen miles from the Atlantic Ocean, in a land crossed with creeks and rivers. She writes primarily about the natural world and family life. Her collection of poetry, Magicicada & Other Marvels, was published by Shanti Arts in 2022. 

Pantoum of Pilgrims Who Walk Beyond Their Destination  

We, the defectives, the dregs
Who didn’t know how to stop
Discovered hearts in our legs
Seek always the next hilltop

We didn’t know how to stop
Or where, didn’t find answers
Seek a further mountaintop
Skip on like spellbound dancers

We didn’t find our answers
Or were our questions wrong?
Trip on, enchanted dancers
We’ve searched our whole lives long

We got our questions wrong
Have further now to travel
We’ve searched our whole lives long
And shall we then unravel?

A longer road to travel
We go west, towards the sea
And there we may unravel
Pause now by the Judas tree

We go west, towards the sea
The track has possessed our feet
Rest under the Judas tree
We puzzle those we meet

The track has possessed our feet
We hold each other’s spirit
We frighten some we meet
The dark, we do not fear it

We hold each other’s spirit
We’ve found our hearts in our legs
The end, we do not fear it
We, the defectives, the dregs.

Bel Wallace is a carer who practises yoga and enjoys long walks. In a previous life she was a teacher. She started writing in earnest after walking 560 miles of a pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. Her writing has been short-listed in various competitions, including the 2022 Bridport Poetry Prize and published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Raceme, Allegro, Lighthouse, Magma, Gutter, The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar and Carmen et Error. She is trying to finish her first novel, but keeps getting distracted by poetry. Instagram @belwallace_writer

Glitz

Sol, the sire of life,
makes butter run.
We’re on the terrace.
Shaded. Breakfast.
Fruit and pastries. Coffee
creamed with Baileys.
Decadent. The street 
beneath, still sleepy,
muses why last night
we stopped mid-road to gawp
a moonless heavens
splotched down its middle
with a billion melded suns.

A primal call to confront infinity?
Elements intuiting whence they came?
Or inculcation that the distant,
vast and barely comprehended
demands our awe?

It could, of course, be glitz -
the straining flame before us on the table,
oil oozing iridescence after rain,
a dusty shaft of sunlight through a crevice –
that lures the eye and later
we take home and,
granting our perceptions import,
flesh with meaning.

Daniel  P. Stokes has published poetry widely in literary magazines in Ireland, Britain, the U.S.A. and Canada, and has won several poetry prizes.  He has written three stage plays which have been professionally  produced in Dublin, London and at the Edinburgh Festival. 

Great Blue

I reach for my camera in the bow of the kayak
as living driftwood of exquisite thinness
senses me from shore with that great, watchful eye
keen for spying fish and frog, lifts, 
stays low skimming the silver gloss,
neck tucked, legs dangling,
curved wings silently rowing.

I’ve heard it said 
that the bird in any poem, in fact, represents the poet. 
Oh, were I that heron!
How I covet the instinct, the grace, the speed, 
the effortless transcendence—
one with sky and lake.

Katherine Edgren has two books of poetry: Keeping Out the Noise, by Kelsay Books and The Grain Beneath the Gloss, by Finishing Line Press, plus two chapbooks: Long Division and Transports. Her work has appeared in journals including: Coe Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Light, Orchards Poetry Journal, and Third Wednesday. Katherine is a former Ann Arbor City Council member. Her past work includes heading up the Health Promotion and Community Relations Department at University Health Service and serving as a Project Manager for Community Action Against Asthma a community-based, participatory and intervention research project through the School of Public Health, University of Michigan.  She has a Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Michigan.

Meditating While Recovering from COVID-19


Deep breathing is a challenge right now.
The virus has yet to seize me by the lungs,
but when I do breathe, the smooth swoop of air
scratches my throat, and the coughing
clutches me again. I do my best, though,
tilting my head back against the recliner,
letting fatigue flood my eyes shut
as the guided meditation begins.

Half of me wants to ask the narrator,
“Why me? And why now?
How long will I have to live with
the craving to sleep all day?
And could my boyfriend please be spared
so he never receives what I never wanted to give him?”
But the other half of me knows
these worries are futile.
So I listen as the narrator’s voice vibrates
through the soles of my feet,
as he reminds me to relax,
as he reminds me not to think,
as he asks me to do what is effortless	(close your eyes)
and what is not (breathe deeply).
Then he asks me to imagine my root chakra
as a sphere of red light at the base of my spine—

and suddenly I see it,
a tiny planet like Mars,
spinning on its axis as it centers me,
and that’s when I find the solar system I hold inside—
all seven energy centers, tiny globes
rotating on fixed points along my back, neck, and head,
each one shimmering in a color from the rainbow—

and only then do I notice
how I breathe with a river’s ease,
how I remain in my recliner yet have floated into a galaxy
where illness, questions, and fear don’t exist,
where the expanse that grows within blurs with the boundaries of skin
until the space I contain is limitless,
until all traces of disease seem to fall away,
until this lying back and listening is all I do for hours
because it allows me to feel well again.

