Author Archives: Sarah

Trust

Every day I endeavor to pray,
raising my heart and my voice,
beckoning God to come, lift me 
out of myself, turn my eyes 
toward the horizon of a cerulean sky.

What am I called to do with my life?
I wait for answers—glimmers of God 
speaking to me through the wisdom 
of my mentors, poetry, lucky coincidences
that often catch me by surprise.

And when I pay attention,
pay close attention, I am called
to abandon myself, to lie down
in sweet grass, to be held 
by this tender earth and believe
everything is possible.  

Anderson O’Brien lives in Winston-Salem, NC with her devoted husband and two terribly spoiled cats. She has published in Iodine Poetry Journal, The Kentucky Review, Blue Fifth Review, Red River Review and Heavy Bear.

New Moon
	Isaiah 1


Women, soothe yourself with incense and oils.
Do not make burnt offerings;
there is no pleasure in the blood of bulls and rams and goats.
Do not put your trust
in man who has but a breath in his nostrils.
You are tinder and your work a spark.
Your heart, a tongue of fire,
will lick up the straw.

Go into the rocks and bow down.
You do not need a land filled with silver 
and gold, horses and chariots . . . .
Rejoice in the new moon festivals; dance.
Delight in your gardens of sacred river valleys;
clasp hands with pagans and praise 
the cedars of Lebanon and the oaks of Bashan.

Tani Arness lives in beautiful Albuquerque, NM. She’s been inspired by hours spent stargazing in Northern NM. Tani’s work can be found in Tzimtzum: 5 contemporary poets lend us their hearts, and numerous literary magazines including North American Review, Malpais Review, and Crab Orchard Review. See also: http://www.tani-arness.com.

Fire

that crack makes
you stop a space between
seconds the body
alert not to bones
taken in arthritic flame
but fire in the box
the glow the ember rare
each time the light
getting in the arc
of a life rising in tongue
to cold air burning
down to ash a morning
silence stoked by need
to keep it lit the fire
aching while there’s still
oxygen you don’t move
listening closely to turn
green wanting seasons
all the colours vented 
inside migration the skin 
breaking open that loud
crack hot killing cold

in Huron squalls you feel
one crystal born in orbit
out of fire banging
the senses that hunger deep
in storm gusts you
reduced insignificant 
absorbed mostly by biggest
nothing only this spark
a vision of universe
merciless you love it
the hurt the predator
the free alive in frozen
lake pretending to be
serene blindness is real 
wind and snow making you 
see another way death
is there in water expanding
forms the sculpting flame
at fingertips in lungs
in squall and cabin
a fire has to roar hot
or cold the same flame

D.B. Goman aspires to be a professional arm wrestler. On occasion, a bon mot appears on a page, real or on-line.

Transformation


There’s tender alchemy to a warm night:
You search for meanings that you never touch
while fireworks battle your soft inner eyes.
Then stars transmit power and your old mind
blazes. You linger outside, question life,
quoting long lost books. Memory’s a knife—
quick, sharp. Open the frayed almanac. Find
out how far money went and just how dry
this land once was. It’s all subtle. Much
stays left unsaid, Your mind glows with new light.

Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for 50 years. He’s the author of five full-length collections, and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing. A Novel, A Book of Lost Songs will be published in March by Hstria Books. He’s fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco where he points out pretty things.y things.

Inner Journey

Please bring strange things*
on this venture into new territory.

My reflection in the window startles me.
I don’t like what I see.

I have never felt this way before.
I am uncertain what I need.

If it's true what they say,
please bring love, all you have.

Hold me in your heart
through the long dark days.

Point out a blue sky
on a crisp cold day.

Send me a tiny, brightly colored bird
despite the chill in the air.

In the depths of despair
gratitude always helps.

Leave your judgment behind.
Accept me, as I am.

Broken, but healing.
Not the best company.

Laughter lightens every load.
Every smile soothes.

Visit me in my grief.
Your friendship brings me comfort .



*From Initiation Song from the Finders Lodge, Ursula LeGuinn 

HM Ayres grew up in Northern New Jersey. She retired and moved to Cape Cod, MA in 2021 after a 43 year career in college student affairs administration. Since retiring Helen has been devoting her time to writing poetry, exploring the Cape conservation areas, bike paths, waterways and beaches and is engaged in several social justice and community volunteer efforts.

Circle of Protection

Cage bars of fluorescent lights glared down upon the Pittsburgh Greyhound station’s scattered denizens well after midnight.  Bare walls of dingy tiles framed with blackened grout encased foul odors of cheap booze, diesel fumes, and unbathed bodies under unwashed clothes. Rough characters with menacing glares, weather-beaten ramblers clutching one-way tickets, and runaway teens fleeing to anywhere slouched in sticky, crumb-covered orange plastic chairs, threaded with cracks and splinters, and bolted to a buckling linoleum floor with a patina of accumulated funk. It was the summer of 1988.

I’d arrived there through a combination of young love and stubborn pride: love of a college girlfriend living several states away, and pride over paying my own way to see her, in spite of my dad’s offer to help. I was an adult, I had insisted, and should be responsible for my own travel expenses – a principled stance I’d now come to regret. As airfare was out-of-budget for an undergraduate with an hourly wage, Greyhound appeared my only practical option. Plus, the romantic in me had a nostalgic image of a cross-country bus trip through small towns and rolling farmlands – a slice of classic Americana lifted straight from a Woody Guthrie song. 

