Author Archives: Sarah

How to Pray
After Jessica Jacobs, How to Pray 

Forget words, especially rote. 
Resist the temptation to flee.
Dig in. 
Listen 
to all that talk inside that makes you crazy.
Rub those knotted worries like a rosary,
inhale the rusty fear,
get rid of your preference for certain tastes.
Accept them all. 
With your eyes closed, fall deep into the dark.
Let it chaff  your skin until you are tender, raw. 
Stop holding your breath as if underwater.
Breathe. 

 I’ve been here my share of time. 
The backs of my thighs are itchy 
where they meet the cushion,
just like when I sit in the grass.
My ribs once tied together have loosened 
and the closed fist around my heart has let go. 
My stomach, a nest of crying birds, has quieted
but my lashes are soaked 
as if snowflakes have pooled there. 
The solid shadows, the debris of all yesterdays 
have been swept out.
Under the topsoil of my hair, my roots run audaciously 
in an open field under a clear sky
where I find nothing but a longing. 

Angela Hoffman’s poetry collections include Resurrection Lily and Olly Olly Oxen Free (Kelsay Books). She placed third in the WFOP Kay Saunders Memorial Emerging Poet in 2022. Her poems have been published internationally. She has written a poem a day since the start of the pandemic. Angela lives in rural Wisconsin.  

The Grammar of Repair 

White Baltic churches, a low barn in Vermont,
the eye needs something solid to rest on,
simple, heat-holding. Even the imagination
greys from so much rain. Before this week
the phrase an angry sky seemed clumsy, foolish,
its use a casting round in choppy waters.
But here we are. What else can we say?

Except that there is always high ground, 
a retreat, for the mind at least, 
and the generosity of words, reminding that beneath
mud and misery proceeds an endless
filtering; that tomorrow or next week will see
a thousand streams, each clear and singular,
their spills and turns, the grammar of repair.

Ted Mc Carthy is a poet, translator and playwright living in Clones, Ireland. His work has appeared in magazines in Ireland, the UK, Germany, the USA, Canada and Australia. He has had two collections published, ‘November Wedding’, and ‘Beverly Downs’.

His work can be found on www.tedmccarthyspoetry.weebly.com

My Broken Prayer

When she tells me her news, I say
I’ll hold you in my thoughts and I do:
I ask everyone to keep her longer on earth:
Creator, Goddess Mother, God the Father,
our ancestors, the broken statue of Mary
under the cedar tree in the backyard.
Buddha, fat and smiling by the front door.
The various goddesses that line our walk, 
brought home from garage sales 
or prizes from white elephants.
Every deity welcome.

The year that drove me to my knees: cancer
in my house in my bed in the air I kissed
when tucking my children in at night.
His constellation suggests no obvious path, 
the oncologist said of my husband’s lab results. 
Metastatic galactic. Cells exploring the frontier
of his body, looking for a place to land.
We’d peer at the graphs and numbers, 
nod and shake our heads in concert
with the earnest doctors in their white coats.
Maybe the stars would know, I thought.
I beseeched the heavens. 

One sleepless night I drove to a field
and when I felt good and alone
screamed myself to depletion. Then 
there it was, a wellspring of presence, 
a hammocking, I tell you. I felt something,
maybe the hand of God on my head,
maybe the porous veil laced thin.
I’ve not felt it since, but this memory 
is the rope anchor I attach myself to.
I want to believe the hammock will hold,
there is no freefall; me, my friend, all of us,
cupped like the rain in my broken Mary.

Michele Bombardier is the author of What We Do, a Washington Book Award finalist. Her work has appeared in JAMA, Atlanta Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Crab Creek Review and many others. She is a Hedgebrook fellow, the founder of Fishplate Poetry, and the inaugural poet laureate of her town.

How to be kind to yourself, like an 8-month-old


you stretch sadness taut, an
anaconda across the length 
of your spine, then
abandon it. 

this boy embraces every sadness, it 
fills up your face, like a montage.

aut dormi, aut lacte
hare krishna, krishna krishna 
meetha meetha, tera kiya meetha lage 


you fill yourself with him like a 
diligent squirrel at work
fore-paws around face
burp aloud

I hum lullabies
your name punctuates
my breath

When Kashiana Singh is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. Her chapbook Crushed Anthills by Yavanika Press is a journey through 10 cities. Her newest full-length collection, Woman by the Door was released in Feb 2022 with Apprentice House Press.

Andrew

Make a garden out of everything you’ve lost                                                                                                  in this no man’s land so broken and so gaunt –                                                                                          old brick and bone. Make it before the frost,                                                                                           this space between dull walls that no-one wants.                                                                                           First for the birds: plant a wooden table deep                                                                                                and scatter it with seeds. Come down some day                                                                                            to catch a gust of goldfinch blowing in, and keep                                                                                                   the moment safe: such memories should never fray.                                                                                             Now that you’ve found a hiding place to bring                                                                                             your deepest fears and dreams, stand here to pray                                                                               even on raining days and hear the wet grey sing;                                                                                                 lift up your face to let the drops wash fear away.                                                                                                                 More than all else, make this a place of light –                                                                                           for the stars to come in gemstones every night. 

Kenneth Steven is widely published as a poet, a writer of fiction and as a translator (from Norwegian). The lion’s share of his work is inspired by Iona and the Celtic Christian story. His volume of selected poems Iona was published a couple of years back by Paraclete Press in the States.

