Author Archives: Sarah

What Rises


The sun, ever earlier
and earlier, a bluebird’s 
orange belly to the feeder,
a robin beak with a worm,
spikes of iris, 
a heron from the mist
off the river.
Flags on mailboxes
up and down the street,
steam from our pot of oatmeal,
the May wood pile with ash
and cottonwood.
Welt of poison ivy 
on my ankle, Muscari 
in the lawn, and dandelions, 
rhubarb stalks, purple heads of asparagus.
A second chicken coop 
the neighbors erect and paint blue.
Theodore, the chipmunk, to the 
deck railing, for orange peels
and apple cores, the dog’s rear end
in a yoga pose, my rear end
in a yoga pose, my son
into a Norway spruce,
the river to meet the bank, 
masks to overtake faces, 
the death toll.
And at last, 
the white moon, 
surrendering.
 

Katie Kalisz is a Professor in the English Department at Grand Rapids Community College, where she teaches composition and creative writing. She holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Loyola University of Chicago, and Queens University of Charlotte. Quiet Woman, her first book, was a finalist for the 2018 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. She is the recipient of a 2023 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She lives in Michigan with her husband and their three children. 

Lauds 
(Sisters of Loretto Motherhouse, Nerinx, Kentucky, May 23, 2021) 
 
sky’s red foil coin 
bedded in taffeta- 
ridged satin pink 
 
bestows day’s value 
trades hem of chill 
mist for mantle’s 
 
blue lumens, buttons 
morning’s deal with disk 
of buttercup chintz 

Nancy K. Jentsch’s poetry has appeared recently in The Pine Cone Review, Scissortail Quarterly, and Verse-Virtual. Her chapbook, Authorized Visitors, was published in 2017 (Cherry Grove Collections) and Between the Rows, her first poetry collection, con be purchased from Shanti Arts. More information is available on her website: https://jentsch8.wixsite.com/my-site. 

Runwell


I

Passing graves - carefully tended, loaded with memories - 
and shrubbery - sculpted and shaped -
on the path leading to this medieval church. 
Approach the rickety wooden porch 
with flecks of paint remaining 
from its earlier medieval-lite decoration.
Open the heavy wooden door inwards
to reveal, among the gloom,
a brightly painted, though faded, interior - screen and murals -
mimicking medieval origins.
Let the silence seep into your soul, 
as the cold into your bones.
Explore and tour the minor marvels
of this hidden place, 
packed within the smallness 
of its tardis-like space.
Tales of heritage and folklore
layered in stone and art,
worship and time, artefact and ritual.
Travel in time and through tales
in a place and space
where God is our beginning 
and our end is God,
where the inside can be spied
from the outside, and the outside in,
where the devil may have left
his mark on the exit door,
where the local Bobby regularly waited 
on all Hallows Eve to prevent disruption, 
where a last prioress,
from the nunnery by the well,
was reputedly laid to rest 
in a tomb that is now empty;
yet which retains 
a unique carved cross -
the Runwell cross -
four circles in a square; 
the instrument of our redemption 
set within a sign 
of the perfection of God.
God is our beginning 
And our end is God.
Spring of living water welling up,
run well through life and time,
run well in this place and space,
its layers and its mystery,
its tales and its history.

II

Time, there has been time, aeons of time.
Time to run well through life, 
time to tell tales and accrue tales,
time for pilgrims, nuns and congregants to gather and disperse, 
time for marks, murals, memorials marking the passage of time,
time for interments and burials,
and for exhumations, 
time to begin and end projects -  orphanages and schools,
time to build and sell vicarages and rectories,
time to decorate and time to strip back,
time to carve altars, crosses and stations,
time for the devil to make his mark,
time for prayers to seep into the walls, windows and stones,
time to sit still in silence and know
God is our beginning 
and our end is God

III

Water rises from the ground,
a never-failing spring,
well water, life-giving, wellbeing,
running water, running well
through life and time and ages.
Settlers build homes and a church, a village rises nearby.
Pilgrims pass by, praying with nuns,
as they receive and bless.
Farmers work the land fruitfully 
using the well's water. 
Boxing Day walkers, led by Mr De’ath,
visit for relaxation, exercise and inspiration. 
See them come as one, 
see them come layered in time, 
see them come
to the same source, the same well,
the same water, each receiving
differing meaning, still
each receiving well. Run well
in Runwell continuing source
of wellbeing, running still,
still running, ever flowing,
beginning in God, 
ending in God, flowing continually
through time and eternity. 
Run well, water of life, run well.

