Author Archives: Sarah

Thoughts on Another Spring (After Tu Fu)  

It’s April. Everything is
reborn, but nature
is against me. Wherever
I look, I feel scorn.
Flowers hang their heads.
Birds scream at me.
Squirrels scatter, as if
they wish I were dead.
Alone, I drink wine.
It’s natural to grow old,
but on this spring night,
it seems like a crime.
But from the lake,
I have to laugh,
hearing the mocking cry 
of an unseen loon.

George Freek‘s poetry has appeared in numerous Journals and Reviews. His poem “Written At Blue Lake” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Spring Service

I bow to east, the mother of day
her azure fingers 
hang white cotton candy blouses out to dry in the sun

I confess my sins
fold them like a prayer
tuck them into cracks between the stones in the fence

I offer sunshine lily and buttercup bulbs
kneel and place them
onto the tongue of the thawing soil

I sit silently before the blessing trees
in spring shadows
beneath moving dappled gestures, made with budding arms

at a distance, on the porch steps
a white cat attends
arriving like an angel, on a puff of air

Victoria Twomey is a poet and an artist. She has appeared as a featured poet at venues around NY, including the Hecksher Museum of Art, The Poetry Barn, Barnes & Noble, and Borders Books. Her poems have been published in several anthologies, in newspapers and on the web, including Sanctuary Magazine, BigCityLit, PoetryBay, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Tipton Poetry Journal and the Agape Review. Her poem “Pieta” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

April

In a snow deep
meadow
of suburban
backyards
on a clothesline,
a single sweater,
bright crocus yellow, 
swings 
on a hanger,
as if my neighbor, 
impatient, 
has folded this field
into a chalice of white,
spiked it 
with yellow stamens
and made her own spring.  

Rita Moe’s poetry has appeared in Water~Stone, Poet Lore, Slipstream, and other literary journals.  She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Sins & Disciplines and Findley Place; A Street, a Ballpark, a Neighborhood.  She has two grown sons and lives with her husband in Roseville, Minnesota.  

To speak


To speak
is
to separate.

One word cannot be another –
A stone is not a tree.
Love is different from pain.
I am just I, and nothing else.

And yet this is a lie, because
all things are one; love turns to pain,
makes hardened hearts break into leaf,
form seeds that fall to earth as stones
and burst with love. I am this tree.

How can my words come back to truth?

Keep open eyes, and never say
“That cannot be.”

It can, it can.

Lory Widmer Hess is an American currently living with her family in Switzerland. She works with adults with developmental disabilities and is in training as spiritual director. Her writing has been published in Parabola, Red Letter Christians, Kosmos Quarterly, Ruminate: The Waking, Christian Community Perspectives, and other print and online publications. She blogs at enterenchanted.com.

Zackary Sholem Berger is a poet and translator who works in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew. He lives in Baltimore where by day he is a primary care doctor (zackaryberger.com).

Leah Goldberg (1911-1970) was a prolific Hebrew-language poet, translator, playwright, novelist, literary critic, and philologist. This translation and publication of the original appears with the consent of her estate. 

Santa Zitae, Virgine Luc
Basilica di San Frediano, Lucca

santa zitae, virgine luc:
bejeweled in roses, encased in glass and gold,
body long, brown, open before me:
her mouth stretched wide in endless inhalation, 
skin papery and packed like mud, 
bone creviced and crusted, 
fingers and toes poking like knives:
i can hear them scraping.

dust scratched and lace lined,
she holds me. 
the cathedral air is thick with her, 
rustling with death, hot and musty whispers,
suspended in shadow.
i wonder how my flesh will rot.
body exhumed in 1580, 
three centuries spent curled inside the earth.
she was real, she was real, i think it as a question.
i will her a voice, one that sounds like wet sand–dense, beautiful;
i feel entitled to some sort of comfort, explanation, prophecy.

tell me what you loved, touched, wondered: 
did you dream?
did you stare at your own reflection? 
an aching to sliver between the fluttering colors of her consciousness,
the human of her, to know her ripest and most shiny parts, 
for her to hold my face close, spill her metallic language into me 
until i recognize that i am of her, and she of me: 
it is my body exhumed, adorned, preserved, displayed,
my eyes gouged smooth as peeled bark, 
my breath sucked dry in the airless case. 

Lucy Seward is in her third year at Hamilton College, where she majors in Literature and double minors in Women and Gender Studies and Spanish. She loves to read novels, write poetry, go for walks in the woods, and listen to music. She spends time at school as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the campus’ main literary magazine, Red Weather (https://www.redweather.org/#home-section), and as the Music Director for the campus’ radio station. 

