Monthly Archives: December 2025

Sunday in the Smokehouse

So this is what it is to cure salmon
in a salt-stained cabin that French mothers 
built on the shore of an inlet between 
two mountains, three generations before
that small white house was raised on a cliff's edge
to face any terror the Atlantic 
might bring. The curing woman stokes the fire.
She says that a certain honor comes from 
enduring the violence of a force
with no intention to punish, and that 
the brine in our bodies sings the same song
as the ocean, moment after moment,
wave after wave – every breath is a prayer,
and what comes after is a prayer answered.

Nathaniel Cairney is an American poet who lives in Belgium. His chapbook Leaving the Oldest House was selected as a highly commended finalist for the 2025 International Book & Pamphlet Competition, one of the UK’s oldest poetry contests. His poems have been published in New Writing Scotland, Cardiff Review, Midwest Review, Moria and many other literary journals.

In the Garden Beyond the Wake

in the garden
beyond the wake,
I reminisce.

somewhere
between forgetting
and expecting,

somewhere
between the whispers
of dry grasses

and the croaks
of pond frogs

are me and memory
and you and possibility.

Casey Flynn is a writer, artist, and father. He’s drawn toward the speculative, spiritual and experimental, and has had visual poetry/artwork published in Vallum: Contemporary Poetry. He is working on a PhD in religion and likes to play with his kids, play outside, and play banjo.

The Commission

The Christ of our heart’s altar says
Go away from me and come toward me.

Go away from what you have heard of me
Come toward what you know of me.
Discard musty, crumbling containers.
Hold the truth naked in your hands.

Never be afraid; always love.
Beware of words; embrace music.
Don’t speak of me; breathe me, live me.
Whatever I have is yours.

I offer you the shining chalice
In your dark hour. Let your hand
Go out to meet it, and feel
The confusion fall from you
Like a discarded garment.  

The goodness in everything comes out
To meet you, wherever you turn.
Nothing evil can bear your presence.

The light that once blinded you
Now clarifies your vision.
The darkness that once swallowed you
Now liberates you.

Go out both softly and boldly
To this world I have given you to love.  

			

Laura Vines is from Birmingham, Alabama but spent 11 years in Alaska, which affected her music, her poetry, and her writings tremendously. She is a teacher, performer, singer-songwriter, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist.

Reciprocity

There's a tree we greet when we visit the marsh, 
an old multi stemmed maple made chaotic 
by time and more than a few storms. 
I always place my hand, in passing, 
on its weary trunk and rest a moment 
in communion with this disheveled veteran. 

The things it has seen, the winds and rains punctuated 	
by the occasional drought year when the marsh 
bled dry, when strange plants grew tall for a time 
and went to seed. The generations of egrets, gangs 
of muskrats waxing and waning, the forest succeeding 
itself at the marsh edge where the land rises just a bit. 

All these, yes, and stories too beyond the notice 
of fast things like me, are captured deep in its record 
of rings and in the shared memory of trees.
The maple knows I touch it; a moment of shared 
sentience. I – mobile and fleet of foot and thought; 
and it – stable and watching and thus wise. 

This week under my touch the old tree felt electric, 
like never before. The pulse of its living near stung 
my hand. I feel that charge still and my leaves fall 
in poetry, sere and curled but necessary. I am 
marked, in whatever passes for rings in me, 
by maple’s lightning and the fecundity of marsh.

 

Chris Fafard is a poet and photographer and perennial student. He is learning to see beauty at the intersection of the created and the creating. He has published poems in local Mid-Atlantic publications (The Mid Atlantic Review, Maryland Bards, Saint Andrews Episcopal annual journals), and is now working to expand his reach. He and his wife Maria live in Annandale, Virginia.

Soul Work

“You must change your life.”


With day now gathered up and put away –
with every head now pillowed for the night –
with all the planets out in their array,
God’s angels come to Earth, in the soft light

that holiness imposes. You can stray
from faith or innocence to your delight,
to your regret. There’s nothing you can say
to make the angels cease their oversight,

there’s nothing you can do. The angels come
to wrestle with the suffering: the sick,
the sleepless, and the dying. In the thick

of combat, they might touch your heart – that numb
and withered organ. And you may well weep.
Their work is done. You can go back to sleep.

John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently living in Paris with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018); he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Destins de femmes: Thirty French Writers, 1750-1850 (2023), both available free online, and Women Writers in the Romantic Age (2025). John spent thirty-five years playing Ultimate Frisbee and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more.

Backdrop

Cloud curtains pull back to reveal a stage,
the backdrop as perfect as a Klein blue canvas.
The sun hangs stage left, radiant, 
prickling our skin with a film of sweat.