Jonathan Evens is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. Previously Associate Vicar for HeartEdge at St Martin-in-the-Fields, he was involved in developing HeartEdge as an international and ecumenical network of churches engaging congregations with culture, compassion and commerce. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief, and writes regularly on the visual arts for national arts and church media including Artlyst, ArtWay and Church Times. He blogs at joninbetween.blogspot.com.

 
The Seagull’s Ninetieth Seguidilla
 
That seagull’s fire won’t ascend.
It’s wrapped in paper. 
It ignites designs within
A bird’s skyscraper.
Mother of hoopoes
And father of kiwis; our
Wings make sky-tipis. 

##
 
The Seagull’s Ninety-Fifth Seguidilla
 
Gone to rack and ruin, I 
Cock-a-doodle-doo.
The ancient sound of new growth 
Reaching reaches through. 
It stretches, stretches 
Infinitely from the place
Where history etches. 

##
 
The Seagull’s Ninety-Sixth Seguidilla
 
Silvery sorority 
Above, very still;
Like each falling snowflake, you
Ring a little bell.
The winter sky’s blank
Page is marked by gulls made of
Invisible ink.

Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and veteran of the US Air Force. He’s married with a daughter and crazy bulldog. Poems and short stories of Jake’s have been published widely. A full-length collection of formal poetry, A Kiss to Betray the Universe, is available from White Violet Press. He also has two chapbooks: Looting Versailles (Alabaster Leaves Publishing) and The Rites of Tires (SurVision).

Lararium


Of the gods,

the panoply of them,
there is one, a companion
to all others, a sense within,
the presence of the good,

in those I have known, 
gratitude itself, the murmuring
innocence of wonder
in the naming of the dead,

the list I’ve made and read
before sleep, the tutelary gods
of the house of my body, those
who have done for me some sound good,

making their best moments mine,
a kindness in the service
of that companion presence
now before me before sleep—

     The colonel who saved me from butchery,
     the teacher who clothed me in dignity
     for dignity’s sake, the cousin who left 
     his kindness, the acceptance of all things, 
     the writer-mentor who was herself
     every inspiration, a friend wronged 
     by birth and tormented by the acts
     of those he rose above.

                       * * *
                                        
Longing is everywhere,
it is itself on its knees,
it is here tonight in the arms
of an armless body, an unknown lover.

I dream of them, the others, they never part,
a living vivarium, Apollo’s heart.

Michael Gessner has authored 14 books of poetry and prose. His most recent is Nightshades, (2022). His poems have been included in, or are forthcoming from, Arlington Literary Journal, The French Literary Review, La Citta Immaginaria, North American Review, (finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Award,) and The Wallace Stevens Journal. A voting member of the National Book Critics Circle, his reviews may be found in NAR, Jacket2, The Edgar Allan Poe Review, and The Kenyon Review. For additional information: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-gessner

Pity for a Birdless World

I detoured along the shore at sundown,
avoiding the short route home 
to consider what you, my love, had told me:
our true souls are as mortal as foam

fizzing above the tideline. I sat on a log. 
Watched crows hop and sanderlings 
chase waves back and forth,
snatch amphipods from popping 

suds. Black dots appeared above the setting sun.
Rungs of flickering dark spots spawned
at their peak a visible globe… then all 
the piper peeped and crows cawed:

           Beware! The birdless world 
           that lurks behind the sun
           is showing through! 
           Twin Earth, where automata run 

           without birds inside 
           for songs to bell,
           where flesh lives unpaired with souls
           to smear with taste or smell!

Exposed, enlarged by some celestial mirage,
I saw the turning image of our twin planet loom,
faintly showing landscapes like our own
until, on its horizon, leaves like sickle moons

pierced that globe’s blue envelope of air.
A single tree grew there: vast branches
reared buds and leaves so high 
that waves of cosmic birds could brush 

against and perforate their skins, slaking 
the need that shivers in all cells. And all 
the crows and sanderlings and I pleaded
with the force who fuses flesh to soul:

           Bless this tree, this witness to being’s thirst 
           for birds! Bless each fungus woven 
           in its rhizome, the sowbugs and slugs
           sheltering within its scalds. Spare them the curse

           of soulless melusines and mermaids, perishing 
           when essences incapable of death 
           replace all mortal atoms. Let this tree 
           be honey-combed with hatchlings 

           in foramina and crotches. Let bark 
           be maculate where beaks chip holes 
           for sap. Let rainbow flocks cacophony 
           on every bough. In its chartreuse dark 

           let raptors snatch up wailing rats — let its snakes
           glut the crops of storks.
		                                          The sun sank.
The birdless planet blinked from sight. 
Shorebirds whisked to wing. Ranks

of crows coalesced on the wooded bight. 
I sat alone, pitying a planet of atoms 
simpliciter and longing for your touch, 
your look. I thought of you at home, 

my love: sipping tea, or sucking 
chocolate chips, full of life and hives of words.
In you repose both flesh and soul: 
a braid of clockwork and living birds. 

