Monthly Archives: December 2025

Revenant     						

Am I like Alice, gazing, stepping,
tumbling through the looking glass?

I try to find you, your new form.
Who are you now, a bird of paradise?

Or a sparrow, thriving on borrowed charm,  
dancing with Mad Hatter, 

a Red Queen rising to that magic place
where I wait for your image to appear?      

A fairy child with gold spun hair, reaching
both hands to the sky, talking to yourself

of being left behind, when those of us 
less whimsical stride into the world.    

Did I dream you from a hundred hopeful
incantations, carve you from the earth?                         

Are you real? Can I still reach you here,
touch the ragged edges of your shirt?    

Linda Conroy, a retired social worker, enjoys writing about the complexities of human nature and our connection to the natural world. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. She is the author of poetry collections Ordinary Signs and Familiar Sky.

Guru Days

The Indian family welcomed us in to their home for the first time. I was around ten years old. By now, I knew there were many different religions, yet I hadn’t heard of a guru before or how that tied into worship. 

As we took off our shoes, I could see pictures of an old man with white hair, sitting cross legged in a black and white framed picture and inside the picture was an ashy substance. There were also pictures in color of a man with a big Afro of curly black hair, wearing an orange straight robe down to the ground, smiling and wearing flower garlands with his hands outstretched in front of him.  

We sat on pillows on the ground as they started to sing songs that were like prayers of praise to Sai Baba. We sang, “Om Bagavan, Om Bagavan, Satya Sai Bagavan.” 

People passed around a bowl of ash and smeared it into the creases in their hair, while others placed it as a dot on their forehead above their eyes. Harriet, my stepmom, leaned over and put a dot on my forehead and one on hers. She told me to take a little ash onto the tip of my tongue and taste it. I did and it tasted sweet, not like ash from a fire.

“That is ash from Sai Baba,” she said. “The pictures are the original older Sai Baba and his reincarnation.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“When you come back in another form, but you are the same person.” I immediately wondered how they would know it was him, but I knew better than to ask a lot of questions in the house. 

She continued, “When we sing really hard and with feeling, Sai Baba hears us and ash is produced in the pictures, like you see in some of the frames. It’s a healing substance and some people have been cured of diseases from taking the ash.” 

I think she wanted to believe it was true, that this guru had a special connection to God and could produce ash as a sign of his divinity. I watched, trying not to blink, to see if I could catch any ash materializing while we were singing, but I never saw it happen. I closed my eyes and prayed hard, trying to see if it would release spigots of ash. I opened my eyes. Nothing looked any different.

*

My parents started out as hippies, then divorced and recoupled with new partners. Dad and Harriet were ‘spiritual’ at first but then embraced their Jewish heritage – I would say they went in ‘whole hog’ if it wasn’t so contradictory to Judaism but that is how they did it.

Even though we had been going to temple and practicing Judaism for a few years, Harriet still longed for something else. She had convinced Dad that we should check a guru called Sai Baba, a spiritual man who performed miracles. On Sunday afternoons, we began going to bhajans, a service where we sang songs in Hindi at the house of a local Indian family.

My parents didn’t see any conflict with being practicing Jews and having a guru. I had read that we should not have idols but I knew better than to ask if Sai Baba would be considered an idol. I kept my mouth shut so I could avoid my stepmom’s wrath and punishments. I could always tell God that I wasn’t seriously worshipping Sai Baba, I figured.

Over the year, as I grew up, we continued to go to bhajans every Sunday afternoon at an Indian family’s house, and Harriet also dragged Dad and me to see other gurus over the years. I never believed in Sai Baba or the other gurus, but I did enjoy the singing, the spicy Indian food and the colorful clothing. Just like I had to choose between my parents, I had to choose between Judaism and worshiping a guru. I chose Judaism – it was tied to my ancestors and made more sense to me on a visceral level. 

That first day, after the prayer songs were over, the family invited us to go with the rest of the group to their restaurant down the street. The meal started with samosas, full of a spicy mixture of potatoes and peas, dipped into a mint chutney, then vegetable pakoras, bundles of zucchini and other vegetables fried in batter. I had never eaten Indian food before and the curry was spicy, with hints of tomato, cumin and sometimes coconut. I loved it.  

A man came over. “Welcome family! We are happy to have you here with us in worship and to celebrate with a meal.”

Dad and Harriet smiled and nodded. 

“How do you like the food?” he asked me.

“It’s great, not what I am used to but I like it a lot.”

