Author Archives: Sarah

Markers on the Trees


My fingers floated just above the keyboard, ready to prove myself. Waiting with anticipation for brilliance to tumble out of my words. This is how I used to write: looking always to prove my creativity, my way-with-words, the worth of my thoughts. I wrote looking for the most impressive language, clever metaphors, hoping to stumble onto truth no one had yet uncovered—and I would be the one to gift it to the world. 

These days, writing is much simpler and somehow still just as difficult. Somehow more demanding. I’m not sure what I’m looking for when I write, most times. Now, it mostly feels like trying to remember important things and people and places and times. It feels like walking in circles around honesty and contradiction and then falling into both, tired of resisting. Sometimes I find myself writing only to savor the round-as-apples cheeks of my baby niece. The pressure to prove myself in some way—that I am a deep thinker, some mystical creative being—lurks in the background, watching.

Lately, my need to remember what is good and real has begun to outweigh my need to demonstrate the depth of my mind or how original I can be. Originality is not keeping me together. Philosophical takes don’t ground me anymore. It’s the moments with my green-eyed niece. It’s the backyard reunion with friends I’ve known since before I could walk, holding each other’s babies, sitting around a table full of crunchy fruity summer salad and grilled chicken and corn and paper bowls piled high with three kinds of ice cream. Staying up late even though we are all yawning and sleepy because we can’t get enough of each other. 

This is what I’m trying to remember, when I write. I’m still reaching. Not for brilliance or ingenuity. I no longer sit around, waiting for inspiration to sweep me off my feet. I don’t have time, in a world like ours, to wait for such lofty moments. I need what’s real; the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I reach for the palm-full of herbs that bless my senses. The slurp of a ripe watermelon in July. I’m trying to just sit and rest awhile, inside these words. Here is renewal. 

I reach for the days I realized I was not alone—when my friend dropped everything she was doing because I wasn’t doing well, drove with me to the grocery store. She filled a cart with everything good for you and wouldn’t let me pay a cent. When I laughed so hard with my mom about something ridiculous I did at the doctor’s office that tears streamed down our faces, and the time my dad and I tried to rewire the house on our own and failed epically, but had the time of our lives. These memories are my trail through the woods, my markers on the trees—reflecting light when I can’t see my own hand in front of me because it’s so dark, reminding me where I’ve been, what is real. Here is my pathway to honesty. Here is hope for this weary imagination. 

Miriam Riad is a public school teacher, writer, and former book editor. She has been published in Ekstasis Magazine, Ruminate Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the author of 28 by 29: A Year of Writing, a short collection of essays and poetry.

The Plunge


Sink into the unsaid
Because sometimes
The words ready
On your tongue
Are too easy.

Swim through your mind
Beneath the sparkling surface—
Wade past the frothy shoreline,
That bubbling, meatless foam,
And take the plunge.

Where whale songs once echoed,
Where anchors disintegrate slowly.

The sound of nothing
Can be so full
And exquisite.

Why do we forget?

The clearest of fish glisten
Like the glass you keep your heart in,

Shielded from what’s really here,
So heavy and unknowable. 

But if you trust yourself enough
To let go
And spend time
In this deep space,
The relief comes
Like a touch of piano keys
Transmitted through 
Still ocean,

Like sunlight filtering through
Pounds and pounds of
Water turned weightless.

Find your voice
In sanctified silence
And float upwards
Towards an eggshell sky,
Breaking open
Like a poem
Falling into a wind-swept page,
Writer huddled onshore and squinting
Into ocean spray and trick of light,
A mermaid rising above the rocks.

Sam Ligeti (She/Her) has always known that she’s a writer, but is only just starting to believe it. Connect with her on Instagram: @samligeti, or at www.samligeti.com.

wanting
 
 
yeah you want calm
relax
sit still    nubbly peace encampment
‘round the campfire
contentment
       minaret and mint tea,
to heed the call,
kneel
   before   original green,
moss, fern, tree.
 
and yeah    you want
pogo stick
and downhill ski,
cowboy boot   swagger shimmy
sassafras root,
     slapdash
           and motorcycle throttle
vroom.
 
you be   the wanting?
or you be
    the field
 
where wanting
say   hello
   say goodbye
watch
the redeliver
   come    and go.