Daniel Cowper is a poet from a small island off the west coast of Canada. His poems and criticism have appeared in reviews in Canada, the United States, Ireland, and the UK. He is the author of a book of poems entitled Grotesque Tenderness (MQUP), and The God of Doors, which was published as winner of Frog Hollow Press’ chapbook contest.

To a Pigeon in Paris
 
Your iridescent breast
deep purple, silver, magenta fast flutter
shimmering mother of pearl
the same as shells in the sea

Your red-rimmed, dull stupid eye
senseless & opaque, your rhythmic
beak peck at bakery crumbs
regular as hands on a clock
 
Autumn yellow leaves
sticking to wet cobblestone
people draped on bent cane chairs
faces to the sun drinking coffee and wine
 
Above all the single flap of your wings
against cold cobalt sky—
the supreme sound of it, one fast clap
way too close to me, mere inches from my face
 
Thank you for your ordinary, ideal flight
allowing my tired heart instinct to alight

Julia Caroline Knowlton PhD MFA is a poet and Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. As a young poet, she won an Academy of American Poets Prize. In 2018 she was named a Georgia Author of the Year and in 2022, her work was publicly installed as part of the Georgia Poetry in the Parks project. The author of five books, her poems have been published in journals such as ONE ART, Trouvaille Review, Roanoke Review and Rust & Moth.

Between the Knowable and the Unknowable


A crack, sliver of space, hairline fissure
where dreams go, but never nightmares,

where names you can’t remember and phone
numbers slip away, letters jumbled with digits,
where nouns abscond as you age and impostor

homophones intrude. They slither just out of
reach, blurred, impossible to reclaim, along with
the scent of your first lover, the particular timbre

of your first dog’s bark, prayers and song lyrics
you memorized between seven and seventeen.

In that crevice, answers to lifelong questions:
Who is my true self? How do I muddle best? 
What am I doing? What comes next?

Joan Mazza is a retired medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops focused on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, The Nation, and other publications. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.

Smile 

Looking, looking. Through a box of postcards. Her collection. All these postcards. Must be a hundred by now. Maybe more. At least. And then she finds it. The one with the photo of a Yorkie. Yes. That’s the one. That postcard. “Dear Elaine,” she writes. “When I was meditating this morning. You know. Mindful breathing. Watching my breath. Concentrating on that. Inbreath, outbreath. Inbreath, outbreath. Like Thich Nhat Hanh teaches. I had a revelation. Thich would call it “insight.” I know. But it felt bigger than that. Bigger. Much, much. It was this. That I don’t need anything. To be happy. That happiness can only be found in the present moment. Here. Now. No matter where I am. Anywhere. With anyone. Or without. I can be happy. In this moment. I mean. I used to think I needed something. You know. To be happy. That I needed to move to another city. To have more friends. To participate in more activities. Everything we’re taught we need. To be happy. But that’s not true. Happiness. It’s already here. Now. In me. In this present moment. I don’t need anything else. To be happy. None of us do. Imagine that? Light. So light. That’s how I felt. And free. That too. Anyway. I thought I’d mention this. To give you a smile. If you haven’t had one. Today. If you’re not smiling. Already. Like me. Right now. Smiling, smiling. Sorry. I can’t stop.”   

Laura Stamps loves to play with words in her fiction and prose poetry. Author of 48 novels, novellas, short story collections, and poetry books. Most recently: CAT MANIA (Alien Buddha Press 2021), DOG DAZED (Kittyfeather Press 2022), and THE GOOD DOG (Prolific Pulse Press 2023). Nominations: Pulitzer Prize (1) and Pushcart (7).  

Gold
                           for Josiah

	
Who would want to miss the world?	

The barn swallow’s nest under the eve,
the fiddleheads unfolding in the forest,
the patter of spring rain

the way the mourning dove speaks to us
of our longings 

and how unfailingly sunlight and moonglow 
remind us that all light casts shadows.

The complexities of our lives urge us away
from knowing things as they are

from realizing that what we are drawn to
is God
   
waiting to be noticed.                                         

   

Michael S. Glaser, Professor Emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004 – 2009. He now co-leads workshops which embrace poetry as a means of self-reflection .He is the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA 2012).  (more at http://www.michaelsglaser.com )