“And how did you like the bhajans?”

“I love to sing, but I am Jewish. I go to temple and I am learning Hebrew,” I said.

He smiled and nodded his head.

Harriet frowned at me and said he didn’t need to know all that and I was insulting his religion.

But he just laughed and moved his head in waves like Indian people sometimes do.

                                                             ####

Shanti Ariker is a writer by night and a lawyer by day. The start of her memoir appears in How We Change, the 2024 San Francisco Writer’s Foundation Writing Contest Anthology. Her work has been published in The Thieving Magpie, On Being Jewish Now substack, OfTheBook Press and Simpsonistas Vol. 3. She can be found at shantiariker.com.

Holy the Firm

			- for Annie Dillard 

Falling like saffron flakes at my feet, 
the glue that holds the cover of 
Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm comes 
undone, the cover slipping free as I 
sit in the car dealership, my brakes being 
repaired and my safety, at least in this regard, 
assured for a while. I gaze at the Blue Ridge 
out the window thinking of Dillard's 
Countenance Divine as it shone forth 
on the clouded Olympic Range, 
while the same God goes riding here, 
oblivious to tourists and traffic and human 
foibles, of which we are legion. God sits 
at my feet, in the dust of bookish glue, 
and washes across this waiting room filled
with unwitting pilgrims, infusing even 
indifferent souls with sparks of silent prayer. 

Gene Hyde‘s poetry, essays, and photography have appeared in such publications as Appalachian Journal, San Antonio Review, The Banyan Review, Raven’s Perch, Valley Voices, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with his partner and a scruffy little dog. You can find his website at https://www.banteringbibliocrat.com/

Deer in December


Guardians of the leap and the stop–

guardians of stillness in the snow.

No need to speak, they carve

a space deep in the woods–

their large eyes seeing 

more of you 

than you yourself know.

 

Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, including most recently TWO EMILYS (Kelsay Books), and HER JOY BECOMES (Fernwood Press). A new collection THE PRESENCE OF ONE WORD is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in the fall of 2025. Her website is andreapotos.com

Grapple

glorify in the grapple here
bearing the tussle whilst
the obstructions of light await
the fleeting moments to pass
in the meandering clouds—

the accomplice to our silent
walks of coping, confronting
meaning is our given climb,
our tasks in thought, then
the leaf falls in comforting color
to still green grasses changing—

we lull, we rest in our new love
calling out nascent words, we
stumble upon our triumphant
as luminescence finds a crack,
the next temporary place—

where we are supposed to be

Mary Baca Haque is a Chicago poet that loves beautiful words in verse. You can find her past featured poetry in the Wild Roof Journal, Cosmic Daffodils Journal, Amethyst Review, Seraphic Review, Closed Eye Open Journal, The Bluebird Word, WayWords Literary & Macrame Literary. A publication, Painting the Sky with Love (acquired for a picture book), released 11/2024 (MacMillan). She loves to experiment in verse poetry, spend time with family and resides with her partner in Chicago, IL along with her mini goldendoodle Georgina.

Little Jug, Big Miracle

To the Little Jug of Big Miracles,

I don’t know why, but when I watch the flames sway and whisper in the wind, each one a soft, trembling echo of eternity, I think of you: A small jar, hidden away in the quiet dark. I wonder if you ever felt the way I do, burdened with a weight too heavy for something so small. The things I carry hang heavily like the air before a storm. Maybe, if I look close enough, I’ll find the answer in you.

What was it like, to be the last flask of oil to retain its purity—tucked away, deep in the shadows of a temple violated and defiled, while the world outside fractured and bled? Did you know what you were, even then? Could you feel the tremor of history pressing against you, waiting, patient as only eternity can be? Or were you content simply to exist, unseen and untouched, as chaos clawed at the walls around you?

Then, one day, they found you. Their battle-weary hands trembled as they reached out, breath shallow, eyes filled with awe and gratitude. Did you feel it—the tug of longing and desperation—as they lifted you into the light? What did it mean to be chosen in a world where everything else lay shattered? Within your smallness, you bore the weight of their belief, their yearning, their fragile hope for salvation… How?

And when the wick was dipped, when the flame caught… Your oil was lit, and you watched as they all held their breath, fearing they were to witness the inevitable doom: the light that would fade, the flame that would die, and the hearts that would break in the moment of your failure. Perhaps you lifted your silent cry to the One who made you: God, I am small. I am weak. I am not enough. Or did you say nothing at all, simply gave yourself over, drop by trembling drop?

