Author Archives: Sarah

Vicissitudes


The large motherly hand of the hemlock
ushers the breeze as a guest onto the porch.
I ignore the tree’s allusion to death
and Socrates.  Instead, I am drawn
to the spread of its wide branches.
The leaves look and feel like infants’ fingers,
the green that of newborn spring.
But at night the tree slips into a robe
black as obsidian that blocks my view
of star-strung Orion.  I move away
beyond the hemlock to find my place
to watch Orion begin his journey
across the sky.  He has all the room in space.
He does not know his fate.
We both are content to wait.

Janet Krauss, who has two books of poetry published, Borrowed Scenery, Yuganta Press, and Through the Trees of Autumn, Spartina Press, has recently retired from teaching English at Fairfield University. Her mission is to help and guide Bridgeport’s  young children through her teaching creative writing, leading book clubs and reading to and engaging a kindergarten class. As a poet, she co-directs the poetry program of the Black Rock Art Guild.

Gifting My Maracuyá

 A stringy vine that gets tangled 
in shoe laces, or around bare ankles,
it's best to let it creep 
up tall trees in broad sun, 
no shade to hide its bloom,
but I have shade and stumbles,
so I gave my Maracuyá vines away 
to settle in a sunnier clime.

Years passed, and the vine flowered 
a ripe passionate purple mass 
of petals and filament and corona.

We forget all we give away 
until it returns fully ripened. 

A stringy vine in another's soil
blossoming flower into fruit and passion,
returned as a gift bestowed 
by giving love away.

Laurie Kuntz is a two time Pushcart nominee and a Best of Net nominee. Her fifth poetry collection: Talking Me off the Roof is available from Kelsay Books. Visit her at: https://lauriekuntz.myportfolio.com/ 

                                 Cronk Meayll


                             Rock crystal centre of the bald hill
                                       graves wherever I stare to balance
                                                   feet that teeter & scratch on the edge
                                                           eyes close to a howling sun & nose
                                                                    sea-smelt breeze of gorse flower
                                                                                     heather with undertones of sheep                             
   in a red darkness, like whirlwinds
                species after species extinguish 
                in meteor showers that create visions
                ancestors floating still above twelve graves
                                              hands shaking –– heads shivering
	                                                                    at all we have yet to do.




Cronk Meayll [Manx Gaelic]: Mull Hill (literally bald hill). 
 

Simon Maddrell is a queer Manx man, thriving with HIV. He’s published in fifteen anthologies and publications including AMBIT, Butcher’s Dog, The Moth, The Rialto, Poetry Wales, Stand and Under the Radar. In 2020, Simon’s debut, Throatbone, was published (UnCollected Press) and Queerfella jointly-won The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition.

Eve Discusses Adam’s First Wife

You tell me Lilith has become a fiend,
a vampire, a screech-owl, one who preys
on children (I have three and she has none),
sentenced for disobedience to run wild,
hideous now, howling for all she lost.
You tell me I was taken from your side
that I might always find a refuge there,
a warm and nestling creature like the cat,
safe from the free but haunted world of dark.
And I’ve adjusted splendidly, I think.
My apple fritters are the best you’ll eat,
go where you will. I keep domestic life
tidy and clean. I never stir abroad
for fear of Lilith’s shriek and bat-like wings.
Yet when our first son killed our second son,
I – the good mother and obedient wife -
had one quick moment’s envy of her life.

Gail White is a contributing editor of Light Poetry Magazine and a frequent contributor to formalist poetry journals and anthologies. She is a 2-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Prize. Her most recent books, Asperity Street and Catechism, may be found on Amazon. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana with her husband and cats. 

God's  Clothes  

This is where He threw them - His clothes.
No hooks, no hangers, no drawers,
just there, where He walked.

See them, His heavy, briary coats -
splayed and humped,  there, in lumps.

See them, His flannel shirts -
all rumpled, all color-crisscrossed,
tossed wherever they could find to fall.

See them, like shadows -
His dark vests, His socks,
His scattered tubes of pants. 
See them,  the mounds, the rolling folds.

And there, the footsteps of stone
on and on, the toes, the high arches, 
where His bare body met the joyous sun,
a robe of purest light -
only, only, only.

God, naked in the Manzanita -
its complexity, its twists, its art,
naked in the cactus - arms up in welcome,
naked in the granite mountains,
every color of blue - blue to magenta.

God, crouching, leaping
in the coyotes, the foxes, 
the spiders, bobcats.
God in the naked sand, 
the naked earth. 

And this, all this,
is what they call a desert, 
an empty place?
I don't think so.

Erich von Hungen is a writer from San Francisco, California. His writing has appeared in The Colorado Quarterly, The Write Launch, Versification, Green Ink Press, The Hyacinth Review and others. He has  launched  four collections of poems. The most recent is Bleeding Through: 72 Poems Of Man In Nature.

