Author Archives: Sarah

Un-undead


The patient ground was ready 
to be changed again
by rain
that fell so fast it hadn’t a chance
to map a course,
so it explored.
Reflecting rivulets forked 
before headlights like lightening.
I imagined the Schuylkill river 
when it was young,
perhaps like this,
before it steadily dug its bed.
Crossing the bridge at 30th street,
the river runs under me, 
now straight and silted,
its cleared way set 
by the city around it.
Somewhere, around a bend,
I imagine it wild,
faced again with the constraints
that free us.
 

Edward Lees is an American who lives in London. During the day he works to help the environment and in the evenings he writes poetry if his daughters permit it.

Vertigo
Masaccio’s Madonna and Child with Angels 
 
 
Too little have I seen of subduing
particulars
 
by shadow. Too little have I seen 
how highlight 
 
beckons to highlight, how color is 
free to build 
 
kinship, how light’s consistent flow 
is compromised.  
 
Too much have I loved of bodies 
catching light, 
 
how the space they live in 
is our own – 
 
too little seen bright flesh 
enflame
 
the gold-work of the background.

Colin Jeffrey Morris lives and writes in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, Delmarva Review, Lily Poetry Review and descant.

Psalm for Simone Weil

From the highest heaven God throws a rope. Man either grasps it or not.
-	From the New York Notebooks of Simone Weil



Sir, what is humanity
that you pay such attention to us,
or men and women
that you let us love one another?

Words slide from you, dropping down
to where you stride
over glaciers and rocks
and down the icy walks of the sea,

trailing behind you a rope, my Friend,
that we can grasp
or at our choosing,
cast away.

Michael Cooney has published poetry in Badlands, Second Chance Lit, Bitter Oleander, Big Windows Review and other journals. His short stories have appeared recently in Sundial Magazine, Bandit Fiction and Cerasus and his novella The Witch Girl & The Wobbly was published by Running Wild Press in 2021. A second novella, A Good Catholic Girl, is scheduled for publication in 2023. Cooney has taught in public high schools and community colleges and currently facilitates a writing workshop with the New York Writers Coalition.

Cave of Brahman


Enter the clearing
of yourself. See beyond
seeing how far you reach.

Relax into your divine 
proportion. Held in the 
absolute arms 

of eternal amplification 
as you have longed to be held
as you have always been held.

Here where you pulse
your ocean of light
first empty the cup 

until there is no cup 
then rise high above
your own horizon.

Sage Cohen is the author of five books including the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World and the poetry guides Writing the Life Poetic and Write a Poem a Day. She offers information and inspiration for poets and writers at sagecohen.com.

Slow Work   

Quaking Aspen, Populus Tremuloides.
One, yet many, sprung from a single seed 

like the 80,000 year-old forest sprawling 
across a Utah plateau, the Trembling Giant.

Briefly emptied of fixed notions—who I am, 
you are, as cracked eggs spill yokes and 

stargazer lilies pollen, change (a word that 
can mean trouble) comes to us as storms 

do to fields. If forgiveness is a flower,
then mercy is the meadow it grows in.

With tears to see through and spit to name 
our pain (we are, after all, mostly water) and 

harrowed as thatched soil. Suppled, we may
welcome others, even our various selves. 

Rhett Watts is a member of the 4×4 poet and artist collaborative in Worcester and facilitates writing workshops in CT and MA. Her books are: Willing Suspension (Antrim House Books) and The Braiding (Kelsay Books). She won the Rane Arroyo chapbook contest for No Innocent Eye. Her work appears in Best Spiritual Writing 2000 and she has poems in journals including Canary, SWIMM, Spoon River Poetry, The Worcester Review, Sojourners Magazine, The Windhover, and many others.

The Goddess of Missed Chances

of missed lives. The goddess 
of the missing lives. The 

footprinted path of where 
we are and haven't been. 

Ground worn down to imprinted 
mud, pressed fronds 

of new growth, snapped 
branches of the old. The missing 

leaves that will never bloom
the other twigs that bloom 

instead. Its desolate goodness
its generous cruelty. Breaking 

off from it paths and not—
no-trails through the glossy salal 

that end and emerge 
from a cedar’s foot, the footpaths

where instead of drenched feet
jumping streams, are steadfast logs.

The words you say and
will not say--yes and never,

no and I will, maybe this
is who I forever am, am I ever--

bridge the gap. Build a new story
across that space. The heavy 

tread of your boots, your feet 
skipping bare across the boards. 

The stream that barely trickles 
roars underfoot. Between boards

and water, yes and never 
air sparkles with spray, fattens with light.

