Author Archives: Sarah

Seagull Church

We’re on our way home when my attention is drawn to a church parking lot where an enormous group of seagulls gathers like a sheet of snow in the dead of August, stark white like clean, pressed shirts, speckled gray and black like neckties. Seagulls in Sunday best. Pastor Seagull behind a podium in front of its hungry flock. Seagulls kneeling at pews with their toe-walking, tree-twig legs. Seagulls whose souls release both joyful and anguished prayers from the tips of beaks. 

Prayers that flitter into the sticky, sweat-sweet air and are carried on sacred wind to God.  
 

April Lynn DeOliveira is a Michigan-based writer, educator, and editor-in-chief of Cereal City Review. She has been published in Fiction on the Web, Walloon Writers Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, Front Porch Republic, Great Lakes Review, Defenestrationism.net, and others. When she is not feverishly pecking away on her tablet, she can be found reading, gardening, traversing Michigan and beyond with her wonderful husband, and wishing she weren’t allergic to cats.

Forever green

Perhaps they'll never 
spin the wheel of color art
and deviate in hues from
greens to blues to mauves,
magentas and all the in
betweens, or go the rogue
when Autumn reigns with
limbo leaves, disarmed
in droves and falling.

They'll never win triathlons
nor run with bulls, ride the rails
speak in tongues, jump the broom
or walk the red lined carpet.

But they'll stand for you 
forever green, and rarely drop
their leaves, while pastels
pale the branch and morph
amid mere memory.

When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting with macrame. She volunteers in animal rescue tending to cat colonies in the neighborhood. She walks with a birding group on weekends. Living by a beach town, is inspiration for her art and poetry. Some of her poems have appeared in Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Amethyst Review, The Rye Whiskey Review. Her latest collection is Ten random wrens, published by Maverick Duck Press.

October Prayer

nae dear god, nae amen
jist a laggie skein beatin 
a braid path i the clood-spreckelt lift;
birk leaves i the rakin wind
like a shook tambourine

Chris Powici lives in Perthshire. For many years he taught creative writing for the University of Stirling and the Open University, but now concentrates on writing poems and essays, mainly about how the human and natural worlds overlap. His latest poetry collection is Look, Breathe (Red Squirrel Press). Chris is co-editor of New Writing Scotland and one of the writers behind the climate change campaign group and e-zine ‘Paperboats’: https://paperboats.org/writings

Anchorite

To be dead is to be safe. I am excused the touch
of hands.  I am contained.  I cannot be removed 
from here.				                  I am free 
to concentrate on pain. I am companion to God.
Sounds enter through this window. I am a mind 
quiet within these walls. I am contained by God
and contain God. I do not find myself sufficient. 
I am safe from the touch of hands. Water enters 
through this window. I am a companion to pain.
I will be buried in this floor. Cold enters through 
this window. I am excused the trouble of voices. 
I am insufficient to God. I am dead and thus am
safe from death. I am companion to this silence. 
I am contained by solitude. My hands will touch
in prayer. I am companion to visions. Day enters 
through this window. I am excused the limitless
horizon without. There is enough of God in here.

Clare Starling started writing poetry when her son was diagnosed with autism during lockdown. Her poems have since been published in many journals including Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Poetrygram, Porridge, Obsessed With Pipework, and The Interpreter’s House. Her pamphlet Magpie’s Nest won the Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Award 2023. She particularly loves writing about our connection with nature, and about how neurodiversity can give different perspectives on the world.

The Hat

A neighbourhood fixture, no one actually knew the mysterious Reb Moishe – one of those who escaped Russia with a battered valise and a horde of enigmas. A roomer behind a discount men’s wear shop, he never spoke of family and lived alone. Lacking discipline and precision, with only the barest employment, Reb Moishe was the indifferent tailor of a reluctant clientele. Hat and coat from the “old country,” a daguerreotype of a refugee wearing out the sidewalks of this beach town or ruminating in some deserted park long abandoned to the weeds – that’s what people saw. 

To live by a stream would be consolation enough for the locust years, he’d mumble if anyone cared to hear. The sand and the salt air were a constant irritation yet he would not leave. 

When Reb Moishe died it seemed he was fated to go unmourned – or worse – unburied, a test imposed by the Divine Court on Shmilke Fine, chairman (and only member) of the Burial Society. Even a spot next to the fence where suicides were hidden cost more than the contents of the charity box.

A respectable funeral for Reb Moishe defied Shmilke Fine’s resources. The notice placed in the Jewish newspapers produced no heir. (Who wants to inherit a debt?)  And then… while others were concentrated in prayer two back row regulars engaging in idle chatter brought the salvation merciful as the dawn.

– Well, he did wear a hat. Maybe he was pious?

– Maybe he was a “lamed-vavnik”? came the facetious reply. 

What Shmilke Fine overheard broke the spell of his helplessness. An epiphany! One of the concealed 36 righteous pillars that hold up the world! He rose as if from the dead and with whispers let on that Reb Moishe was a descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, may his name be blessed. As the rumour spread donors sprang forth – such an illustrious genealogy, a holy man – Reb Moishe’s burial could not be delayed. And so it was that with donations sufficient for a prestigious plot, a nephew of the Baal Shem Tov’s grandfather’s grandmother on his stepmother’s side was laid to rest in the section of the cemetery reserved for the elite.

Covered in brambles and vines a century hence, obscured by lichens, how will the inscription on the headstone explain the past? Surrounded by the once-revered rabbis – how did Reb Moishe merit such company? Only Shmilke Fine was privy to the secret and with Shmilke Fine the secret passed away.

