VertigoMasaccio’s Madonna and Child with Angels
Too little have I seen of subduing
particulars
by shadow. Too little have I seen
how highlight
beckons to highlight, how color is
free to build
kinship, how light’s consistent flow
is compromised.
Too much have I loved of bodies
catching light,
how the space they live in
is our own –
too little seen bright flesh
enflame
the gold-work of the background.
Colin Jeffrey Morris lives and writes in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, Delmarva Review, Lily Poetry Review and descant.
Psalm for Simone Weil
From the highest heaven God throws a rope. Man either grasps it or not.
- From the New York Notebooks of Simone Weil
Sir, what is humanity
that you pay such attention to us,
or men and women
that you let us love one another?
Words slide from you, dropping down
to where you stride
over glaciers and rocks
and down the icy walks of the sea,
trailing behind you a rope, my Friend,
that we can grasp
or at our choosing,
cast away.
Michael Cooney has published poetry in Badlands, Second Chance Lit, Bitter Oleander, Big Windows Review and other journals. His short stories have appeared recently in Sundial Magazine, Bandit Fiction and Cerasus and his novella The Witch Girl & The Wobbly was published by Running Wild Press in 2021. A second novella, A Good Catholic Girl, is scheduled for publication in 2023. Cooney has taught in public high schools and community colleges and currently facilitates a writing workshop with the New York Writers Coalition.
Cave of Brahman
Enter the clearing
of yourself. See beyond
seeing how far you reach.
Relax into your divine
proportion. Held in the
absolute arms
of eternal amplification
as you have longed to be held
as you have always been held.
Here where you pulse
your ocean of light
first empty the cup
until there is no cup
then rise high above
your own horizon.
Sage Cohen is the author of five books including the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World and the poetry guides Writing the Life Poetic and Write a Poem a Day. She offers information and inspiration for poets and writers at sagecohen.com.
Slow Work
Quaking Aspen, Populus Tremuloides.
One, yet many, sprung from a single seed
like the 80,000 year-old forest sprawling
across a Utah plateau, the Trembling Giant.
Briefly emptied of fixed notions—who I am,
you are, as cracked eggs spill yokes and
stargazer lilies pollen, change (a word that
can mean trouble) comes to us as storms
do to fields. If forgiveness is a flower,
then mercy is the meadow it grows in.
With tears to see through and spit to name
our pain (we are, after all, mostly water) and
harrowed as thatched soil. Suppled, we may
welcome others, even our various selves.
Rhett Watts is a member of the 4×4 poet and artist collaborative in Worcester and facilitates writing workshops in CT and MA. Her books are: Willing Suspension (Antrim House Books) and The Braiding (Kelsay Books). She won the Rane Arroyo chapbook contest for No Innocent Eye. Her work appears in Best Spiritual Writing 2000 and she has poems in journals including Canary, SWIMM, Spoon River Poetry, The Worcester Review, Sojourners Magazine, The Windhover, and many others.
The Goddess of Missed Chances
of missed lives. The goddess
of the missing lives. The
footprinted path of where
we are and haven't been.
Ground worn down to imprinted
mud, pressed fronds
of new growth, snapped
branches of the old. The missing
leaves that will never bloom
the other twigs that bloom
instead. Its desolate goodness
its generous cruelty. Breaking
off from it paths and not—
no-trails through the glossy salal
that end and emerge
from a cedar’s foot, the footpaths
where instead of drenched feet
jumping streams, are steadfast logs.
The words you say and
will not say--yes and never,
no and I will, maybe this
is who I forever am, am I ever--
bridge the gap. Build a new story
across that space. The heavy
tread of your boots, your feet
skipping bare across the boards.
The stream that barely trickles
roars underfoot. Between boards
and water, yes and never
air sparkles with spray, fattens with light.
Neile Graham is Canadian by birth and inclination but currently lives in Seattle, Washington. Her publications include: four full-length collections, most recently The Walk She Takes (2019) and a spoken word CD, She Says: Poems Selected & New. She has also published poems in various physical and online magazines, including Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Mad Swirl, and Polar Starlight.
Hiatus
I need interruption. Hammers hamming
Nails jamming
Precision working against the coming gale force winds
The low country, so many contradictions.
Magnificent sunsets
Clouds that pearl blue and white, iridescent
Streaks circling the Almighty
Gardenia blossoms and palmetto, herons
Gliding hawks, rainbows
Prehistoric marvels in their slow moving terror.
Summertime now, but fall is coming; crews hurrying
Before the oceans
Heat up; twisting sand dunes
Into wind tunnels
The sensors working overtime
The rising tides a velvet hammer
Deconstructing the sameness.
Remembering, everything will be cast down
Suddenly, I need this hiatus
To save my flowerpots, before the trees fly.
Keith Melton holds a Master’s Degree in City Planning from Georgia Tech and a BA in Economics and International Studies from the American University. He previously has served as Director of Planning and Program Development for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Region IV Office; as well as VP of Development for both the Atlanta Economic Development Corp. and the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce (Metro Atlanta). His poems have been published in numerous periodicals.
