Author Archives: Sarah

Last Day on Earth as a Human


Kneel in the spaces that you walked all over,
Today somehow sacred.
Steal a glimpse at faces
You somehow made silent strangers of.
Look at the sea,
Just look at the sea
And wonder how you never really did.

Forgive anyone who crossed you,
It takes courage.
Remember what you will not miss.
The prison of the late body,
The early release of souls.
The perfect sky.

Algo is from Ireland. In self imposed self isolation, Algo only wears black and enjoys studying the school of Austrian Economics, reading comic books and meditating. Algo once thought he was a nihilist but now believes in something higher.

Fingerprints of Ether


ice crystals reflect thoughts; prayers
as they unfold, as if contemplating--
like a still pond reflects the sky

& each snowflake is unique
like a fingerprint of ether

now that I know this
I have yet another reason
to give thanks to water

as if existence itself 
celebrates its affirmation
 
& I wonder if
when we dream
do the waters of our bodies
dream with us?

Fern Golden (they/them or she/hers) is a Dena’ina Athabaskan artist from Alaska. Their writing navigates the confluences of culture and language, ecology and belonging, chronic illness, and healing.  

Hunger 

I awake with a new hunger this morning, one that can’t be satiated with food.  It is an emptiness hollowed out in me like a quarry.  The way the vast stillness of space swallows any sound.  I get up and make coffee, the kitchen still quiet in the predawn darkness.  It is a large cup, and after drinking it, I feel like an inland sea.  I notice a ship sailing through the horizon of my ribs; it is filled with blue horses, the kind that you might find in a Chagall painting.  Surrounded by them on the beach, I look for apples to offer, but the horses lead me to a pasture where they graze.  Not sure what to do, I watch in silence until one of them nudges me.  I look up and see the sun rising like a mosaic and, for a moment, feel myself becoming stained glass.  

in the desert
the long search
for mana

Keith Polette has published poems in both print and online journals.  His book of haibun, pilgrimage, received the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award in 2021.

By-the-wind-sailor


By-the-wind-sailor on the beach I go down to
and stand beside. Happy at your name.
You have travelled far with the others and if it was spring
I would go so far as to bring Jack-by-the-hedge to you 
in particular - stuff we have along the waysides here - picked 
for you to dry in private inside your oilskin. It will bring you 
Good fortune when you sail on as you must. 

You stand side on to me and to the waves, 
dressed in dusk on the flat low-tide shore, 
Your eyes glistening as gift is given, doubting nothing,   
Pipe bowl glowing, eyes of you singing songwords -
Neap. Venus. And Star O’ the Sea.
‘I knew a bar of that name,’ my eyes sing back, wet as your own.
You see something in the sky then and turn away, back 
Towards the fateful waters and I stand seeing full beam car lights 
Weaving between B road hedges on the headland beyond the dunes.

Martin Towers recently moved from Northern Ireland to Wales where he works as a support worker. Moths are a big thing for him, his favourite being the Angle Shades.

       K

1

Stars blooming in the sky.
Burbling Yamuna.
Ri and Krishna are sailing away on a boat.
Ri asks murmuring, 'can the world ever separate you from me?

Krishna smiles.
The oar cuts burbling water 
but they're weaved together again.

3

Ri, if you'll not receive me, I am nothing.
Lightning, the tragic king of sparks, loses his crown in a flash as there's no one to receive him.
Ri, I'm nothing if you will not receive me.

4

Ri, neither in a sound sleep nor in an unfeeling death, I love my eyes to be closed during an amorous kiss on the flute summoning you.

5

Sakhi, when I shed tears, Krishna never casts words of solace over me. Rather, sitting beside me, he also sheds tears
as he knows only water can hold water. Raindrops on the land just wither away

5

Sakhi, Krishna is so mischievous.
When I run on tiptoe for fear of getting drenched in rain, he beckons me waving his leaves as a tree and offers me shelter, but gradually makes me wet with the raindrops dripping from his leaves, when rain stops outside.

Partha Chatterjee is a practising poet from India. His first anthology, Flashes of the Lightning, was published from AlienBuddha Press , California, USA. in 2018.

