Author Archives: Sarah

Splits  

Some days the world fractures
and opens up a gash,
yet countryside remains as
new grass softens slashes
after cataclysm; tourists wonder
if anything happened at all.

Some days my vision splits;
half heads one way, the other
in reverse. It doesn’t hurt. I sit down,
sight dispersed for a purloined purpose
by someone from another time;
my vision returns in minutes.

Sometimes an entity comes along,
picks up a cord lying there, plugs it in
a socket and connects two souls. No one
noticed before the two dissolved together,
like the richest chocolate river runs
when a fork undams a lava cake.

Locked in a roller coaster car, all is lost.
At the top of cobra rolls one has
no choice; not so in life. We dig
in the wrong spot, mix muddy colors,
mismeasure space for the new sofa,
and hope for the best.

Things release in a hair’s breath.
Mostly answers come that we seek
without knowing the questions.
Our task—to feel the change, sense the split,
let slide the halves, this one right,
the other left, and not ever feel bereft.

Ann Grogan is a joyful octogenarian, pianophile, and retired lawyer who lives in San Francisco, CA. Her writing promotes the unequivocal permission to pursue one’s passions at any age. Her poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Querencia, Shot Glass Journal, Little Old Lady, The Prairie Review, Whims of the Wilderness, New Verse News, Writers Resist, and Bloomin’ Onion, among others. She was named semifinalist for The Writing Salon’s 2025 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize and for Leftie Blondie’s chapbook competition. Her poem “Used Envelopes” was nominated by Bloomin’ Onion for Best of the Net Anthology 2026. Find her at rhapsodydmb.com.

the heart of the earth

the heart of the earth
a furnace pulses
yet in its spinning
how like a seed in its own pit
surrounded by layers that pearl
within the fruit of our slightly tilted planet
within us      too
somewhere in a rooted core   
a restless 
spinning
heart
with its own sacred fire

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS is a former teacher and librarian whose writings have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Press 53 published her first book of poetry in 2015 entitled she: robed and wordless and her second, Writing the Stars, 2024. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. James Lee III composed “Chavah’s Daughters Speak” for a concert held on May 11, 2021, at 92Y in New York City for five poems from her book. Another concert was held in Cleveland, Ohio on March 28, 2023, sponsored by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society.

Through a Child’s Handheld Microscope

If a fairy skated a figure of eight 
she would carve a deeper groove 
than lacework on a fly’s wing 
drowned in a pool on the garden table.

We elbow for a turn to see 
a curled fragment of a dead leaf, 
moist from days of winter rain, 
reveal radiant labyrinths.

Voices float and ring
our breath steams the slide that holds 
worlds within worlds
within one blade of grass.

Each bead of a dew drop,
is a multi-faceted diamond 
in our scrappy old backyard.

Margaret Davis lives in the South of England with her husband and son. She enjoys writing poetry and fiction and has been published in Cranked Anvil.

The breath of her words ignites flame and luminous wind


“She believes in the ga haramata, the wind which blows here hot, here cold [...] though only some will breathe out in bloody chaos. [...] This is, of course, a metaphor. But she lives by it.” 
					             —Zadie Smith: “Two Men Arrive in a Village”

She stares through the pallor 
smells infiltrating wildfire smoke.
Gusts of wind surge, recede
each leaf shows its underside 
and holds, all but the one 
splayed dark maple descending.

She knows there is a coal 
in the ash of her belly 
that needs her breath 
to flame, the breath 
of her words.

She knows there is fear in the fire.
Now, she senses the fire in the fear. 
She reaches into the gray ash 
and finds liquid phrases lit from within.
She discovers there is no pain 
in her burning.

Trees bend in hollering gusts and birds 
lose their balance on the phone wires 
walls of flame in northern forests send
smoke afar, casting sunlight to rose.

She could not have guessed the stillness
of being a flame, how keen her gaze
how her burning attentions focus.

She calls up her metaphor, the ga haramata
and says 
	We all breathe this cruel wind	
	but the tyrants breathe out chaos. 
	
	Be a living leaf ablaze from within
        adhere where you can
	fly where you must
        on the breath of luminous wind.

Susan Mary Freiss writes poetry to clothe vibrant silence and hear what she might discover. She is a mother, grandmother, gardener, teacher, and community activist in Madison, Wisconsin. Her poetry can be found with Madison Vets for Peace, in Amethyst Review, in A Catalog of Small Machines, and in Lost Blonde’s 2026 Anthology of Poetry. 