The Meaning of Life

In the struggle between the stone and water, 
in time, the water wins.   —Japanese proverb

A formula came to me in a dream   
when I was desperate 
		a dream drifted
clear as an algaed pond
	in which mottled koi
	swim their scaley dance
meaning: fog-sighted,
self-contained,
meaning: this belongs inside
	my thought’s clay banks

	the dream sign stood clear 
to me
letters and numerals
moving verso to recto	
like a koi ballet
or the garnet veins
of a coral-bell leaf

I wrote it down in a notebook
I no longer carry it with me	 

because to stamp meaning 
on one equation of life
makes an imperious whim
an emperor of argument

yet the finch goes on 
just being finch 
creating its sounds       
we soothe ourselves 
by calling song     	
instead of edict

our words become rock or water
rhetoric is a boulder
a tool to build 
laws or confidence
power or fear

poetry flows as human song
heart in throat—
evolved from ancient
circles of fire, circles
of stones, small tribes 
farflung under a shining dome
of alien galaxies—
hope with many feathers
truths free of greed’s chains

may our words, our acts, be a river
polishing smooth the stones
 

Susan Swartwout’s books are Odd Beauty, Strange Fruit: Poems, 2 poetry chapbooks, 12 anthologies, and a publishing textbook. Her work has been awarded a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, St. Louis Poetry Centre’s Hanks Award, and nominated for seven Pushcart Prizes. She taught creative writing and small-press publishing, and founded a university press. “Retired,” she copyedits as a freelancer and currently serves as editor of Delta Poetry Review.

The Fly’s Prayer

A fly joins me at the three-legged table. 
She appears to be divining, her miniscule 
forearms bent in supplication, her head 
steadied millimeters from where our dinner 
is served. Many years ago, when anxiety 
raged in my chest like a lion, 
I went to study meditation 
with a Buddhist monk. Every Monday, 
I’d sit in that stiff metal chair 
and listen to his high voice recount 
the inevitability of death, the humanity 
of suffering and the constancy of meditation. 
I’d close my eyes and try to hear 
the silence. When I opened them again,
this man’s eyes met mine, and I saw, 
in that moment, his burning 
sanctity like the center
of the sun. Now, as I gaze 
at the fly, I see that same fiery 
core, and I want to love her
before she flies away.

Sonya Schneider is a playwright and poet living in Seattle, WA. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in 3Elements, ONE ART, Naugatuck River Review, Catamaran, SWWIM, West Trestle Review, Eunoia Review and MER VOX, among others. She was a finalist for the 2022 New Letters Patricia Cleary Miller Award for Poetry and her micro chapbook, Hunger, was shortlisted for Harbor Review’s 2023 Jewish Women’s Prize. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Pacific University’s MFA in Poetry.  

Pearl Knotting

“The Latin word “bede” means to pray.  And as we stitch our beads one at a time, I hope we can find solace in this simple and loving repetition that somehow adds goodness to the cosmic soup.”  Beadwork Magazine

Put on your favorite music,
Pachelbel or Vivaldi recommended.
Prepare your space,
placing cloth on table that will hold all your 
vials of pearls, beads and tools.

Pierce the barely visible hole
of a pale pearl with fine wire
trailing gray silk thread,
snuggly place a precise knot
with sharply pointed tweezers,
close behind the pearl.

Thread a faceted crystal, 
a knot,
a smaller pink pearl, 
a knot.
back to the milky pearl.
repeat the mantra again.

At the center
place a large tear drop pearl,
return to pattern.
At the end join 
female and male parts of clasp.

Gems of water world,
clear crystals of earth
knotted together into 
a rosary,
no matter the order of the beads, 
a universe of rose petal prayers.

Eva McGinnis has written three books of poetry Strands of Luminescence: Poetry of the Spirit’s Quest;  Wings to my Breath and At the Edge of the Earth and has had her work published in a number of literary books and magazines, including Tall and True Tales of the Olympic Peninsula, In the Words of Olympic Peninsula Authors Vol 2 in 2018, Vol 3 in 2019 and Prevail in 2020; Tidepools 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2023;  Rainshadow Poetry Anthology 2016;  Wild Willow Women’s Anthology Project; Seattle Poems by Seattle Poets Anthology;  Woman as Hero Anthology; A Mother’s Touch book; Spindrift ’93,’94 &’95.  Her poems and photographs were displayed at the PA Public Library in 2018 & 2019 and in Fluidity (online) Art Show in 2020.  She has had Ekphrastic poetry displayed alongside artwork (or read from) at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, Blue Whole Gallery, Northwind Gallery and Studio Bob’s.  Her poetry has been part of the FAC’s Poetry in the Park for three years. She facilitates a writing group in her neighborhood in Port Angeles. Eva holds degrees from Michigan State (in English) and Iowa State (in Adult Education) and a certificate in Poetry from University of Washington. 

