Monthly Archives: October 2024

love keeps the world
Rio Chama, Monastery of Christ in the Desert

an ebb in the river

my mind wanders
in the call and response 
of a yellow-rumped warbler

silence

whirls in an eddy, unmoored 
from the frenetic flow 
of the steady center

always 
  moving 
never 
  resting

cupped in bloodied palms
of sandstone, alabaster peaks
weep scarlet tears

stream to river
river to ocean
ocean to sky
sky to stone
stone to stream

untamed 				 
from the clasp
of anxious hurry     			              	  

love 
works gently 
eddies
flows

and comes again
and keeps the world

John McMeans is a transplant to the Texas Panhandle, where he resides with his wife and sons. He received a degree in Geography and works for Refugee Language Project (refugeelanguage.org). His writing has appeared in Texas Poetry Assignment and an anthology published by the High Plains Poetry Project. 

Roadrunner Meditations

Saturday; the no-news channel morning show
has animals in far away locations. The world is still
the world there.
                         And outside in the back yard
are quail who like to roll in the dust
where grass used to be. There is bad news
somewhere, but the white scent
of jasmine drifts across the front door
and declares a few square feet of peace.
There’s no way back
                                  into the dream that ended
with a dog’s bark at daybreak. Some
dark wisdom disappeared. The minutes slow dance
from six to eight to ten. A cheetah
watches for prey between the trees. A sloth
hangs upside down from a bough.
Suddenly a streak
                             of patchy sunlight runs
across the lawn at the speed of an idea escaping.
There’s a mean streak to his elegance.
Did the dream hold any answers
to the questions of the day?
                                           It flicked its tail and ran.
Don’t ask where to. Never question
sunlight when it flies.

*

In the ditch back
of the drug store, lizards like
the grasses dry and weeds
that don’t take long to disappear. Here are waste paper,
plastic cups, boxes
filled with nothing but the wind and whatever’s left
of newsprint blankets: someone’s
overnight address.
                              It’s a good place
for passing through, damn
the lack of scenic in the scenery, this
is where survival’s crest
stands proudly between the forehead and the sky.
This place without ambition,
where heat pools on the ground and shadows
run for their lives
                            is the promised land for him,
a dusty world that no one
else will claim.

*

Straight ahead between two moods
a desert path lifts one step
into light and
one back into darkness. Philosophy’s been here,
so has faith,
                  but both got lost
on the way down
into the arroyo. Shady now, and on the rocks
balanced above walls dissolving,
                                                    making space
for new ones as the earth pushes hard
from beneath
is the sudden insight
                                 into who and why
and where it all became this here and now.
Hurrying behind a dry mesquite as though
time itself were chasing him
he disappears.
                       The light opens for him
to pass and closes behind him when he’s gone
to where he’s looking back
at what the world would be
without him.

*

Wind and nighthawks beneath the stars
and it’s quiet as worry in the kitchen, quiet as darkness
passing through the yard. The window worries
that its frame won’t hold, the back door
worries that its hinges
will come loose to fly off down
the wash, and the left shoe
worries that the right one will walk away on its own.
Come dawn,
                    time for starting over,
and each time the Roadrunner appears
he’s a surprise, he’s
                                a lost thought trying
to find the question
it’s an answer to.

*

There’s a fine trail to take
for walking with only
the ground underfoot for company. Nobody here
talks about the soul,
                               gives instructions
on how to be alone, or to look inward. 
Clear sky, blue
all the way to eternity. Stop,
and the view of distant mountains says this world
never ends. 
                   The mind can fly
from here, the body has to walk. And unexpectedly
breaking through
the desert’s revery with a yip and a coo
comes the Roadrunner’s call
                                               in the key of mindfulness.
He’s concentration running
and it matters not at all
that the rocks around him
have become
                    meditations turned to stone.

*

He was here, that much
is certain but where he’s gone nobody
will say. He’s good at making mystery
of a sudden appearance on the back wall and then
turning fact to fiction
                                  with a flick
of his tail and an updraft of light
that lifts him to the roof. He might return
tomorrow or
                    not for several months; he’s no
messiah, neither does he stop
to be admired. Religions don’t explain
where he comes from, where
he goes and whether that is food
                                                     or indecision
in his beak. It’s a lifetime’s work
to wait for the improbable
when his return could never be
as beautiful as dreaming it.

David Chorlton is a European now anchored firmly in the Southwest. He grew up in Manchester, lived several years in Vienna, and later adjusted to being in Phoenix where learned to look more attentively at the wildlife where city and desert overlap. A book is forthcoming from The Bitter Oleander Press, Dreams the Stones Have. 

Breaking Through The Veil

Once more waiting for sleep, lying on my back in my bed
with casket hands, palms down, crossed upon my chest 
speaking quietly to my dead mother.