Neile Graham is Canadian by birth and inclination but currently lives in Seattle, Washington. Her publications include: four full-length collections, most recently The Walk She Takes (2019) and a spoken word CD, She Says: Poems Selected & New. She has also published poems in various physical and online magazines, including Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Mad Swirl, and Polar Starlight.

Hiatus

I need interruption.  Hammers hamming
Nails jamming
Precision working against the coming gale force winds
The low country, so many contradictions.
Magnificent sunsets  
 
Clouds that pearl blue and white, iridescent
Streaks circling the Almighty
Gardenia blossoms and palmetto, herons
Gliding hawks, rainbows
Prehistoric marvels in their slow moving terror.
 
Summertime now, but fall is coming; crews hurrying
Before the oceans
Heat up; twisting sand dunes
Into wind tunnels  
The sensors working overtime
 
The rising tides a velvet hammer
Deconstructing the sameness.
Remembering, everything will be cast down 
Suddenly, I need this hiatus
To save my flowerpots, before the trees fly.
 

Keith Melton holds a Master’s Degree in City Planning from Georgia Tech and a BA in Economics and International Studies from the American University.  He previously has served as Director of Planning and Program Development for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Region IV Office; as well as VP of Development for both the Atlanta Economic Development Corp. and the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce (Metro Atlanta).  His poems have been published in numerous periodicals.

Thomas Ponder					

I call the old Doug Fir out back
Thomas Ponder.
Ever since the Valentine’s Day
ice storm took two branches,
others hang there like nursemaid elbows.

His spine is as straight 
as it can be, although his crown
leans toward my bedroom,
tilting his cap to my dreams.

When I hear him laugh some nights,
is he tossing old moons
over his shoulders
like spilled salt?
	
One Christmas, 
a charm of hummingbirds
shimmered his length, 
little carolers,
candles at the back door.

He’s also a flirt – that Thomas Ponder.
His northern branches stroke
the neighbor’s Blue Spruce,
southern branches
dingle dangle the red maple.
Eastern branches wink at the rising sun;
western branches blow kisses to the night hawk.

North winds lift his remnant of green 
like syncopated praise,
like call and response.
You’re a shimmery old holy roller,
that’s what you are, Thomas Ponder.

Colette Tennant is an English professor. She has two books of poems: Commotion of Wings and Eden and After. Her poems have won various awards and have been included in many journals, including Poetry Ireland Review, The Fish Anthology, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and others. In 2019, upon the request of a national press, she wrote Religion in The Handmaid’s Tale: a Brief Guide to coincide with Atwood’s publication of The Testaments. She has also taught art in Great Britain, Germany, and Italy.

If It Is Possible


Searching for sunrise this morning, east
through freckled patches of window screen.
A quiet yellow glow appears, mellow, serene, 
not heart-gripping dramatic pinks we’re sometimes shown, 
so arresting it feels that one could die happy now, 
complete, having been immersed in such a thing.
I switch to west, our back window view over the river, 
glistening like diamonds, and there comes a faint pink-purple 
blush, underlining the full Wolf Moon, vivid in this waking sky.
Small but powerful, our moon at its apogee, glowing at me 
like a round white grape lit bright from within.

If it is possible to pilot one’s way into a day, 
best way is with full moon above a river, color in the sky, 
and a root centered in openness; allowance for come-what-may, 
nimbly accepting, be it rough, easy, or arresting, 
received softly as massaging, hugging, holding your heart 
with the astonishment of wonder.

Marjorie Moorhead writes from the New England river valley border of NH/VT. She is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press 2019), Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020), and has poems in many anthologies and literary journals. Marjorie’s first full collection, Every Small Breeze, is forthcoming, as well as a third chapbook, In My Locket. 

The Little Hours 


Mid-morn, noon, mid-afternoon,
paired doves dip and dab for seed 

where lawn meets hardtop and
the courting male coos.

Mottled feathers, blue-ringed eyes, 
mourning doves hunt and peck

during the hours known as 
terce, sext, none.

Minus the drama of dawn or dusk, 
times for stacked paperwork,

cups of tea. Value measured by
ticked to-do lists. Dollar time.

The twice-twelved day sliced fine,
needs thicker layers, a kinder pace.

Praise for eyes that stare off, 
soften focus. For deep sighs 

body releases from our first home
in the world. Thanks also 

for the doves who wing whistle
and like the hours flee. 

Rhett Watts is a member of the 4×4 poet and artist collaborative in Worcester and facilitates writing workshops in CT and MA. Her books are: Willing Suspension (Antrim House Books) and The Braiding (Kelsay Books). She won the Rane Arroyo chapbook contest for No Innocent Eye. Her work appears in Best Spiritual Writing 2000 and she has poems in journals including Canary, SWIMM, Spoon River Poetry, The Worcester Review, Sojourners Magazine, The Windhover, and many others.