“The true capacity of poetry comes in finding strength and grace in everything life presents us.” 

There’s a Meadow

There’s a meadow beyond the back pasture
of my grandpa’s old farm, and when I was a city
kid, it scared me—that vast openness brimming
with nothing but wildflowers, insects, and birds.

Grandpa often took me there to read and think.
The reading I didn’t mind, but I had no idea what
to think. “Relax your mind, Jenny Bell,” he’d say.

And so we’d lie there on his red-checkered blanket,
staring at the endless expanse of sky, making shapes
out of the cottony clouds, pieces of grass between

our teeth. The hum of insects would make me drowsy,
but I’d stay awake. Grandpa would eventually tell me
his thoughts, mostly about how to invent new tractors

or what to name the new calves that were nearly born.
One time, I surprised myself by telling him about middle 
school and how I didn’t like Harvey Winters because he

stuck gum on people’s seats and made fun of the freckles
on my nose. “Why do you suppose he does that?” Grandpa
asked. That’s where all the thinking came in—"I suppose 

it’s because his mama is dead, and he doesn’t have a good
daddy,” I said. Grandpa made an umm hmm noise, but didn’t
add anything. He let me think some more. Over the years,

Grandpa and I shared lots of thinking time, and nearly every
one ended with—why do you suppose. Grandpa died when
I was twenty-three, right after I graduated with a psychology 

degree. But every now and then, I leave my office and return
to the farm. I lie down in that back meadow, a blade of grass
between my teeth, and I talk to Grandpa just like I used to.

When I’m puzzling things out in life, I hear his voice,
Why do you suppose? And I find my answers floating among 
clouds shaped like lions while a butterfly rests on my chest.

Arvilla Fee teaches English Composition for Clark State College and is the managing editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, including Contemporary Haibun Online, Calliope, North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and many others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other. To learn more about her work, you can visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/

Mary Magdalene Utters Words of Wisdom 


By the hard rocks where the well was, they’d gathered; 
the morning sun, rising boisterous, ecclesiastic,

over the tortured mountain rock. It would be hot today. 
Mathew & Judas stood there, beside her, robed, sandaled. 

She said, “I’ve been with the Master; he is well.” Then: 
“The wickedness of each day is sufficient; it’s what marks us 

with the candid will to survive, until we thrive …and we’ll thrive 
in that light that has no diocese to it – except that it is 

beyond these garments.” The men stood silent, listened.	
And then she said: “Workers deserve their food. We who work 

against the ignorance that binds and ties us to ourselves –
to that greed that will not let us pass the door of light in us – 

will earn, and be fulfilled in that other food that has no false 
apostolicity to it. And it is earned only by that careful choosing 

that disrobes one’s self from enormity. The work is small: 
it passes us through only the smallest place: and it has no trust 

of enormity, which is the struggle of the falsified eyes, always: 
and it always blocks the beginning of the way. Mathew & Judas 

sipped water from cups, sat quietly on the red side of the well, 
listened further. Mary then said: “Disciples resemble their 

teachers: they learn from their wisdom, and also their folly, 
and then they must find their own way home, through the 

ignoble false light that blocks even the teacher, and then 
the light pours down. And when the truth-light pours down 

(upon us) we are disassembled but emerge victorious, 
and it will take standing in that place of reach, when we strip 

ourselves of garments, that Spirit is disclosed. And then she said, 
“The Master has told us just this: One who does not stand 

in the darkness cannot see the light. And those who come 
after us will dwell in that unwashed riddle and many 

will die. It is best that we try to drink from that well 
that has no water in it, but just vision. And if we can 

just drink the vision, we will see the birth of a new soul 
into the world. And then we will have done our work.”

Ken Meisel is a poet and psychotherapist from the Detroit area. He is a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee, best of the net nominee, winner of the Liakoura Prize and the author of nine poetry collections. His new book, The Light Most Glad of All, was published in 2023 by Kelsay Press. It was reviewed by Tipton Poetry Journal and Trampoline Magazine. Other collections include: Studies Inside the Consent of a Distance (Kelsay Books: 2022) and Our Common Souls: New & Selected Poems of Detroit (Blue Horse Press: 2020). He has work in Crab Creek Review, Concho River Review, San Pedro River Review, Panapoly, Sheila-Na-Gig and The MacGuffin.