Author Archives: Sarah

Air


They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, she said, 
and we don’t know where they have put him (John 19:2).



Her words cracked and we ran.  Peter, 
heavier, older, fell behind until my 
poundings alone surround me – the air, 
the air felt weighted, seemed to split 

split open like the Red Sea
I ran on hard sand, walls of water,
a corridor, air seemed to fall
like logs burning, but no fire, 
felt like the light of too many stars, but
still night, breath of incense bitter 
as myrrh, but honeyed, vibrating 
wings, uncanny, a roar, a door, 
awhirl, a dance, a night, a day, 
a pool – the air the air
I ran, ran – 

a rustle somewhere, my name whispered –  
a footfall.   I kept turning in the dim light – 
At last: the tomb.  I looked:  all air –
I saw, backed off:  fear.

Peter.  Here now, charging the invisible, 
panting, lunges into the tomb, like hunger.  

He stops, shocked, head cocked, listening, 
eyes wide, streaming.  He doesn’t breathe, 
slowly turns to me.
  
We know: lisp of tender leaves,  
Life hidden in the limpid dawn

Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun.  She was born in the United States and lived there until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to England, where she now resides.  Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, The Windhover, The Ekphrastic Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Catholic Poetry Room, and other venues, both online and print.  

Magdalene’s Night


	First Watch


I had no fear of the dead,
the dead and darkness.  I feared the wolves, 
but howling stopped hours before.

Before that, hours of howling feeling. 
Feeling died, then, when he died, 
except the quick-sand,

quick-sand feeling of grief and
grief opened wider with panic-kicking.
I tried the death of sleep.

Sleep slid off, snake-like, under a stone.
A stone.   He is behind one.  Before sun rose I rose. 
Go, I said. Go to his tomb.

His tomb where they laid his body. 
His body?  More stone than flesh, but in life
rippling – everything. 

Anything that was left of him
I needed.  I had no fear
of the dead, and the wolves.


	Second Watch


The wolves had left their silence behind.
Behind their silence, heavy and hunted,
I dressed and hunted thought

and thought hunted mind-pictures.
Pictures keep pushing, rushing – a swollen river  
of agony.  I could not look away.

Away I went three years ago to follow.
Follow as they followed him, I said.  
My rule: always to be there.

Be there, I said to myself – I, one hunted.
I hunted for my shawl.
Be there now.   Hurry.

Hurry through the dark. It mattered.
It mattered to him I was alive -
He would look round

look round for me, catch my eye, 
a small nod.  I mattered then.  And now?
Wolves were silent.


	Third Watch

Silent one day – a moment.
Moment without crowds – he had asked me
why I followed.  Slowly,

slowly the answer came: 
so much to say. Say just the one thing,
I thought.

I thought it came to this: 
I said, You are, you are like 
the Temple, Lord.
 
The Lord looked so long
and long at me with such wonder,  I 
grew frightened.

Fright and menace 
menaced me in the tearing of evil 
wind and angry clouds.

Clouds.  Breaking light.  I ran,  
I out-stripped the night, seeking the Temple 
of his body.

Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun.  She was born in the United States and lived there until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to England, where she now resides.  Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, The Windhover, The Ekphrastic Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Catholic Poetry Room, and other venues, both online and print. 

Shared Divinity



The crucifixion is for everyone
We hear its echo night and day:
That moment God 
Became man became nothing

It's not like the Resurrection:
Our hope is in the name of the Lord 

Taken on faith
Faith alone

And it's not like the Incarnation: 
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done 

That despite a bit here, a break-through there
Lies dormant in our hearts

No, the Crucifixion is different
It’s with us always
In public and in private places
We don’t escape its cry

Some warranted blasts—
My God! My God! Why

Others oh-so-particular—
Have You forsaken me?
 

Maryanne Hannan is the author of Rocking Like It’s All Intermezzo: A 21st Century Psalm Responsorial (Resource Publications, 2019). A resident of upstate New York, she has published poetry in Christian Century, Windhover, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry and elsewhere. 

Good Friday on the Road to Goma*
 
She spread her straw mat under the dead Soviet street  
lamps, patted down her long, black dress. The volcano 
loomed in the clouds.  Between bursts of rain, the children 
emerged, clutched around her, numbered ribs gnawing out 
at stacks of fruit too green to eat.  A girl in a purple
polka-dot dress scratched at the flies on the top of her 
head, then a whisper ran through them—they looked down
the road.  He shimmered, slow.  Heavy trucks rumbled 
on, the woman knelt down, deeply calloused hands on
her knees.  He passed by—blood and water beaded off
his chin, and the old woman, the children, the road 
heaved and shifted down his lacerated back. 
 
*Goma is a market town in the war-torn eastern region of 
the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Jonathan Cooper‘s poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in various publications including Thin Air, New Plains Review, Poetry Pacific, Tower Journal, and The Charleston Anvil.  He lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Grape Hyacinths
 

Chosen for contrast,
set against the scalloped
tongues of jonquils
and the hay-green grass,
they most resemble
ceramic thimbles in
pitted glaze or jeweled
parasols pressed up-
wards attempting to
fend off a mid-April
sun. But more than
that, I think, is how
they bring heaven
so much closer to us,
bearing the simple
miracle of a cloudless
sky within their tiny
urns and pouring
all of it across the
earth in a luminous
spill of purple-blue
quiver.
 

A resident of Connecticut, John Muro’s first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published in 2020 by Antrim House. His second volume, Pastoral Suite, will be published this spring by Antrim House, as well, and both are or will soon be available on Amazon. A two-time, 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee, John’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Barnstorm, Euphony, Grey Sparrow, Penumbra, River Heron and Sky Island.