Doubt?

I wrestle with it
Like some spar with angels.

God,
Who doesn’t exist for a lot of peopl
Or who becomes a poster Jesus
Stuck on light poles,
Bumpers, vacant building windows,
Is always a shadow
Who may be my projection
Or an absence that is a presence.

The enlightenment only goes so far,
Then Heisenberg’s unprincipled principle.
Shadows lay across the mind
And the heart,
Its pulse so emotion driven.
Revelation is certainly a matter of perception.
All stories are true if you suspend disbelief.
Poems are not philosophy,
Or axioms,
Or wisdom;
Poems are the cries of the heart,
The fire of immaterial molecules,
The immaterial fire of molecules,
Arrows shot into the night,
String Theory at its finest.

Dan Cuddy is currently an editor of the Loch Raven Review. In the past he was a contributing editor of the Maryland Poetry Review and an editor for Lite: Baltimore’s Literary Newspaper. He has had a book of poetry published, Handprint on the Window, in 2003. Most recently he has had poems published in the End of 83, Broadkill Review, Welter, the Twisted Vine Literary Journal, the Pangolin Review, Madness Muse Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, the Rats’s Ass Review, Roanoke Review and, Gargoyle, and the LA Cultural Daily.

Apis Vero Est



The bees in
ever-rising
spheres,
scatter iridescent lures 
before the
open boundary fence;
a diligent, eloquent
choir.
Avenues of almond trees
fringed with mint and rue
welcome gold-winged 
harvesters
chanting by the dawn.

Enlivened in
their gathering task 
to live a now familiar life
after the bee of Nazareth,
in lambent cells
of wine--
their healing angels
ward the life
as slender Wedgewood thyme.

All labor ends at sunset,
but singing
never dies.

Charles Haddox lives in El Paso, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, and has family roots in both countries.  His work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. charleshaddox.wordpress.com

Inheritance 

An oval of silver, feather-light against my throat. Mother Mary stands atop the world, a serpent crushed beneath her feet. Her arms are open in welcome. Rays of light descend from her palms. Grace. Blessings. Once my mother’s, fallen to me.

When I was pregnant with you, my fifth pregnancy, my first surviving child, I remembered. I scrabbled through my closets for her red lacquered jewelry box; untangled the pendant from tarnishing chains, placed it around my neck. Grace flowed from it, seeping into my body. Light like gold flecks infused red blood cells. Cupping the curve of my belly, I whispered: My blood sings with grace. My blood is a blessing to you. Over and over. And I could feel it, a Mother’s grace, spiraling through the cord that bound us, nourishing you, plumping you, keeping your grape-sized heart, going, going. This heart would not stop.

Last night, you cried as you studied for your chemistry finals. I’ll never remember all this, you shrieked, and something slammed against your closed bedroom door. You let me enter your room, smooth your hair, kiss the top of your head, while you stared at sketches of polymer chains as if they’d betrayed you. I started to unclasp the pendant from my neck and fasten it around yours, but you put up a hand. Mom, you know I don’t believe in that stuff.

Your words fell like arrows. Somewhere, they pierced. But before the reality of you, what could I do except nod? I know too well: Some gifts can’t be given, only found. So, I just lay my hands on your cheeks, wiped your tears with my palms.

Marveled at the light seeping into your face,

the gold flecking your brown eyes. 

Barbara Diggs’ fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including FlashBack Fiction, Reflex Fiction, (mac)ro(mic), and Ellipsis Zine. Her work was Highly Commended in the 2022 Bridport Prize, and has been longlisted and shortlisted in the Bath Flash Fiction Awards. Barbara lives in Paris, France with her family. 

a date with god

Sharon Lopez Mooney, poet, is a retired Interfaith Chaplain from the End of Life field, living in Mexico. Mooney was given a CAC Grant to establish a rural poetry series; nominated for “Best of the Web Award”; co-published a regional anthology; co-owned an alternative literature service; produced poetry readings, continues facilitating poetry feedback workshops. 

Mooney’s poems are in publications nationally and internationally, like: The Blotter, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Kennings Literary Galway Review, California Quarterly, Ginosko, Door is a Jar, The Ricochet Review, Glassworks, Tipton Literary Journal, Sybil, Revue {R}Évolution”…, anthologies: “CALYX; Cold Lake; Strong Words; Smoke & Myrrors” (UK), amongst others.