New Writing Engaging with the Sacred
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
What bitterness in those eyes,
what gracious pain.
The flowers fall,
and I gather them in.
Ulrica Hume is the author of An Uncertain Age, a spiritual mystery novel, and House of Miracles, a collection of stories, one of which was selected by PEN and broadcast on NPR. Her work appears online (EcoTheo, RIC Journal, Short Édition, etc.), in literary journals (Firmament), and in anthologies. She is a labyrinth guide.
Shih
I am waiting
for you to be brought
to the phone at the care center.
Looking out
at the yard from the rear window
in the living room,
I watch the red-headed grosbeak
hang from the tip of a branch
then dip down to the birdbath.
My eyes graze
over the midnight blue
of the Chinese plate
we purchased at the antique store
in Woodstock, Vermont, written with
the character, “Revelation,”
in its center, within
a black circle, as
the plate itself is rimmed
in black.
I am told that you are
still having your breakfast,
to phone back later,
as I will, as I consider
the character, Shih,
my revelation today—
that all our lives
are limned in sorrow,
so many levels of it,
through which we experience
the ache of love.
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.
Amethyst Review 