Author Archives: Sarah

a widow’s mite redux

“don’t take those coins”
mama says in her scolding voice
as the girl dips into the wishing fountain
toward a sun-polished silver orb
the girl jerks her hand back
hides it in her jeans pocket
peers side-eyed into the sparkling water

“you don’t want to steal the wishes other
folks whispered into that old pocket change
if only alice would get well if only
raymond knew i love him if only
a nickel for passing tomorrow’s
math test a silver dollar to see daddy
one last time a dime for snow this
christmas a quarter for the violence
all of the violence all of the violence 
to end and who wants to 
carry any of that home”

the girl squints at the magical water-spray
and then just over there where silver-white curls 
spray out in the march wind but the woman
seems not to notice as she searches through
a well-used handbag “she looks lonely”

the girl stuffs her hands deep in her pockets
digs out a blue lego the yellow eraser she 
found in her desk in mrs harvey’s 2nd grade
reading class grandpas old car key a piece
of red yarn and two brown pennies

she reaches out to the woman
“one for me and one for you and we can 
wish at the same time mama always says 
be careful what you wish for” and 
the two of them old and young pitch
a single cent 
each coin somersaulting
into the water slipping 
through the surface down 
down on top of 
nickels dimes quarters
woman and girl watch
till the ripples quiet enough to 
mirror their faces 
reflected 
side by side

Learning to Pray…Again

When I was a child
I prayed like a parrot,
a hatchling swallowing 
the food from its mother’s beak.

But I am not a parrot.
And if I were,
I wouldn’t spend my time
repeating everything I heard.
I would quietly preen
my emerald feathers and fly away 
to a rain forest in the mountains of Costa Rica
where I would hear only waterfalls 
and the raucous caw caw caw of my own kind.
And what sounds like random noises
would be my prayers uttered from a perch
high in the trees because I would be closer
to God’s ear there and wouldn’t have to squawk 
so loudly to be heard.

No, I am not a parrot.
And I am not a child.
And the prayers that spring to my lips
are not the words inscribed 
in the Baltimore Catechism,
or memorized in Sunday School
half a century ago.
But I trust God hears them.
So I kneel beside the bed once more 
and press my forehead 
to the cool sheet and beg,
Lord help us. 

Gloria Heffernan is the author of the poetry collection, What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List (New York Quarterly Books) and Exploring Poetry of Presence: A Companion Guide for Readers, Writers, and Workshop Facilitators (Back Porch Productions). Her work has appeared in over 100 journals including Chautauqua, Presence, Dappled Things, Braided Way, and Magma. She leads workshops on poetry as a spiritual practice.  

Make a Tree Good

Make a tree good 
and its fruit will be good…
Matthew 12:33

I

I am tempted to staple a fig
To the branch from which is has fallen
Unburied brown in piles of failed fruit
That cover the shame of shallow roots
Turn the flat bruised side toward the trunk
Wipe it clean and shake off the tan worm
Paint it purple with faded green spots
Spray it with a fruit essence perfume
Keep it moist and sterile, sanitized
Step further back and admire the work
Because I am afraid I don’t know how
To make a tree good.

II

Sure, why not make it good
And make it well
Sink the roots deep 
And write the plot thick
Keep it secure
Commercial free
And incorruptible
Of shade but not dark
On a hill but not steep
Cured and decanted
Crispy
With soft contours
And clean lines
But free flowing
Fresh, fertile
Intricate, durable
Inspired in season
With lots of pockets?

That might be a harvest
Worth waiting for.

Ryan Keating is a pastor, writer, winemaker and coffee roaster on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. His work can be found in publications such as Saint Katherine Review (forthcoming), Ekstasis Magazine, Agape Review, and Miras Dergi, where he is a regular contributor in English and Turkish.

Grace, defined


i.

I am spineless, stiff-armed,
coveting guilt. I know
my own hands. They’re soaked

with ichor, viscous 
from attempted mercy.
Saccharine stain nauseating
in wake of a foreign economy.

My slitted sinew unravels.
          Oh, nods mercy, It will be hemmed. 


ii.

Slander slices a carving
knife into blood orange
and seeps. You peeled
instead of mourning,
citric carcass rested gently
on the sill. Wedge to lips, now
             take, sip the nectar.


iii.

Cross-examined, then consoled:
             We’ll have nothing more to do with that. 

Caroline Liberatore is a former English student and future librarian. She has also been published in Ashbelt Journal, Ekstasis Magazine, Foreshadow Magazine, and Clayjar Review. You can read more of her work at carolinelib.wordpress.com.

Natural Light

The crayons crumble inside their plastic bag
and a stick floats around the house, trapped inside

like a bug. The Tupperware is muddy,
the cardboard boxes soggy, and rocks

slide down the chute of a toy cement truck.
I feel like a drying-out drunk today, inside

a bloated laundry basket
with a headache, and my joints are bone

on bone, my brain a misfire
of thought and emotion. Natural light

fills the room through slats of a window blind,
alternating bars of dark and light,

and the picture on the wall is of a butterfly
stretching and drying its crumpled wings.

Jessamyn Rains is a writer, musician, and mother of four. She loves old books and new poetry. She lives with her family in East Tennessee. 

Guardians

Birds sing, 
butterflies watch on in, 
they don't know, 
they can fly away. 

