Author Archives: Sarah

Ghazal:  Remembering Dublin, 1964


When you ordered coal, and it arrived
brought by horse and dray along the unswept streets,

when a funeral passed by and people stood to watch
and crossed themselves respectfully all down the street,

when a queue of people blocked the pavements
waiting for a church to open on the crowded streets

because it was the day of “Blessing of the Throats”
and God alone would know the germs that lurked in city streets.

These are the details I recall, the reasons
that I fell in love and treasured Dublin City’s streets.

Gill McEvoy won the 2015  Michael Marks Award for The First Telling (Happenstance Press). She is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her recent collection is Are You Listening? (Hedgehog Press 2020) and a “Selected” is forthcoming from Hedgehog Press in 2022.

Released

Does it feel like you’ve given 
me a gift or a burden,
in those final moments,
when you’re released
from yourself?

Maybe all of life finds
itself learning to survive amidst the 
oppressive joy of the infinite;
conceding to a power
that will not divide or diminish,
relentless in its pursuit for wholeness.

I think my problem,
from the beginning,
was not the fear of a barren universe
but one so generative it consumes me completely.

Megan Ulrich lives with her husband and three sons in a charming little town in East Tennessee. She has recently found inspiration in writing about grief and the healing that comes from sharing our brokenness with others. You can find out more about Megan at her website www.Megan-Ulrich.com.

Tooth fairy


St Bride’s day,
the row of candles stand blessed,
and the snowdrops,
more haphazard 
yet still as full of cradled promise,
wait under the moon
outside your window

as I, slipper footed
swap first tooth for a single coin
weighing much 
more than it should.
Enamel, milk-like 
soft as your still-baby face
with the gap which has opened up

between us.
Outside,
blackbird breaks the snow’s silence
and, deep within the hedgerow,
a nest is already being built.

Alice Watson is a new poet, a priest, and a mother to young children based in Northamptonshire, England. She is inspired by the natural world and her faith. She has had work published in Earth and Altar and Dreich. She chats about faith, ministry, and feminism (amongst other things) on Twitter @alicelydiajoy.

Puds


An earth angel,
the colour of a hobnob,
plush fur shines like gold.
His paws, dirty pink,

ears twitching to receive signals.
Stripes of a tiger,
paws outstretched or crossed.
Sagacious, divine.

Whiskers an antenna,
pink nose, not that he
uses it. He uses taste
to discern, licks gravy

off his meals, only
eating half the meat.
Until we gave him a new
bowl. Now he can dip his whole

head and whiskers, 
devouring the entire serving.
From another dimension,
he sleeps lightly, bass

rhythm in four-four time,
always smiling, often snoring.
When he’s awake,
He opens his front paws,

his tummy exposed,
he absorbs a chin tickle.
Curled into a ball,
an orb of light.

Paul Attwell lives in Richmond, London, with his partner Alis, and cat, Pudsey. Paul’s experience of ADHD help shapes his work. The pamphlet, Blade is available from WRP at https://www.wrongroosterpublishing.com/ The pamphlet, Early Doors will be available mid-November. Paul’s poems have been published on various ezines.

Two Ways of Looking at a Redbird  


Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic 
power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the 
sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight                                           
in and of themselves….

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

                          --- Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Nature


The dab of vivid red is a grace note 			    
in the snowy landscape, a painting, 			    
a photograph waiting to be made.			    
It is cardinalis cardinalis, its bold color		    
a surprising result of evolution, 			
one mutation after another, 			  	    
some that work out better than others		                
and voila! the bright northern cardinal.		    	
The delightful fit between the cardinal 
and the lens, retina and brain pleases us		    
so much because we evolved together.			                	
Our visual capabilities and aesthetic sense	
have been shaped by ten thousand
generations of mutation and natural selection.			    
Homo sapiens and cardinalis belong together.	   

The dab of vivid red is a grace note
in the snowy landscape, a painting,
a photograph waiting to be made.
The cardinal may be hidden
from the hawk but we can hear his trills
as he hops from branch to branch
in our overgrown thicket
on the shortest, darkest day when
the weary year lies down to die,
like a wise elephant who knows
she has had enough of this life.
Then in a flash he flares upward
through the overcast sky with the color
of the rising sun and the rainbow 
promise we still need to hear –
the dark will not last forever.

James Hannon is a psychotherapist in Massachusetts where he accompanies adults and adolescents recovering from disappointments and illusions.  His poems have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Soundings East, Zetetic and other journals, and in Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets.  His collection, The Year I Learned the Backstroke, was published by Aldrich Press in 2014.