Mother, I had another one of those wicked migraines this morning.
You know the ones like we shared.
When I was young, you used to have me lie on the couch,
with my head in your lap,
the room darkened and in total silence, 
and you would put a cold, wet washcloth on my head
and you would rub my temples until I stopped crying.
I would sometimes fall asleep like that.
It was a short-lived moment of peace.
Now, I can’t stop. I don’t have time. 
I need to push through the pain until I reach the other side.

Mother, our lives are so hard.
Work has been especially frustrating lately.
No one listens to me. No one hears me.
As I get older, I feel more and more
like a thin piece of cellophane,
translucent and unrecognizable, imperceptible, unnoticed.
And my children are my worst critics;
they laugh at my fears and faults and make fun of my age.
Did you feel that way before the end?
Were you someone?

Mother, I saw you in my dreams last night.
You were just a girl, with your auburn red tresses long and curled. 
You smiled up at me,
sitting on your knees on the patterned picnic blanket, 
the warm sun brightening your face, your eyes aglow.
And you spoke in your young voice,
“It’s lovely here.” 
And the wind grew louder, and you spoke again, 
but I couldn’t hear you, your words were ghostly and indistinct.
Try harder, mother, speak louder.
And at that moment, I felt unbridled grief.
Were the words I missed important or prophetic or nothing at all?
Were they a reflection on the beauty of life or a list of sad regrets?

Mother, I miss you so much.
Please answer. Tell me what’s waiting there for me.

Mark James Trisko has been writing poetry for his entire life, but after retiring recently, he heard his muses yelling loudly in the night begging him to let their voices be heard. His work is scheduled to appear in Valiant Scribe Literary Journal. He currently lives in Minnesota, with his beautiful spouse of 47 years, four wonderful children and eight above-normal grandchildren.

Monologue to Myself


Being so close to something
so alive, so otherworldly,
it was multidimensional,
there was a buzzing
in the air, the air opening,
seared with light,
an instantaneous rupture
which closed again
after it hovered
over her head
in a flash of gold,
perhaps, the response to

the monologue to myself,
regarding the purpose
of commitment, the need
for prudence in planning 
one’s final days, 
not so much different 
than before I came 
to visit you this morning,
when you relayed to me
you saw me from a distance,
walking up from the road,
leaving the blossoms behind.

Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds and Nature, winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Poetry Prize. Recent essays, poems, and translations have appeared in Asymptote (Taiwan), Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, The Comstock Review, Healing Muse: Center for Bioethics & Humanities La Piccioletta Barca (U.K.), Pensive: A Journal of Global Spirituality & the Arts, Tipton Poetry Review, Poetry London, and Your Impossible Voice. Shanti Arts published his translation of L’Allegria, Giuseppe Ungaretti’s first iconic book, in August 2023. He will be featured writer in the Spring 2025 issue of Ezra: An Online Journal of Translation that will highlight several of his translations from the Spanish of Roberto Juarroz.

Finishing Line Press will be publishing his book, If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from The Book of Hours, in 2025.

Love Poem of the Long-Dead Egyptian

When Lord Anubis weighs my heart
Be easy, love; you’ve done your part.
There’s years of heaviness I’ve brought
Upon myself with deed and thought,
But in the memory of your care
My heart’s no longer meat, but air.
The muscles do not squeeze, they play,
And so shall the inscription say:
Despite the harms received and dealt
In life, love’s truth may still be felt,
Continued in the underworld.
Imperfectly deserved, but pearls
Embrace the grit they grow around.
So tarnished hearts glow underground.

My travelling soul’s vitality,
Pathfinding ba, will rise wing-freed
To find the trail back to your skin.
To leave a kiss there, nestle in
Where scent and warmth and memory
Revive once more our unity
Before the grave asserts its pull.
I rest with heart both light and full.

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

Running Through the Trees
	
I’ve decided to run among the trees—
 to leap over clover, and wild onion,
to keep running toward the horizon—
 It’s so beautiful, my eyes water and burn.
The splendor is like a fiery star 
 come out of the night— to ignite the world! 

I cannot feel my body. I do not exist. 
 The monarchs are here: where I’ve stopped
they alight on my forearm! and all I can do 
 is kneel and cry, kneel and cry...

It’s so painfully beautiful to see their wings
 slowly lift, then lower in pure delight.
The way the clover lifts praise to the sky. 

 Every body raised high— earth, untouched.