This Morning’s Minion Glimpse

Oh God, it’s growing, some kind of grey mass
of muscle flexing within, still living in
the sinewed wetlands of the mind; live bands
of light, spindly bright, threading over time.
The yearning agony of energy
is shoving through, pushing in my chest,
pushing me, swirling through an outlet,
a chasm, opening to more and more light.
I push myself part way through, an astral birth,
an oozing forth by inches, slow, yet sure.
It isn’t us that’s in control, we know
that much is true. It’s us, but then it isn’t.
It’s no one, then it’s me and you. Engage,
supply, and circulate. We, this, is new.

Tom Bauer always wanted to write poetry. In the late 1980s, he published his own chapbooks, which he sold door-to-door. Currently, he has work forthcoming in Blue Unicorn.

Mating Goldfinches


They drift and float over
power lines then freefall
across the stream bed where
lemon gorse and whitethorn beam.
Their bellies flash in
each churn of wing
a duet in the blue sky.
Each lift, fall and spin
synchronised -
Love's golden measure.

Mari Maxwell’s poetry appears in Washing Windows Too, Arlen House 2022; and, the Poetry Jukebox STARS Curation, part of the 2021 Belfast International Arts Festival. She received a 2020/21 Professional Development Award with the Arts Council of Ireland and a 2019/2020 Words Ireland/Mayo County Council Mentorship. TWITTER: @MariMaxwell17

I Was Eve


that naked rib, weaving through tiny words
on the tissue pages of my bible.
I lifted her out of the ink and drank her.

The curves of her body glowed, clothed 
only in the warmth of a young sun  
that seeped through the leaves of Eden.  

Eden, that scrim of perfection,
paper thin and easily torn.  

She had seen the serpent, long and supple, 
wound around branches and coiled 
at the base of trees.  It writhed a path

in the soil and grass.  Unrestricted.
How would it feel, its one cord-like
muscle massaging its way all over

her body.  She wanted to dance with it 
twined around her torso.  Oh, the tingle
of its tongue on her skin.

Temptation to know and know,
throw open the garden gates.

Deborrah Corr is a long-time resident of Seattle where she taught kindergarten for twenty-eight years.  Currently, she is digging as deeply as she can into the joy and craft of poetry.  She also quilts, reads, and enjoys the outdoors where she can be seen watching and sometimes talking with birds.  Her work has appeared in Crosswinds Poetry Journal, The Halcyon, and Raven Chronicles and will be included in upcoming issues of The Main Street Rag and Sequoia Speaks.

Transfiguration


Sitting between the law and prophets, 
The word that holds them together, 
Bound not in letters transcribed 
But in glorified flesh and bone. 
It is good to be here but not to stay.
Mountain rest must be spoken in the valley. 
Transfiguration comes by going down; 
Our perishable seed planted for the imperishable. 

Dew of Tabor collects into a stream, 
Watering the fields prepared for glory; 
Holy potential we glimpse in Spring 
As light illuminates vivid hues 
Born in tulips and daffodils, 
Woken by the piping of playful crocus: 
Delicate as children, in carefree laughter. 

Even the canopy of cherry blossoms bear 
Splendor as which graced the visage of Moses, 
Who spoke plainly with God as to a friend. 
He veiled his face to hide what was fading in the Old, 
Longing to behold the unfolding of the New 
Made manifest in blooming buds 
And green blades of young grass, 
Caught up in the song and dance of Creation. 

Never to what has been but what will be. 
Transfiguration comes by growing up. 
It is good to be here, to rest awhile; 
Bound not in letters transcribed 
But in the word made flesh around, 
Over our heads and under our feet, 
Nourished by the dew of Tabor.

James Robert Kibby is an accomplished songwriter and aspiring poet whose love for creative writing began when he authored and illustrated his first comic book at age 11. James has poems published through Calla Press and The Voices Project and is currently working on his first poetry collection.

The Fisherman

At the shore
a silver boat gleams
beneath the moon

and a white-robed Fisherman
cuts Fish

from His skin.

A. Michele Leslie has written more than twenty plays, including one about a bus-ride that won 1st prize in the one-act play contest sponsored by Kalliope Magazine (Jacksonville, FL). This play was nominated for a Pushcart in 1993. Another play she wrote, Location Unknown, which treated schizophrenia during Victorian times, placed as Alternate in the Jerome in 1991. She has had about 7 plays produced in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and has also published poetry, short stories, and essays and edited an international literary magazine (as a hobby) for about fifteen years.

She lives with her husband and two wonderful cats in Minnesota. She deeply enjoys meditation and in her spare time dabbles in reflexology, essential oils, and a variety of mystical issues. She is presently putting the finishing touches on two new full-length plays.