Like a Thief in the Night


I once rode out of a Tatra valley 
on a horse-pulled wagon 
with a priest who joked of God 
all the way to the Krakow train 
on which I’d be robbed 
of what little I owned 
by an old woman who promised
to pray for my soul. 

I do wish that priest had told me 
a little something of the meaning 
of just one of those peaks, 
which I’d photographed with my soon-to-be 
stolen camera, so sure of their importance.

Now I hear on the radio the Tatras 
are no more. 

They’ve changed their magnificent minds
about being mountains – got clear out
of the business – and were last seen 
swimming in the Caspian Sea 

which itself has a famously precarious
grip on reality.

At least, the priest and I have stayed in touch. 
He has written to say he’s been defrocked 
and spends his days mining fool’s gold 
from California rocks.

PS, he adds, the Lord is coming
like a thief in the night. 

Paul Jaskunas is the author of the novel Hidden (Free Press) and a novella forthcoming in 2024 from Stillhouse Press. His fiction, poetry, and journalism have appeared in numerous periodicals, including the New York Times, America, Tab, the Windhover, the Amethyst Review, and the Comstock Review. He teaches literature and writing at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he edits the art journal Full Bleed.

Green Pearls


When illness stills you, and worry weights 
your limbs—when you rub your eyes to wake up

and the rose light of evening slants
across the dusty table—you take a walk, 

but the neighborhood is empty—even the birds
have flown, taking with them the furnishings 

of sound that make the world inhabitable.  
You remember Midwest autumns—how herds

of maple leaves skittered across the blacktop. 
Nestled among tree trunks and leafless shrubs,

they found their place of winter rest.
You, too, hurry down the driveway, brittle

as the dried husk of a seed pod.  But within you—
green pearls in a frail shell. 

Daniel Thomas’s second collection of poetry, Leaving the Base Camp at Dawn, was published in 2022. His first collection, Deep Pockets, won a 2018 Catholic Press Award. He has published poems in many journals, including Southern Poetry Review, Nimrod, Poetry Ireland Review, The Bitter Oleander, Atlanta Review, and others.  More info at danielthomaspoetry.com.

We All Do Fade as Leaves
 
 
The prophet said,
We all do fade
as leaves—
dissolve as snow.
 
And yet it’s said,
Eternity
is sown inside us all:
 
Fine golden thread
and needle,
in and out our ribs—
 
a cage to hold 
our beating hearts,
a life to call our own.
 
At once, a ceaseless thing—
again,
a halted stone:
 
The breath inside
our rising chests
is not our breath alone.
 
The prophet said,
We all do fade
as leaves—
dissolve as snow.
 
At once, a constellation—
again,
a dying glow.
 

Kimberly Phinney is an award-winning AP English instructor and professional photographer. She’s been published inRuminate, Ekstasis Magazine, Calla Press, The Write Launch, Heart of Flesh, The Dewdrop, and Harness, among others. She is also a poetry editor at The Agape Review. She has her M.Ed. in English and studied at Goddard’s MFA program in Creative Writing. After almost dying from severe illness in 2021, she’s earning her doctorate in counseling to help the marginalized and suffering. Please drop by to visit her at www.TheWayBack2Ourselves.com and on Instagram @thewayback2ourselves.

After the Fires, Rain


With this downpour 
the earth seems washed, 
after the long, late summer
of fire. 

Even if your couch and table
your walls and bed are damp ash
in heaps by your burnt-out car
not one sodden flap of cardboard
left of your photo albums,
even if your washer-dryer 
stands like the scorched scaffolding 
of normal, 
even if you don’t know 
what you will do today, tomorrow,

is it possible?
 
for one wet moment
after the loss of everything
the morning light 
sifts through clouds,
raindrops 
glisten
a benediction.

Meryl Natchez’ fourth book, CATWALK, received an Indie Best Book 2020 Award from Kirkus Reviews. Natchez’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, LA Review of Books, Hudson Review, Poetry Northwest, Literary Matters, Tupelo Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, and others. More at www.merylnatchez.com

We Are All God's Poems


recited live
in a dark and crowded cosmos
flowing freely at the bar
ice and glass clink
spirits stronger in the shadows. 
Whatever whirling chaos
in the background
fades to formless
when the divine face 
hovers over the mic.
Let there be you
and me alight
with attention,
three minutes 
not an eternity
but eternally
alive in each 
other's memory.
All beloved poems
eventually get read
at funerals, our lives
summed in a few
short lines. What
are we, but spoken 
Word, easily chilled
by the cold void?
And it was so
good, anyway,
the warm cloud
of breath lingering,
vapor and steam 
float briefly 
then drop 
let's return 
not to dust
but to the dark.
We listen
so much better there.

Katy Shedlock is a Methodist pastor and church planter in Spokane, WA.  Her work has been featured online by Pontoon Poetry, Earth & Altar, and Line Rider Press.