Melanie Green‘s most recent poetry collection, A Long, Wide Stretch of Calm was published by The Poetry Box of Beaverton, Oregon. The titles of her earlier collections are: Continuing Bridge and Determining Sky. She is a resident of Portland, Oregon. 

A Dartmoor Cross

Knee-deep in wild flowers 
and fresh bracken, twisted
as if the weather of twelve 
centuries could finally 
warp granite - the stone cross 

leans on its high hillside,
but will not fall, socketed 
by four mossed boulders 
sunk in deep, locked with 
conviction of significance. 

Did they come here to pray
stand in the sun or rain
in view of forty other hills
ranged out like ripples
from this one dropped stone?

The valley folds round those who
sing their matins wondering 
who’ll repair the leaking roof.  
Here, scabbed with old lichen 
arms cut back to stumps -

a tree-stump petrified -
this elemental sign may 
stand for centuries yet.
witness both of change 
and changelessness.

Tony Lucas is retired from parish ministry but continues work of editing and spiritual direction.  His poetry has appeared widely, on both sides of the Atlantic, and past collections Rufus At Ocean Beach (Stride/Carmelyon) and Unsettled Accounts (Stairwell Books) remain available.

Carer Complex
 
Sometimes I want my existence
to have no impact,
but my bedroom door creak-squeaks
every time I open it.
How much support is right?
Is enough?
Is never enough?
 
The sun does not discriminate
in its light-giving,
yet some of us can’t receive it;
& every day the withering flat fills
with cigarette smoke
as the sun blazes outside.
How much of an open window can I be
to air it out for you to breathe?
 
Is the trick of this life
to hold the black tar of it
in cupped hands and shout “Sticky!”
with full-throated welcome?
Ironically, I’m stuck
pretending my hands are still smooth
as it thickens,
now pooling at my feet.
How long
before my knees are muddied too?

David Hanlon is a Welsh poet living in Cardiff. He is a Best of the Net nominee. You can find his work online in over 50 magazines, including Rust & Moth, Icefloe Press & Amethyst Review His first chapbook Spectrum of Flight is available for purchase now at Animal Heart Press. You can follow him on twitter @davidhanlon13 and Instagram @welshpoetd

Nachshon, Who Led the Way


Trapped between the Red Sea
and Pharaoh’s army
Nachshon listened while others
bickered over who would go first. 

He watched Moses cry and pray.

Then he stepped into the water. 

I close my eyes 
and imagine Nachshon,
moving forward with faith, despite
being drenched to the chin.

Did he know the sea would split
before it covered his head?

That Adonai would admonish Moses
for offering prayer when action was needed?

When my moment on the shore has passed,
will it be said I stepped into the water 
instead of standing back, waiting
for someone else to go first?

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications including Amethyst Review, The Sunlight Press, Gyroscope Review, and One Art. Visit  www.jacquelinejules.com

The Gardener

Her name was Rose. She sewed dresses for the girls
who stepped up to the altar and made their First Communion.
My mother scorned the gaudy options in the shopping mall,
she swore to me I wouldn’t be a little bride. So, one Sunday,
she tapped on Rose’s shoulder and asked for a favor.
I was obliged to one fitting. She offered a plate of Pizzelles
as my mother tried church gossip. Rose’s father sat mum,
hunched in his La-Z-Boy armchair. Before we left,
he broke his silence and offered a tour of the garden.
An oasis grew out of a city plot’s malnourished soil.
He gifted us bunches of lettuce, handfuls of zucchini, 
and pints of cherry tomatoes. I didn’t want to go.
My communion dress ended up plain and dove white
against a mirage of cream-colored ruffles and frills.
Weeks after, my mother told me the old man was dead. 
Rose had risen from her sewing machine and found
her father in the garden. His cheek was pressed to the earth,
his fingernails were full of dirt and his blue eyes rolled back.
The pear trees and grapevines slumped in grief. I was a child,
but I too wanted to lay down on the earth, reaching out
for fresh seedlings as my soul was let loose.