Ahrend Torrey is the author of This Moment (Pinyon Publishing, 2024), If it’s darkness we’re having, let it be extravagant: The Jane Kenyon Erasure Poems (Pinyon Publishing, 2024), For What Are the Blossoms Reaching? (Limited Artist’s Edition, American Academy of Bookbinding, 2023), Ripples (Pinyon Publishing, 2023), Bird City, American Eye (Pinyon Publishing, 2022), and Small Blue Harbor (Poetry Box Select, 2019). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, storySouth, The Greensboro Review, The Westchester Review, Welter, and West Trade Review, among others. He lives in Chicago with his husband, Jonathan, their two rat terriers, Dichter and Dova, and Purl, their cat.

Among the Grammars of Loss

One word
single on the leaf
reveals my helpless silence.
Among these pages
small ants, frantic 
lose their way, drop back
to the bottom, scurry underneath.
Gnats on course stumble 
blind, into my skin.
I brush them away.
Sunshine gleams. Calls
nearly opened green:
That call, those sounds, this honor of leaves: 
Icons stirring within dusty clay 
chambered walls.

Darlene L Witte is a former Professor of Education on the faculty of Northern Vermont University from 1993 to 2014. Born and educated in Alberta, Canada, she always meant to become a poet. Her thanks go to Stephen Kastner at www.greenmountainwriters.com for envisioning a vibrant community of writers. http://www.darlenewitte.com

Where would this pathway lead


Look down.
Where would this pathway lead
a sunken seed, a fallen deed.
Follow sheaves of green
rock clusters bound
hard soil, sun bleached
faded June leaf.

Look up.
Streams of light, circling wind
around the earth igniting soundless sleep
lost in thoughtless fragments
of the empty deep.

Look in.
Blazing fire of the heart, firing thought
in the pyre of the sun, earth’s funeral
sits ablaze on the wounds of all the hallowed mouths
bereft of dying words, tasting the advent of birth.

Who solidified the earth
who trusted the empty season of greed
who touched, dying
and kissed the tired eye
was it you
unseen god
was it you 
who led this pathway, below
above, within

for you and I
to gather fallen in the forest bloom
and see the sky,
and carve the pathways new.


©Ioanna Panagiotopoulos

Ioanna Panagiotopoulos is a Greek-Australian writer, actor and priest. She spent her youth writing poetry before training in speech and acting at The School of the Living Word. In 2017 she was ordained as a priest in The Christian Community. She lives and works in Canberra, Australia.

Veni, Sanctus Spiritus

My heart: hungry, not humble, hubristic with voracity.
I think I could drop through the cold floor like a sinkhole
and devour it all, a chasm under the chancel—
I fear my emptiness. Worry-water beads my lashes.

St. Michael behind me: a lance in my shoulder,
leading me onward with stiffened jaw.
St. Erasmus before me: a hand on my brow,
branding me with oil, enflaming me—
I dig my fingernails into that burning burden
and feel it give under my grip; I
gnaw it, will it to fill the sinkhole at my core.

But the sacred sparks flit here,
this restless stomach I mistook for a heart—
while I count the drops of oil slipping down my nose,
His bloody hands rap at the walls of my
ignored heart like the skin over a hollow drum,
beating a third beat in my anxious pulse.

My white-knuckle prayer to be fed tires itself,
rattling, until I hear the rhythm in my ribcage
harsh and heavy: Have I not hewn honey
from stone for you? Knit your bones?
Tended your soul-fire while you slept?

You will not consume until you are consumed.

I am the starving St. Catherine with watery eyes,
the silent St. Gemma with dripping palms,
blindly emptying myself and clutching thorns.
I am crushed like oil and laid in the ambry
to rest, heart burning from the outside in.

Caroline Gorman is writer and public library lover from Indiana. She studied English literature and religion at the University of Evansville, where she won awards for both her academic and creative writing.

When Gods Don’t Come In


God’s dog is sick, and he isn’t coming in today, and I rejoice—
play music loudly off YouTube and clean
my desk. Days like this, where I can work uninterrupted,
filing away like a madwoman or typing up a report in one sitting,
ease the gnawing claws at the back of my neck. 
Days like this only come so often, and after work is done, I stroll 
into the sanctuary with its 20-foot windows, 
white pews, red carpet, and sit on the wooden altar steps
and pray. The sunset streams light through the glass
and rainbows appear along the organ’s balcony. I feel
God here, not the God of this church who like a dictator demands
my obedience to his every word and acceptance of his schemes,
but the God I found once when I was abandoned by man. 
I want that God to return. I would rest my head 
on His shoulder, whisper my devotion and become 
His secretary writing up His prayers and decrees.
Then I would be free. 

Cat Dixon is the author of What Happens in Nebraska (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2022) along with six other poetry chapbooks and collections. She is a poetry editor with The Good Life Review. Recent poems published in Thimble Lit Mag, Poor Ezra’s Almanac, and Moon City Review. She works full-time as a church admin and teaches creative writing part-time at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.