Gratitude

Sparrows perch on the stone ledge
outside my window, looking in.

I watch them 
over the black bloom of espresso
 
flowering in a white ceramic cup 
that reads I heart New York.

The moon is a sliver of fingernail 
fading into morning.

Shortly all this will disappear.
I hold tight to everything:

birds, coffee, 
cup, New York, moon.

Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, ParisLitUp, Meniscus, Agenda, Gradivaand other journals. Her most recent book of poetry is EDGES.

Something Else I Didn’t Understand


The old woman with the raggedy hair
was waiting for me at the door of the church.
I had the key.  It was early, very cold.
I said no, and no again.  I can’t let you in.

When I came out later to look for her
she was sleeping against the wall, heaped up,
and we were told, never try to wake them.
They’re confused then, uncertain, as we all are,

as in the afternoon once when I woke up
from a nap and the sun was shining through
the window.  My eyes were blurry, out of focus,
and for a moment the green and yellow leaves 

of the trees outside sparkled like facets
of something else I didn’t understand.

Chris Anderson is a Catholic deacon in Corvallis, Oregon, and everything he writes comes out of his experiences as a deacon and out of his experiences of faith, and doubt.  He is also an emeritus professor of English at Oregon State University.  He has published a number of books, poetry and prose.   Love Calls Us Here is forthcoming from Wildhouse Press.

It Is


It is the singularity of black holes
a swarm of hummingbird hawk-moths 
the insatiable hunger of caterpillars
smile of a camel, song of a nightingale 
the moon frail as the edge of a fingernail –

It is dirty as a clam, economical as ants
dark as a pocket, convenient as money
nervous as a squirrel, close as a box turtle 
an ostentation of peacocks, a siege of herons –

It is hardy as grass, fragile as a tiger
words sleeping between the covers of a book
a fanatic hiding his doubt, a sceptic his faith –

It is an unkindness of ravens, an exaltation of larks
the spitefulness of philanthropists, a plague of poets –

It is none of the above.

Shanta Acharya’s latest poetry collections are What Survives Is The Singing (2020), Imagine: New and Selected Poems (2017), Dreams That Spell The Light (2010). Her doctoral study, The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson, was published in 2001 and her novel, A World Elsewhere, in 2015. www.shanta-acharya.com

Suspensions

                                                                            
Solids held by liquid & that itself kept in by glass,
a sweet vial of light buffed by air, dust tracings, another elixir,
is living still as hues fused.

So the milky way floats, echoes of an opera welling,
the bands of touch gone up by elements
to keep reformation slow but there.

So our gestures are colors also there with manatee-preciousness
in the deep belly breathing us so we may breathe back.

This is a prayer, riddle of love, heart like a walnut,
& we, hoarding squirrels, we who could stoop
into bastard-hostility, the polish of spite hewing knives agleam.

Kindness keeps us from such, kindness wild as our greenhouses,
our wash lines, all the particular chores beating normalcy,
beating tenderness on in a tried & true rhyme
in this glass of existence.
 

Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer.  Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online.  Recently his work has appeared in CROW NAME, WORDPEACE and Duck Duck Mongoose. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum – The Chroma Museum (weebly.com)

Altar


She bought it online on a whim,
The one bulky item I insisted on keeping.
A glass topped wooden table, 
Delicate mosaic tiles encased underneath.

I’ve filled it full of rocks from far away beaches,
Pigeon feathers tied up with kestrels,
No less beautiful for being grey.
Statues of Aphrodite, Thoth and Bast,
Ready to be consulted on matters of cosmic importance.

Object by object I add to her temple.
My crystals, 
My essentials oils,
My witching tools,
My “hippie nonsense”
I keep this space sacred.
Remember all she taught me about bigger picture love,
The sound of the universe throbbing in my heart.

There’s no superstition in this ritual,
It makes perfect sense to me,
Keeping the mind out of what it can’t comprehend.
This absolute present moment,
This honouring of ancient nature,
Among the thick grey carpet and the whirring radiator.

This temple gleams with all the ground's colour,
Takes me out of time into an older world,
When talismans were found in the dirt rather than scrolled down,
And we knew how to respect death. 

A piece of coral she found in the desert in Egypt,
A non descript stone I plucked from the Fairy Pools on the Isle of Skye,
After asking permission.
A note she wrote for me in a women’s workshop,
“I wish you true friendship, true love, prosperity”
These are the treasures you can throw in when I burn.
The rest of the house only spews her absence back at me,
Tells you nothing about our shared passions.
The rest of the house can gather dust,
And go to hell. 

Lorna Meehan lives in Birmingham and has been on the national performance poetry scene for many years. She has headlined various acclaimed nights such as Hit the Ode and Jawdance, toured with Apples and Snakes and performed at festivals like Glastonbury, Ledbury, Shambala and Moseley Folk. She starred in performance poetry theatre show News of the Word directed by Giovanni ‘Spoz’ Esposito, who she later collaborated with on Ten Letters, an intergenerational poetry show about Birmingham and was part of the Decadent Diva’s and the New October Poets collectives. She has autobiographical spoken word solo shows under her belt and her debut collection Caterpillar Soup is coming out in March with Verve Poetry Press.