Watch
 
Maundy Thursday, ten o’clock
the lamps along the church path
supplemented by a full moon
 
shining through trellised branches
of an unleafed sycamore.
Red warning lights on cranes,
 
massed about sites across the river
glowing in velvet darkness
add to an air of quiet waiting.
 
Back in the space where altars
have been stripped, a few
will keep the seasonal vigil
 
for a further silent hour.
Out here it is as if there were
a holding-in of breath
 
–  everything feels gathered
somehow attentive, for
one lingering moment, then
 
a late bus, lighted, empty,
busies around the corner
and the city’s pulse resumes.

Tony Lucas is retired from parish ministry but continues work of editing and spiritual direction.  His poetry has appeared widely, on both sides of the Atlantic, and past collections Rufus At Ocean Beach (Stride/Carmelyon) and Unsettled Accounts (Stairwell Books) remain available.

Seedbed


We don’t dig up the planted seed
to check if it is germinate;
we forswear checking on its gain,
predicting time it might emerge.
We can only cultivate 
the right conditions, water, light,
that it might thrive, though secretly.
It is that private, silent growth,
that calls to mind annunciate,
or, when time right, epiphany.
For that’s the revelation scene
as garland roots by diamond drops
and minerals have proved their salt,
the sunbed warmth has cossetted
and humous life is resurrect.
Each seed, an Easter garden wait.

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including Amethyst Review. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/ He is, like so many, a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net this year.   

Sacred Song

I am totally caught up in the music on my radio:
songs sung by a choir, mesmeric and ghostly, 
hallowed even, this close to midnight.

The announcer says it is Holy Week, 
but my daughter complains it is 'not very nice'. 
It is time to surrender, turn off and go to sleep.

Rupert M 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)

Bardo


Spare me the music

the thrill of waiting is enough

in some corner     dreaming

in a shadow     pulsing

the softness in a mare’s eye

moth skin and wing

bleating for love

the tick and tick arising

in each soul suspended

I walk with closed eyes

into the roar of dawn

Scott Elder lives in France. His work has mostly appeared in the UK and Ireland. A debut pamphlet, Breaking Away, was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2015, his first collection, Part of the Dark, by Dempsey&Windle 2017 (UK), and the second, My Hotel, is forthcoming in Salmon Poetry 2023 (Ireland).   Website: https://www.scottelder.co.uk/

The Sacred Self

I
There goes sleep, in its nightshirt
and slippers down the path
that never deviates from its one true
purpose of remembering. It doesn’t matter
that each call goes unanswered, that
the canyon opens to allow
anyone inside but
nobody may leave once the birds there
have befriended them. When a song
comes echoing along
the gravel trail, it is to announce the obvious
with men hearing only
what they want to hear. Meanwhile,
the eye in Heaven winks
and rock spirits
raise their voices to say this is here, this
is now. Never mind
what stays hidden behind the screens
and thorns; this is where
history comes awake
and speaks only in the present tense.
 
II
Barefoot down the slopes and wearing
heavy boots back up, the night
burrows into the mountain and twists
in its sleep while the earth with one eye open
dreams itself awake. Tonight
will stretch from end to end along
the stony path from sunset’s crumbling edge
to the saguaros standing guard against
the city; chilled to the core
and determined
to hold the high ground in the name
of nature. Solstice is a cold night
when owls awaken and follow
darkness’ scent while moonlight
snags on a thorn, and no image
survives of the claw
that cut the silence open.
 
III
The moon turns out its silver lining
at the darkest hour
the night can draw
from its catalog of mysteries and threats.
And while the mountain moves
ever closer to dawn
with its eyes shielded
the sky holds its breath. Along the ridgeline
first light signals time
returning to the slopes and the arroyos
where memories find
a quiet place to hide from what
they have done. They’re saddled up
and riding now, along
the wash to where they disappear
into the still pond that contains
all pain. Look hard along
the winding path: they’ve gone too far
to ever come back and be
recognized. To ever find
the scene of their creation.
 
IV
The water’s on its back but smiling
at the sky today, host
to winter’s folded wings. The walkway
leading here peels itself away
from the left sole and the right at the pace
of injuries healing. It’s that time
in the morning when
the mountain has surrendered
to the light, and the light has unsheathed itself
with no regrets. Up there
at the peak the view goes all the way
back to better times and worse
ones. They run together
in the clouds now: a splash of sunshine
and a red-tail rising
where memories fly against gravity.
 
V
The bird came down to drink
an ambulance’s siren from the air; it spread
its wings to shield
the scene from sunlight.
As often as it flew with nothing to invite
it to descend, one moment split
apart and everything that time revealed
lay spread out on
the morning’s road. It circled
patiently. Its plumage shone
as the broad wings tipped to left
and right and
held fate in the balance.
The clocks showed hours and minutes
but no signs
of what occurred. No memory
had come to roost
once the panic was dispersed.
Everybody left the scene
for traffic to resume, but in
the spaces in between the slow cars
and the fast, the bird came down with its
ungainly posture and red
face to clean
away the final traces. Then
it rose in a state of grace
toward the waiting sky.

David Chorlton is a European and longtime resident of Phoenix. He loves the desert and avoids complaining about the heat! He paints from time to time and writes consistently, with a short book, The Inner Mountain, about the nearby desert mountain park in poetry and paintings (Cholla Needles Press), with another recent publication, Unmapped Worlds from FutureCycle Press.