Thomas Ponder
I call the old Doug Fir out back
Thomas Ponder.
Ever since the Valentine’s Day
ice storm took two branches,
others hang there like nursemaid elbows.
His spine is as straight
as it can be, although his crown
leans toward my bedroom,
tilting his cap to my dreams.
When I hear him laugh some nights,
is he tossing old moons
over his shoulders
like spilled salt?
One Christmas,
a charm of hummingbirds
shimmered his length,
little carolers,
candles at the back door.
He’s also a flirt – that Thomas Ponder.
His northern branches stroke
the neighbor’s Blue Spruce,
southern branches
dingle dangle the red maple.
Eastern branches wink at the rising sun;
western branches blow kisses to the night hawk.
North winds lift his remnant of green
like syncopated praise,
like call and response.
You’re a shimmery old holy roller,
that’s what you are, Thomas Ponder.
Colette Tennant is an English professor. She has two books of poems: Commotion of Wings and Eden and After. Her poems have won various awards and have been included in many journals, including Poetry Ireland Review, The Fish Anthology, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and others. In 2019, upon the request of a national press, she wrote Religion in The Handmaid’s Tale: a Brief Guide to coincide with Atwood’s publication of The Testaments. She has also taught art in Great Britain, Germany, and Italy.
If It Is Possible
Searching for sunrise this morning, east
through freckled patches of window screen.
A quiet yellow glow appears, mellow, serene,
not heart-gripping dramatic pinks we’re sometimes shown,
so arresting it feels that one could die happy now,
complete, having been immersed in such a thing.
I switch to west, our back window view over the river,
glistening like diamonds, and there comes a faint pink-purple
blush, underlining the full Wolf Moon, vivid in this waking sky.
Small but powerful, our moon at its apogee, glowing at me
like a round white grape lit bright from within.
If it is possible to pilot one’s way into a day,
best way is with full moon above a river, color in the sky,
and a root centered in openness; allowance for come-what-may,
nimbly accepting, be it rough, easy, or arresting,
received softly as massaging, hugging, holding your heart
with the astonishment of wonder.
Marjorie Moorhead writes from the New England river valley border of NH/VT. She is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press 2019), Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020), and has poems in many anthologies and literary journals. Marjorie’s first full collection, Every Small Breeze, is forthcoming, as well as a third chapbook, In My Locket.
The Little Hours
Mid-morn, noon, mid-afternoon,
paired doves dip and dab for seed
where lawn meets hardtop and
the courting male coos.
Mottled feathers, blue-ringed eyes,
mourning doves hunt and peck
during the hours known as
terce, sext, none.
Minus the drama of dawn or dusk,
times for stacked paperwork,
cups of tea. Value measured by
ticked to-do lists. Dollar time.
The twice-twelved day sliced fine,
needs thicker layers, a kinder pace.
Praise for eyes that stare off,
soften focus. For deep sighs
body releases from our first home
in the world. Thanks also
for the doves who wing whistle
and like the hours flee.
Rhett Watts is a member of the 4×4 poet and artist collaborative in Worcester and facilitates writing workshops in CT and MA. Her books are: Willing Suspension (Antrim House Books) and The Braiding (Kelsay Books). She won the Rane Arroyo chapbook contest for No Innocent Eye. Her work appears in Best Spiritual Writing 2000 and she has poems in journals including Canary, SWIMM, Spoon River Poetry, The Worcester Review, Sojourners Magazine, The Windhover, and many others.
Paradiso: The Empowered Vision
Brightness beyond all brilliance, rising
At speeds impossible to guess …
Within this hypervelocity,
Appears, as though unmasked, a blazing —
White .. like comets alighting in nests
Of meadow-flower infinity
Whose colour and scent, whose twirling power
Becomes speed’s stillness, the source of all
Light rays and every radiance
Reflected back from every flower.
In this, like plunged in a waterfall
Of pounding baptism, I danced
Until my blinded eyes were stretched
Out to a vision which encompassed
The whole of space-time and beyond,
And there I witnessed .. but words, snatched
From that light-torrent, are mere rumpus,
Cracked babble, stones placed onto a pond
And meant to float, but sinking .. I saw,
Light’s music and speed’s stillness flower
In marriages of mathematical law,
My vision becoming somehow - empowered ..
I saw - though can’t tell what I saw ...
Leo Aylen: Born KwaZulu, South Africa, 9 poetry collections (latest The Day The Grass Came “a triumph” Melvyn Bragg; “Stupendous” Simon Callow); 5 international prizes; 100 poems in anthologies, 50 in U.S.A. poetry journals, 100 broadcast. Recently published in Century; 100 Major Modern Poets; Agenda; Able Muse; Amethyst Review; Grand Little Things; Westward Quarterly; The Road Not Taken; Better Than Starbucks; Orchards Poetry Journal; Scarlet Leaf Review; Blue Unicorn; Sparks of Calliope; The Hypertexts.
Amethyst Review 