Safety First

My year of flame starts with water
at hand ready to prevent burns, 
to douse the cushions or tables or chairs
if the candle goes awry, if flames shoot up
to the ceiling that already has a crack in it.

I am cautious and fearful and have never played
with fire before. I was quite old before I could 
light a match. The smell of smoke does not evoke
the peace of grandfathers to me
but a problem to solve. 

So before flames, water, and soon
my hands are in the soapy water with
every day pots and pans, with the 
iridescent bubbles playing chase 
with my fingers.

Rachel Ann Russell has recently earned a Master of Arts at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and has taken a number of classes at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Her special place is where art turns into joy and church. She has been published, among other places, in Christian Century, the Maryland Literary Review, Time of Singing, Christian Courier, Hearts of Flesh Literary Journal, and others.

Wyoming Prayer

Evening settles gold
over the prairie.

Tall grasses
lean into the wind.

A blue heron lifts
from the riverbank,
following a line
only it can see.

As a teenager, I prayed
for the Holy Ghost
to set my tongue aflame,

listening
as others sang in languages
I couldn’t understand.

I wanted to belong.

Now I hear coyotes
calling through the dusk,
one voice,

then another answering.

I don’t know
what they’re saying.

Only that something
keeps calling,
and something
keeps answering.

Sam Aureli is an Italian-born poet living in the Boston area. A first-generation college graduate, he spent decades working with concrete, steel, and the built environment before turning to poetry as a way of exploring memory, inheritance, and the complicated legacies we carry. He is the author of On the Edge of Knowing (Kelsay Books, 2026). His chapbook, That’s Not My Shadow, won the 2026 Poetry Box Chapbook Prize and is forthcoming in 2027. His poems have appeared in The Berlin Review, Chestnut Review, The Bournemouth Journal, and other literary journals.

A Bodhisattva

She knew nothing of the Buddha
or of buddhahood, held no distinctions
sacred, thought no condition permanent,
no truths or laws transcendent, no glory 
but the glorious aftermath of chance 
and change, no consolation but the gift 
and precious grief of losing, no compassion 
to extend or be withheld, nothing certain 
but the unrelenting weight of ignorance, 
no presence but her sense that being here 
is always coming after, no thought 
but what arrives as joy, no voice 
but what wells up in laughter.

DB Jonas is the author of four collections of poetry: Tarantula Season and Other Poems (2023), Flight Risk, Poems and Translations (2025), In Dubious Terrain (2026) and Ut pictura (forthcoming in 2026). His work has appeared in over 70 journals internationally, examples of which can be accessed at jonaspoetry.com.

Elegy for Explorers
For Some Hospice Patients
  

Like Columba or Brendan
launched on the infinite sea searching
for their own spare, special place of Holy Ground
     
These holy ones cut themselves loose,
drift off when the TV is on, find the deep swell
the partner asleep on the couch.
		
Sweat on the forehead and wrist
arrives like spume off the bow as they journey
towards that ultimate harbor.

O Lord, O Eternal!
Listen as these holy ones praise You.
We lift them up, their spirits rising like incense.

Brian E. Backstrand is an Episcopal priest with pastoral experience in hospice, hospital and rural congregational settings. His work has appeared in South Dakota Review, The Long Story, Anglican Theological Review, and other literary journals. A collection of fiction came out in 2005: Little Bluestem: Stories from Rural America. He and his wife live on a farm in the Driftless region of Southern Wisconsin.

The Bodhi Tree

That man who squats at the base of my trunk
Above my invisible roots
A week he must have been here now
How and why did he choose me?

The chatter in the forest is ambiguous
Some think he is holy some say mad
Others say just compost for us trees
With a wilful purpose to die

For he has taken no nourishment
And my leaves tremble—I know not why
He makes my sap crawl and all the little creatures
Have crept from my bark to settle on him

I sense a great light in the dark
Even my rootlings pause their questing ways
Is this the famous extinction foretold?
Is this the stop of the world?

He rises finally and blesses me
Chewing one of my fruits
As he meanders down the hill
To tell the men

Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021], Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and Movement of People [Dempsey&Windle 2024] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Amethyst Review, Crannog, Pennine Platform, Popshot, Prole and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems.