Author Archives: Sarah

Ribbons
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, asked as a child to select a ribbon: “I choose all.”

You know what it’s like
to want it all: velvet, taffeta, lace,

butter-yellow, hazel, sky,
the basketful. You know how

to expect a heaven where a little flower
gets every meadow of love. You know

what it costs to take them up, one
by one, the ribbons you desire,

black-striped and gossamer, to take
the darkness and the light of him,

to wear them with equal joy,
marks of love

and love’s repayment.
You know the way to hold out

prayerful hands, gathering the cries
of your daisy-chain children,

clutching them in bright handfuls,
choosing.

.

Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press, forthcoming Fall 2020), winner of the 2020 Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and the nonfiction book I Live, No Longer I (Wipf & Stock, 2017). Her poems are featured in America, The Christian Century, Dappled Things, Anglican Theological Review, First Things, The Cresset, Whale Road Review, and other publications. Find her online at www.laurareecehogan.com.

Sitting Soundly

I cradle the bell
…………..Until the brass goes quite still
And set it down, soft,
Beside my aching right knee
On my worn black mat, grateful.

I release the sound
…………..Pretending not to hear it,
But the air shimmers
With the ringing of bone
Beneath a wink of the moon.

.

Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection, Starting from Tu Fu  was just published by Encircle Publications. A new collection is due out in December from Cherry Grove.He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he makes his meager living pointing out pretty things. He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and two full length collections so far. A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/

WRITING ON SACRED TOPICS

When we go to bed, as we are drifting off to sleep, there is a time between our waking life and sleep. That period of dusk or twilight is similar to the way I feel when I am writing a poem. It’s a few minutes (or a few hours) when interruptions are not very welcome because they pull me out of that trance, that half-dream, half-waking experience. And if I’m not able to recapture the sweep of the poem soon, it will be lost.

If this sounds pretentious, I think it’s important for me to add that –after my wife, my son and my spiritual life—writing poetry is most important to me, as I would guess it is to many poets.

But this twilight period is identical with the mind-set of those who meditate. And if the meditator is at all religious, as I am, then the sacred will visit it, either at intervals or steadily.

It may have something to do with being in a state of mind that is between the conscious level and the unconscious, that rich and roiling sea within us. For me the portion of my best religious poems make up one-third of my writing. I wish it had been more, but one critic wished it had been less. I work with what I’m dealt.

Now to that other aspect of writing poems that evoke the sacred. What do we do with them? Hold readings I suppose, but the Coronavirus has squelched that option for the foreseeable future. Publish them? Many editors won’t have anything to do with sacred themes, though a few do, and among them is The Amethyst Review, for which I am grateful.

In my retirement however, I write a poem nearly every day, so I send some to the other few journals that publish poems of the sacred. But these editors are receiving so many submissions to read and sift through that response times grow longer every two or three years. It causes me to think of Yang Xiong, the Chinese poet who sent one of his poems down the Yangtze River. Maybe I’ll send some of mine out to sea in a bottle.

John J. Brugaletta has seven volumes of his poetry in print; the latest of these is Selected Poems (Future Cycle Press, 2019). He is a professor emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, and an ELCA Lutheran.

Breathe

I handle this pebble
in my pocket
like a rosary.
My fingers know
the cool smooth surface—
its tiny ridge
at the top.
I do not pray
to Jesus or Ja
or Christ or Allah
to Buddha or any other

I simply breathe.

.

Gabriella M. Belfiglio’s work has appeared most recently in Red Rock Review. Belfiglio won the W.B. Yeats Poetry Contest. She has also had writing published in VIA, The Potomac Review, The Monterey Poetry Review, The Centrifugal Eye, Radius, The Avocet, and Lambda Literary Review, among other places. She works as an artist, mother, and teacher in New York City.

I stand vigil

I stand vigil
Over your grief

Palm on my heart
I feel the pulse of your pain

Course through me
The open window, the birds, the rain
All stand sentry

Let me hold the grief
As though it were a tiny animal

In my palms
I will let it linger and moan

.

Deborah Leipziger is an author, poet, and professor. Her chapbook, Flower Map, was published by Finishing Line Press (2013).  In 2014, her poem “Written on Skin” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on human rights and sustainability. She advises companies around the world on social and environmental issues. Her poems have been published in Salamander, Voices Israel, POESY, Wilderness House Review, Ibbetson Street, and the Muddy River Poetry Review. She is the founding co-editor of Soul-Lit.  http://flowermap.net/

Keyhole Portrait

Chrome locks reflect
entering, belonging.

They were waiting to
anxiously perform

the nocturnal ritual
before my bare abode.

The quiet glow of
their skin arouses

suspicions, adding
a feeble luster to

a crushing routine,
of unquestioned worth.

I can feel the jangle of it;
The idea of it. Its lovely

cheat and withdrawal;
evasion, or capitulation

to longing and rest. Time
for another constellation!

I am home. The world
gathers meaning as

the quell of evening
intervenes; crickets

sing ruffling silence.

Michael Seeger lives with his lovely wife, Catherine, and still-precocious 16 year-old daughter, Jenetta, in a house with a magnificent Maine Coon (Jill) and two high-spirited Chihuahuas (Coco and Blue). He is an educator (like his wife) residing in the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs, California. Some of his poems have appeared recently either published or included in print anthologies like the Lummox Press, Better Than Starbucks, and The Literary Hatchet.

Blank Look #599

a warbling vireo in the olive tree
sings the notes he’s been given

not caring what we think of the song
or where he’ll be tomorrow

Carl Mayfield knows better, but continues to write. Recent work in Glimpse, The Pangolin Review, Plum Tree Tavern.

Yellow

Yellow is the yolk of my thoughts.
I rarely wear it but my eyes hover around it
as a butterfly encircles a candle’s gold.
The passionate flames of altar tapers are the alphabet of my soul.
In the marrow of every fire, a yellow hymn is intoned.
Halos are crowns bestowed by Jophiel on those who pursue the saintly road.
When the moon waxes yellow, I adore.
The verdant route to my office is punctuated by gorse,
kindling a fire in my blood, my skull, my every pore.
I always wait patiently for the summer when clouds
proudly wear their yellow coats.
The grails of daffodils are furnaces in which every happy memory is forged.
I wrap my mind with yellow whenever blizzards blanch the landscape of my world.

.

Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with
a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her writing has appeared in
multiple venues including Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Mad Swirl,
Down in the Dirt, Impspired Magazine, Leaves of Ink, A New Ulster,
Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Ink Pantry.

If I must wear a mask

Let it be a mask of flowers
Violets and magnolia
Pansies, buds of all
kinds, wrapped around my ears
covering my lips
Let me smile in iris
Flower the first syllable

.

Deborah Leipziger is an author, poet, and professor. Her chapbook, Flower Map, was published by Finishing Line Press (2013).  In 2014, her poem “Written on Skin” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on human rights and sustainability. She advises companies around the world on social and environmental issues. Her poems have been published in Salamander, Voices Israel, POESY, Wilderness House Review, Ibbetson Street, and the Muddy River Poetry Review. She is the founding co-editor of Soul-Lit.  http://flowermap.net/