Mary Durocher is a poet from Schenectady, New York. She also writes fiction, non-fiction, and cultural criticism. She’s a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College, where she studied English & World Literature and Creative Writing. Her work has recently appeared in The Carson Review, Laid Off NYC, and KGB Bar Lit. She lives in Queens, New York. 

                A Rock Displays


“For the error bred in the bone
 of each woman and each man
 craves what it cannot have...”
         - Auden, ‘9/1/1939’



A rock displays its ardor and release
it shrinks and swells, we climb or pocket it
its truth becoming ours in each of these

it keeps its counsel, not a moody beast
it sheds the uses we had thought would fit
a rock displays its ardor and release

our climbing codifies what we would keep
we pocket pestles, arrowheads and flints           
its truth becoming ours in each of these

a crocodile will swallow stones to knead
apart its dinner’s features: heads limbs hips
a rock displays its ardor and release

we want these stones to still us when we bleed
to make us steady, heal our rages, rifts
its truth becoming ours in each of these

we would become steadfast but cannot be
our rascals blind us, still our light persists
a rock displays our ardor and release
our truth becoming its in each of these

Don Brandis is a retired healthcare worker living quietly outside Seattle writing poems.  His latest book of poems is Paper Birds (Unsolicited Press 2021).

Sonnet on Otherness


My bones my breath my thoughts my wants
my I my me my mine ~ 
I throw into the bright white fire 
of light that sways my spine.

With power to reveal the real ~
even darkness can be kind.
The night that will conceal & seal,
the shade in which all things can shine.

Our air that birthed both you & me,
& helped our hearts begin to beat,
is everywhere it needs to be,
gives & yet remains complete.

If I didn’t have the sense of ‘other,’ 
would I ever suffer?
 

David Leo Sirois is a Canadian-American poet published 137 times, in 21 countries, in 12 languages (such as Hindi, German, & Spanish). He hosts the Zoom continuation of SpokenWord Paris. First collection: Humbledoves (poems to pigeons & plants). He won Third Prize in Winning Writers’ Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, & his poetry has appeared in journals such as The Bombay Review, Paris Lit Up, & One Hand Clapping.

The Numinous

I’m on a wave. 
Foam crinkles at my back. 
Salt water drips from my face. 
I dig my hand into the jade green wall 
and ride North into the direction of hard truths. 

I now feel worthy of knowing 
the power of my own light. 
No more hiring crooked archers
to take me out. 

A band of pelicans moves in,
in perfect formation - 
their wings almost kiss the sea. 

I am supported by the seen and the unseen. 
The entire galaxy has my back. 
When I move my body I am in prayer
for those suffering and lost in transition. 
When I gain speed the Light of the One 
builds inside of me and I send it out 
over the Earth - 
this Earth - whole in its vision,
this Earth - ripe with ancient secrets,
this Earth - strong in its determination to 
shake off this infection of fear, 
greed and delusion and return to the Original Balance. 

I get out. My feet make prints in the sand. 
The sky above me stretches up forever. 
Crabs choose their direction. 

How will you come to know the totality 
of your being when you are in fact, limitless? 
How will you understand everything you 
hope to become, you already are?
I’ve shed my titles. 
I’ve dimmed my ego. 
I make my home in the numinous. 

Chelsea Lynn LaBate is an award winning poet, songwriter, painter, book binder, runner, surfer and yogi. She has played thousands of shows for the global community, including performances for children and elders. She has released several albums, animated music videos, and a podcast for songwriters called Songcrafter, which aired on the radio as an hourly Saturday morning special. She has a collection of short love poems, Sugah, which she handbound into miniature wearable books. She also has a collection of long format poems called Free Roses, inspired by the pandemic, which is set to be printed in winter of 2023. She lives a simple life by the sea, helping others with her words and making her art.