Perhaps you understood what they could not: that it was not your strength, nor your sufficiency, that mattered. That the measure of your worth lay not in how brightly you burned, nor for how long, but in the simple act of surrendering to your Purpose.

It was never about the light, nor the flame, nor even the miracle. The greatest wonder lay in this: that you became not what they hoped for, but what you were meant to be. A vessel—not just for oil, but for the will of your Creator. A carrier of something infinitely greater than yourself, like us all—fragile and imperfect, entrusted with a light not our own.

And oh- how could I have forgotten the most wondrous part? You lasted. Eight long days and nights, defying the rhythm of nature, the cold hands of fate itself. You, the fragile and fleeting, held your flame long after reason declared you should fade.  And yes, not only for those days—for eternity, truly. Your flame lives on, flickering in each menorah, winking through the shadows of exile and the storms of our history.

Teach me, little jug, what you knew. Teach me to stop measuring myself by the light I can give, by the weight of others’ expectations. Teach me to trust in the Hands that made me, the Hands that lift me, even when I feel too small to carry the burdens placed upon me.

Let me remember that in the end, it is not the vessel’s strength that matters, but its offering. And as the flames rise and the world watches, I pray to light my own flame—not with the fierceness of certainty, but with quiet trust in the purpose for which I was created.

In awe and prayer,

A fellow vessel

Gail Reed is a writer whose work explores the intersection of faith, everyday life, and tradition. She lives in New Jersey where she does editing and proofreading for a local magazine. This is her first submission.

By-Name
"Its true name we do not know. Tao is the by-name that we give it." Tao Te Ching, Chapter XXV

Sealed with impermanence, shrouded in mystery,
we call those things which are and are not 
by names we cannot pronounce, 
like pillars that stand dripping with oil beneath
eternal staircases.

The lesser lays his head on desert, dreams of life,
sees a laddered tongue linking earth and heaven, telling 
his story as it is; the word that he has lived by 
is a scratch of syllables, a distant spelling on stretching stone, 
the by-name breaking up until the word it was beside 
knows fully and is known.

Caleb Hill is a cybersecurity technician by day, poet around the clock. He contributed to the monthly newsletter until they decided he was having too much fun and revoked his duties. He lives in central PA with the trees and his family.

Looking for Words

Words upon words, for lack of words.
Each like a sand-print—
self-erasing guesses
in a thirst-driven desert tread
to find a sip, a pool, a well—
ready to spill the last drop
from one's canteen
to spell in cursive line
upon a mirage-blurred surface—
a clear thought
that quenches.

Marso writes poetry shaped by years of living in different cultures and by a practice of paying attention to ordinary life.

How To Prosper
from Psalm 1


You'd be better off 
not listening to anyone
who says 
you'd be better off.

And crowdsource your addiction.

Don't sit and laugh 
at anyone that says
"you'd be better off"
or "crowdsource".

Meditate
day and night.
Or take an age.
Where's your delight?

Mine is a tupelo tree,
next to a stream,
with unerodible banks
sipping water juleps 
green leaves 
waving merry
black and blue
fresh drupes

feeding the wildlife.

JK Miller is a former third grade dual language teacher. He lives on the edge of cornfields. He is the first prize winner of the 2025 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest.

What we call Dark

is often what we don't understand, or cannot yet
explain. Dark as in: unseeable; not observed.
The inside of the box. Beyond the boundary.

The energy stretching the universe
faster than reason can catch. The matter that,
unseen, drives gravity mad.

But these too are dark: the consciousness
that torments itself with unknowable things;
the inside of the apple; the underside

of the serpent's tongue; the knowledge that,
once tasted, darkens like fruit rotting
out of its place. Some darkness

comforts, shields from day's fire
and its scrutinising eyes. Some hides
its own darkness inside it, the deeds

that even evil shames to think of.
And some – the thick darkness
where Moses found God – is only

dark in its mystery. Nothing to fear,
although fearsome. May we
reach for You in our knowing

and our unknowing too,
prepared, like the possum with its
tail black as night I saw scampering

through the forest, sure in
its maker's nocturnal providence,
the treasures of the dark.

Matthew Pullar is a Melbourne-based poet. He has had poems published in Ekstasis, Poems for Ephesians, Amethyst Review, Fare Forward and Reformed Journal. Most recently, his collection of poems, This Teeming Mess of Glory (Wipf & Stock, 2025) was shortlisted for Australian Christian Book of the Year.