Dust


I abandon my desk, twist
down the stairwell and out 
to the street into a nearby church, 

which hosts Tibetan monks, 
three saffron-robed men 
bent over the floor, scattering 

colored sand. I blink 
to adjust to dim space.
Why don’t they ask for more light?

Two weeks they’ve been here, 
intent on their artwork.
Static fills the chapel. 

Are they whispering? Praying?
Or is this the rasp of their sticks 
dispersing dust? 

Oceans form storms,
fanciful creatures, desires, all 
needing to be noticed or made pure.

Fringed flowers, vines, yellow tongues, 
secret doors. I often return,
but can’t bring myself 

to that last ritual, that final day.
I hear that local children arrive
and bring brooms. 

Everyone stands in a circle and chants 
until one monk breaks 
the mandala with his thumb. 

This signals a great collecting of dust 
into jars, carried to the river and cast -- 
to widen the blessing.

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. She founded Artwell’s We the Poets program (www.theartwell.org.) Publications include poems in Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, One Art Journal, Passager, Philadelphia Stories and three books: Camera Obscura, Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press, 2021) and Sparks and Disperses (Cornerstone Press, 2021).

A Hole in the Poem

I balance barefoot on a rim
around the poem, wary
of glass unbroken.
Smooth edges don't last.
Just look down at the ground
along the curb on any street,
bits of bottle shape themselves
into nothing left to say,
unlike the window that laughed
right in my face when I threw 
it a curve ball. How strong
we are to fragile things, 
and yet we cannot save them.

Beth Oast Williams’ poetry has appeared in West Texas Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER Journal, Poetry South, Fjords Review, and Rattle’s Poets Respond, among others.  Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.

The Silver Tether (Somerset)


There sits the silver twine, 
the tether, which so delicately
Holds and guides us to the nether. 

It is lost in a furrow, 
besmirched by those
Who have touched it but once before. 

It is illuminated
by that guiding light
of Soul’s transmutation at night.

Where bound is bound no more, 
Only tied and sent yore
to a place of such delight.

It is the argent
twine of memory;
and faultless dream-bound reverie.

It has been left here, discarded,
Below lamplight of Mayflies. 
Ornately winged flying souls—
our princely visitors of the skies.

Those bright comets
devised worthily,
as it watches only from its dirt bed, 
for an eternity.

Alicia Beatrice is an autistic poet, writer, folklorist and florist from Melbourne, Australia. She studies Literature and is interested in exploring our experiences of memory through nature, as well as how we (or neurodivergent minds in particular) process grief. She loves prehistory, hiking, old churches, cemeteries and travelling through England and Wales.

In Search of a Container for Jesus



This is how the talk 
of vessels starts,
the ark that might be Mary.
Or maybe it begins with the boat
that, despite carrying literally
the weight of the world, 
so easily moves on. 
How dreadful to be God's captain,
turning away the splinket
and the flomb just because
she could claim no spouse. 
It's not just attachment
but what's held inside, organic
coffee in a cup, fresh bread 
brought home
inside a brown paper bag. 
Somehow the theory holds up
if you understand emptiness 
is not a random
mental condition. 
You must believe God came
to me in a dream and invited me
for tea and biscuits, but it’s never
just that. It’s about my body
and what it could hold,
the trash receptacle,
the kitchen cabinet drawer.
Everything has a place to go
and every woman 
looks like an open jar,
or so it is written.

Beth Oast Williams’ poetry has appeared in West Texas Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER Journal, Poetry South, Fjords Review, and Rattle’s Poets Respond, among others.  Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.

Point of Order


We’ve pulled a thousand million G’s
escaping from the hearts of stars.
Each life’s filled with infinities.

We’ve slipped a hundred prison bars,
outrun a dozen packs of hounds,
survived ten deaths, and bear the scars.

We trespassed on forbidden grounds
the gods had posted clear enough.
Our intrepidity astounds.

We learned to deal and bet and bluff
and hide the wild card in our sleeve
from who but Nature, who plays rough.

The wonder is that we believe
belief belongs to us alone
when faith runs through all stems that leave:

a faith that granted life on loan
there’s light to spin and shade to weave.
The greenest grave is gravity’s.
Each life’s filled with infinities.
 

Dan Campion is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism and co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, a third edition of which was issued in 2019. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines. A selection of his poems titled The Mirror Test will be published by MadHat Press in 2022. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.