Marty Newman was born in Czechoslovakia, raised in Montreal, Canada, educated at McGill University & lives in Jerusalem where he studies ancient languages & texts. The modern poets who influence him most are Dan Pagis, Richard Wilbur, Zbigniew Herbert & Vasko Popa.

Balancing Rock

I find God   every time I go hiking
sometimes he’s        waiting for me at the          peak

sometimes          he whistles    between Longleaf Pines
sometimes     he      meets me       at a critical

juncture          last weekend       in the wake of our
rupture     two months out    still reeling   I drove

to Hanging Rock       to shake my mind loose      first
mile       straight up a stone staircase   was brutal

in the midst of       deciding whether to
give up    my footsteps    sunk into a groove

and I was flying      Falcon’s wings    took me high
above present circumstance    soon cresting

the thunderstorm-tinged horizon     I could 
think again      rhythmed temperate terrain

brought me back to my body   fixed footstep
cadence       rewiring     rebuilding    systems

of self    I found God     on Balancing Rock
we sat        shoulders touching       I wrote      he was

still    we sat and watched the storm move     across
rolling Piedmont hills         miles away from us

after an hour        I stood up     breath calm
and patterned            God         and I parted    I pulsed

my descent       to the sound of my footsteps     one
foot after the other      back to myself

Eva Alter is a poet and information professional whose work explores memory and myth through hybrid and procedural forms. Her work is published or forthcoming in Maudlin House, Don’t Submit, scaffold literary journal, wildscape. literary journal, and elsewhere. She can be found @eva_alter_poet on Twitter, @eva.alter.poet on Instagram, and @evaalterpoet.bsky.social.

Easy

“as if it was easy for the world to make flowers”
	Ada Limón, “In the Shadow”

Dependable like sunlight, color
bursts onto every berm and field,
seemingly effortless, a new season
appearing overnight, as if flowers
make the world, such making
easy as opening a bloom,
easy as breath, a sigh in the dark.

If only each of us could exhale
flowers, see the beauty we birth
as we breathe, the blossoms
teeming with potential,
with connection, a belonging
easy as color belongs to flowers,
easy as hope, budding in a field.

Elisa A. Garza is a poet, editor, and writing teacher. Her full-length collection, Regalos (Lamar University Literary Press), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her chapbook, Between the Light / entre la claridad (Mouthfeel Press), is now in its second edition. Elisa’s sacred poems were recently published in The Ekphrastic Review. Her writing about cancer has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, American Journal of Nursing, and Huizache, who nominated her for the Pushcart Prize. She teaches writing workshops for cancer survivors.

Lost and Found

Over the years I may have lost
more than I have held on to.
Dozens of pairs of sunglasses. 
Sentenced to squinting in bright light.
Scores of gloves.
Lonely left hands left in coat pockets.

I don’t hold onto things. Gone 
are the treasures brought home
by precocious children.
Poems, mosaics, handmade mugs,
awards and trophies.
Family heirlooms, I have few.
Most discarded, some lost.

Hard feelings, regrets, hurts and defeats.
I let them all go.
It’s people I hold on to 
and now I keep losing them too.

I’d rather write a poem about 
what I have found.
Criss crossing waves on a windy beach.
Tiny colored stones spread across the sand 
like freckles on a sunburnt arm.

A flat rock at the edge of the water
that fits my body like the recliner chair
in my living room.
Miles of pale blue sky 
striped with puffy white clouds.

A warm breezy day after an endless series 
of blustery cold ones.
The courage to go out into it and write this poem.

HM Ayres grew up in Northern New Jersey. She retired and moved to Cape Cod, MA in 2021 after a 43 year career in college student affairs administration. Since retiring Helen has been devoting her time to writing poetry, exploring the Cape conservation areas, bike paths, waterways and beaches and is engaged in several social justice and community volunteer efforts.

Stained Glass


whisper
still space beneath the spire
echoes

the daunting
inviting
portal behind my moving body

above my moved mind
pillars rising
to reach and reclaim

one arch after another
buttresses
strength and intricacy

gasping in the midst of it all
sheltered from the bright and the loud
exposed to a different self

you sense there is something
to the light and sound
that speaks to you

as if there was more
as if there had to be
someone there

there is
in the timeless tireless swirl
of the tissues of the earth

generations
breathing in and out
unsung stories echoing

prime mover that is hardly final
first cause that does not count
eternity fleeting

look back out through the vault
across the shimmering expanse
and see the curvature of it all

cavernous masonry cannot but follow
the living features of the only planet
that just might care

with our evolved bodymind
one and all
we need no stained glass

Dawid Juraszek is the author of, among others, Medea and Other Poems of the Anthropocene (2020) and Carbon Capture and Stories (2024). A bilingual writer and educator based in China, he is working on a research project in cognitive ecocriticism and environmental education. His fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have have been published in numerous outlets in Poland, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand.

Flare-Up

To dream of a volcano—hold your joke—
is not so bad. By reckless driving, we
outran the pyroclastic flow, the smoke,
the falling flaming rock and ash. The key
to such a dream is always poetry.
The underworld, the hectic flight, the air
a churning bioluminescent sea
are, for a rhapsode, a routine affair.
Take Dante’s reeking hellfire’s reddish glare:
What is it but a flare-up from the deep,
and his descent the key to it, right there
for anyone to see, awake, asleep—
or in that zone between, poised as Pompeii
to feel the mountain breathe upon its clay?

Dan Campion is the author of Calypso (1981), The Mirror Test (2024), A Playbill for Sunset (2022), and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (1995) and is a co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981, 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2019). Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Able Muse, Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, THINK, and many other magazines.