The Pittsburgh station’s filth and palpable desperation shattered whatever remained of that illusion, leaving me feeling vulnerable, foolish and scared – until a new arrival appeared. Dressed in black, prim and pressed, she sat perfectly straight in her plastic chair as if in a pew. Sensible shoes, a veil upon her head, and a cross around her neck identified her as a nun. I moved to be closer to her and place myself within what I imagined was a circle of protection.

We didn’t exchange a word. I wasn’t Catholic, and had never spoken with a nun before. I didn’t know what to say, and we sat in silence. But it didn’t matter. Her habit spoke for her, hinting that light can always pierce the gloom, and goodness intrude where it seems conspicuous by its absence. And insisting that there are those not too proud or privileged or petrified to find themselves seated amongst such company. Unlike me. 

Scott Hurd has authored five books, including Forgiveness: A Catholic Approach. His books have been translated into Korean, Polish, and German, and won awards from the Association of Catholic Publishers and the Catholic Press Association. His essays, reviews, and poems have been published in numerous journals, newspapers, and magazines, and he has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is married to fellow writer Diane Kraynak.

Communion

Two women stand still as statues 
in the neighbor’s yard in winter. 
Looking up into the bare branches 
of a tall elm, they watch a large hawk 
perched high overhead and doing 
very little. Another and then 
another passerby is drawn in, 
faces lifted to the sky, strangers 
otherwise, standing shoulder 
to shoulder to shoulder. 

We are no longer in a time of churches.
The world, nevertheless, draws us
together—the cars backed up 
at rush hour, onlookers curious
for the flashing red and blue lights, 
the violence of the torn metal
and shattered glass. There is praying,
so many prayers—as many
as there are harried curses— 
I’d put my money on it.

Here in this cathedral, the one
that has no name but earth,
that has no entrance but here,
we are called to the altar 
of our own being, only to find 
that we are not alone. 
This is the hope of wonder 
and a reason for suffering— 
to arrive where we are 
in God’s sanctuary, 
knowing already 
how to worship, 
knowing already how 
to accept each gift, 
not the least of which
is each other.

Catherine Kennedy studied creative writing and poetry as an undergraduate at Denison University and is a former children’s publishing editor. She splits her residence between Columbus, Ohio, and St. Simons Island, Georgia, and not-so-creatively named her two cats Simon and Georgia. Catherine draws inspiration from place and nature, which reflect her midwestern and southeastern roots as well as her travels, as much as her life will allow. Learn more at http://www.catherinestewartkennedy.com.

Claritas


The rising sun this morning is wild,
striking everything it touches into fire.
  
It’s as if each pellucid piece 
of the wind-bell were scrubbed
 
for hours on end with Windex, 
to give each tinkling of glass 

against glass a savage purity:
each pellucid piece pendulous
 
in the early breeze and clear 
as the interior of diamonds:
 
this morning a tapestry
stitched with strands of glass

dazzling the lead crystal
chalices of our eyes.

Larry D. Thomas, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, has published twenty-three print collections of poetry and several poetry chapbooks, both in print and online. His poems have been published in Amethyst Review, St. Austin Review, Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, and elsewhere. Buttonhook Press recently brought out his online chapbook, Letting the Light Work: Poems of Mexico, and two online poetry pamphlets, Gems and Bestiary: Far West Texas.

Needle Biopsy


The room was neutral, hushed 
and dim, except for sconces 
that glowed like modest bouquets 
and a cone of light budding
from the end of a flexible stem. 
It seemed like a lot of people 
for a simple biopsy: a doctor 
to guide the needle, a nurse 
to give and receive, another
who came in just to hold 
my hand. There are all kinds 
of love in this world, here 
to be gathered, carried, 
pressed between pages 
as our grandmothers did, 
knowing they’d forget 
how something unexpected 
arose and shimmered 
on a particular day, 
wanting to remember.

Brett Warren (she/her) is the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Canary, Cape Cod Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hole in the Head Review, ONE ART, Rise Up Review, SWWIM, Westchester Review, and other literary publications. She is a 2024 Pushcart nominee and was a triple nominee for Best of the Net in 2023. She lives in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. http://www.brettwarrenpoetry.com

Who sweeps a room…
(George Herbert, The Elixir 1633)

Rub bees wax 
onto the faces and 
wings of angels.
(They would fly from
the reredos were they 
not fixed in time, in space)

Sweep the stone floor.

‘Who sweeps a room’? 
	I do:
‘Who swept?’
	She did.

My mother cleaned 
the village church, 
took me with her.

I liked the smells, 
the dark shapes, 
the eye of the brass eagle,
I liked the pulpit.

I climbed its wooden steps 
stretched up, peeped
at empty pews. 

Outside birds sang, 
trees shushed,
cows lowed.

Inside the metal mop-bucket 
scraped the stone floor,
broom shushed,  
hoover hummed. 

She swept the room as for His laws. 
She made that and the action fine. 
	
Light is mottled, 
scents remain. 

Who sweeps?
	I do
My mother is gone
	I am here

Who will sweep?
I do not know
I shall be gone. 

Susan Brice lives in Derbyshire. She has worked collaboratively with Viv Longley and Jane Keenan to publish two anthologies – Daughters of Thyme (available from dotipress.com) & Homethyme (available from Amazon). They are currently working on a third anthology, Makingthyme. Susan’s collection Brushstrokes of the Ultimate Artist (October 2024) is available from Amazon.

Recently she volunteered to go on the church cleaning rota. Her first session with the mop reminded her of George Herbert’s poem ‘The Elixir’. Cleaning the church gathered the past, present and future into one place.