We stand and wait,
secretly hoping the action will not begin.
We gradually lose ourselves in the depths of it. 
All minor irritations and daily tasks take a back seat.
Our perspective widens and the fulness of it
reaches the periphery of our vision.

Eventually, a bird flies by
and we welcome its swooping signature,
an unexpected moment of wild beauty beyond us.
The light begins to dim as the curtain falls.
We sigh, and carry with us through the night
a memory of warming skin,
a bird in flight, and an endless sky
more perfect than Klein’s blue. 

Joanne Maybury has lived in Uganda and Sudan, has worked a variety of roles including as a field linguist and graphic designer, and latterly has journeyed with the chronically and terminally ill. She now lives in the borderlands of Scotland where she is learning, amongst other things, to be a hopeful gardener. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Scotland, Snakeskin Poetry, Theology, Penumbra Online and others.

One Small Part

Reeds block the view of the river,
create their own view. The river
of grass bends with each breath
of the wind. A heron’s neck bends,
revealing what was already there,
as it pulls a fish from the water,
brushing a cattail. Tufts separate,
drift through the air on currents
only they can see, follow a path
that takes them to the river
that nourishes the reeds that are
one small part of the river.
 

Ken Gierke is a Pushcart Prize Nominee who is retired and writes primarily in free verse and haiku. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in print and online in such places as Poetry Breakfast, Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, Silver Birch Press, Trailer Park Quarterly, Rusty Truck, The Gasconade Review, and River Dog Zine. His poetry collections, Glass Awash in 2022, Heron Spirit in 2024, and Random Riffs in 2025, were published by Spartan Press. His website: https://rivrvlogr.

Matthew Tallied Who’d Eaten the Most

Jesus called forth his friends
to star in their own work of art,
gently washed their feet.

Thirteen companions reclined
on carpets and floor cushions
in the dimly lit upper room.

Pure stone jars of olives, dates,
pistachios — supper laid out
on low tables by Peter and Simon.

Judas dipped bread into Jesus’s fish sauce.
Thaddeus stroked the air with prayers between bites.
Bartholomew passed the lamb.

John leaned close, listening.
James refilled the wine.
Thomas bit his bottom lip,
doubted their truth.

Andrew and the other James
argued over leavened bread recipes.
Matthew tallied who’d eaten the most.
Philip questioned how bread became body.

In the centre,
Jesus broke bread and drank wine,
asked his friends to do this
in memory of him—
body in bread,
divinity in wine.

Amen.

Margaret T Rochford is a poet and playwright originally from Ireland living in London. She regularly performs her poetry at open mike sessions. Her poetry has been published in magazines and on line, she is working on her first pamphlet. Two of her short plays have been performed at the Irish Cultural Centre in London and she is currently working on a play about Irish dancing.

The Fish in the Deep Lake

run their mouths 
over rocks again, 

take many forms 
of flesh,

dart among
the wild celery
and driftwood— 

And we the people 
do not see them; 

we do not acknowledge 
they’re alive. 

As we turn
from this side of the lake 

toward the other, 

they’re all the same 
making a difference 
in their own world.

Though we can’t see them 
in their camouflage,



a life-filled world

exists     beyond ours—

Ahrend Torrey is the author of This Moment (Pinyon Publishing, 2024). His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly; Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature; storySouth; The Greensboro Review; The Westchester Review; Welter; and West Trade Review, among others. He’s currently working on a new collection of poems titled Running Among the Trees—New & Selected Poems. He lives in Chicago with his husband, Jonathan, and enjoys exploring the nearby forests and dunes. Read more of his poetry at https://ahrendtorreypoetry.wixsite.com/website

The Path for Me?
 
In the hall are twenty devotees, a terrier
and a mongrel.
 
A smile greets when I hand in a quiche lorraine
for the potluck meal; blank faces disappoint
 
when I tell them I've been exploring Theravada.
A volunteer lights incense and candle then invites the bell.
 
We recite ‘The Community’’s version
of the five precepts. I’m too shy and dodge
 
my turn; say I’ve forgotten my glasses.
Walking meditation makes me self conscious
 
and feels strange. After a blessing,
we savour lunch in silence.
 
Some of us take a walk through the village,
over a bridge, down a lane and back.
 
As we do so, we talk and talk;
released from silence.
 
One serene follower sits cross legged
on a mat, peels and eats a banana
 
before the dharma talk on mindfulness.
After which, I still don't know what it is.
 
 

Terry Sherwood lives in Northamptonshire, England. A former painter, his creative outlet is now poetry. His poems have been published in Allegro, Acumen, Orbis, Pennine Platform, The Cannon’s Mouth, The Ekphrastic Review and The Seventh Quarry amongst others.