Monthly Archives: October 2025

cockatoo

could i see my reflection
in its eyes
while in a cage
wearing a mini
homemade green sweater
over a self-plucked chest
as it watches
out the window
wasps and pearl crescents
competing
for all the garden asters
as elm trees absorb
the autumn sunset
into their golden leaves

Anthony Lusardi lives in Rockaway Borough, New Jersey, where he writes haiku and other poetry. He has been published in journals, such as Frogpond, Modern Haiku, hedgerow, dadakuku, NOON and Verse Virtual. He has four chapbooks, published by buddha baby press. To purchase copies, contact him through email at lusardi133@gmail.com.

And A Child Shall Lead Them


I.  In Denmark we are Lutheran,
says the tour guide, repeating himself in German

for travelers who do not speak English.
This church, Grundtvigs Kirke, is very important.

Look at the bricks, ten million bricks used
and every one the best, the finest in all Scandinavia.

The church holds 1,000 people,  
here he pauses conspiratorially,

but on any given Sunday, you will only find 27.
We laugh. Do what’s expected.

II.  Still there are Catholics in Denmark, 
and the next morning I go to Jesu Hjerte Kirke, 

Sacred Heart Church, where heads, not too many,
not too few, bend; elbows lean on old wooden pews.

And while the priest preaches in a language 
I don’t understand: Was that Christos? Did he say Sin? 

I keep wondering when Mass will end 
so I can leave church, walk the downtown streets

again, search again for that perfect konditori, a bakery 
with a trip-defining Danish pastry,

III.  and then a baby screams, no reason, inconsolable, 
prolonged, no remedy, a mother’s comfort worth 

nothing, it seems, against the universal measure 
of human heartache. And then I remember 

why we use the finest bricks, 
why we gather on old wooden pews, 

how we come to hold the highest hopes 
in the raised host, the Risen Lord, 

and I pray that this child, so desolate today,
will someday count himself—among the 27.

Maryanne Hannan has published poetry in both All Shall Be Well: A poetry anthology for Julian of Norwich and Thin Places & Sacred Spaces. A resident of upstate New York, USA, she is the author of Rocking Like it’s all Intermezzo: 21st Century Responsorials.

Seagull Church

We’re on our way home when my attention is drawn to a church parking lot where an enormous group of seagulls gathers like a sheet of snow in the dead of August, stark white like clean, pressed shirts, speckled gray and black like neckties. Seagulls in Sunday best. Pastor Seagull behind a podium in front of its hungry flock. Seagulls kneeling at pews with their toe-walking, tree-twig legs. Seagulls whose souls release both joyful and anguished prayers from the tips of beaks. 

Prayers that flitter into the sticky, sweat-sweet air and are carried on sacred wind to God.  
 

April Lynn DeOliveira is a Michigan-based writer, educator, and editor-in-chief of Cereal City Review. She has been published in Fiction on the Web, Walloon Writers Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, Front Porch Republic, Great Lakes Review, Defenestrationism.net, and others. When she is not feverishly pecking away on her tablet, she can be found reading, gardening, traversing Michigan and beyond with her wonderful husband, and wishing she weren’t allergic to cats.

Forever green

Perhaps they'll never 
spin the wheel of color art
and deviate in hues from
greens to blues to mauves,
magentas and all the in
betweens, or go the rogue
when Autumn reigns with
limbo leaves, disarmed
in droves and falling.

They'll never win triathlons
nor run with bulls, ride the rails
speak in tongues, jump the broom
or walk the red lined carpet.

But they'll stand for you 
forever green, and rarely drop
their leaves, while pastels
pale the branch and morph
amid mere memory.

When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting with macrame. She volunteers in animal rescue tending to cat colonies in the neighborhood. She walks with a birding group on weekends. Living by a beach town, is inspiration for her art and poetry. Some of her poems have appeared in Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Amethyst Review, The Rye Whiskey Review. Her latest collection is Ten random wrens, published by Maverick Duck Press.

October Prayer

nae dear god, nae amen
jist a laggie skein beatin 
a braid path i the clood-spreckelt lift;
birk leaves i the rakin wind
like a shook tambourine

Chris Powici lives in Perthshire. For many years he taught creative writing for the University of Stirling and the Open University, but now concentrates on writing poems and essays, mainly about how the human and natural worlds overlap. His latest poetry collection is Look, Breathe (Red Squirrel Press). Chris is co-editor of New Writing Scotland and one of the writers behind the climate change campaign group and e-zine ‘Paperboats’: https://paperboats.org/writings