Clouds swim calmly by, 
as sparks of heaven fall 
from the sky – 
raining white feathers 
to remind you. 

Louise Mather is a writer from Northern England and founding editor of Acropolis Journal. A finalist in the Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize, her work is published in various print and online literary journals. Her debut pamphlet The Dredging of Rituals is out with Alien Buddha Press, 2021. She writes about ancestry, motherhood, endometriosis, fatigue and mental health. Twitter @lm2020uk www.louisematheruk.wixsite.com/louisemather

Why I Go To Church


I dream of an ageless woman with short brown hair
and moist lips, body thin as young pine.

She has many children. She is a member of a religion
but none I know, not the one that caged me as a youth.

A preacher once said, “We are giving you a gift so that you
will be strong when you’re in pain,”

but I believed all was political,
and wine nothing like blood, bread nothing

like flesh that never crumbled. I believed
wings were made of nothing but skin, bone, and cartilage

and that only windows, not mirrors, don’t lie, that a brick
was nothing without mortar troweled by human hands.

I believed this: weather balloon, ambulance, furnace, dividends,
digging through the Earth’s magma to China and not a grave,

always culling, applauding, gathering, guarding,
and not the woman in the dream who visited me

in the middle of the night, lying on a bed,
surrounded by all her children chanting,

and I walk to her side and think how I only truly know
unconditional love when people die or are born,

my silence wrapped in prayer, a bell yoke,
a clapper swinging in a hollow mouth,

my children nothing like skin, bone, and cartilage,
nothing like windows or welded iron

but of gold, and when its sun lights the trodden path,
it is not despite the written hope of Earth, but because of it. 

Kika Dorsey is a poet and fiction writer in Boulder, Colorado.  Her books include the chapbook Beside Herself  (Flutter Press, 2010) and three full-length collections: Rust, Coming Up for Air (Word Tech Editions, 2016, 2018), and Occupied: Vienna is a Broken Man and Daughter of Hunger (Pinyon Publishing, 2020), which won the Colorado Authors’ League Award for best poetry collection.

Investigating my Grief Group’s Reports 
of Communications from their Departed Ones

I strike my singing bowl, 
set it vibrating.
lean my ear inside with caution
so as not to interrupt.
I wait for the ringing to swell
and surround me,
for the sound to ring me, the way it does.
So dependable, how
the ringing goes on 
whether I attend or not
but softer	and softer.
I can never tell
if I hear the bowl
or the vibrations set up in my ear.
Is there still anything to hear? 
or is it no more
than memory of memory

Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a retired clinical psychologist, former German major and restaurant reviewer, and, two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. Her first full sentence was, “Look at the moon!” Her work has appeared in journals including Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, B O D Y, Comstock Poetry Review, Rappahannock Poetry Review, CHEST, and, Spillway. Kattywompus Press publishes Burrowing Song, Eggs Satori, and, Kafka’s Cat. Kelsay Books publishes The Book of Knots and their Untying. She co-curates Fourth Sundays, a poetry series in Claremont, California. She is currently working on a collection about her husband Walter, who died of lung cancer in 2018.

Welcome Mat

She said a poem’s title
is a welcome mat,

where all visitors wipe clean
the world’s grime and gunk

from their trackless soles
and soul sludge. Gently knock . . .

when the front door opens,
who is she—silvery hair,

veiny hands—who
beckons you to enter?

Peter Venable has written sacred and secular verse for many decades. He has been published in Ancient Paths, Prairie Messenger, Time of Singing, American Vendantist, The Anglican Theological Review, The Christian Century, The Merton Seasonal, The Penwood Review, Ekstasis, Poems for Ephesians, The Windhover and forthcoming in Spiritus. His Jesus Through A Poet’s Lens is an eBook available at petervenable.com.

Born-Again Criminals

'May my courage be greater than my fear 
and my strength as great as my faith'


Rio’s gangs of God blend faith and violence, Christ and cocaine. 
Drug lords, some regular churchgoers, with automatic rifles
have incorporated Christian symbols into their ultra-violent trade.

Rio’s narco-pentecostals admit their often brutal line of work,
including torture, murder and concealment of death,
clashes with the scripture they profess to follow.

A breathtaking evangelical tsunami has swept over society:
a new generation of evangelical gangsters on the frontline, 
rifle-toting extremists known as the Army of the Living God.

A warm breeze coursed through the narrow back alleys 
and for a moment the world seemed at peace –  
but shortly after midnight the crackle of gunfire woke residents:

another night of chaos and heartbreak in a city crying out to be saved.
Theirs is a cut-throat world so they seek something to believe in,
storm a nearby neighbourhood in hope of expanding their domain.

Evangelicals now occupy key positions in the world of crime, 
just as they once did in the media, politics, judiciary and culture;
a new generation of fundamentalist criminals take power.

Graffiti offers spiritual guidance and heavenly praise. 
Give thanks for blessings received from above; 
no one who believes should stay in darkness or unarmed.


     © Rupert M Loydell

Rupert Loydell is a writer, editor and abstract artist. His many books of poetry include Dear Mary (Shearsman, 2017) and The Return of the Man Who Has Everything (Shearsman 2015); and he has edited anthologies such as Yesterday’s Music Today (co-edited with Mike Ferguson, Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2014), and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: manifestos and unmanifestos (Salt, 2010)