Author Archives: Sarah

E.’s Portrait

Easeled for all to admire
(we all knew what it meant)

in that frame she sat looking at a point
neither happy nor sad

who was this woman so still—
she could be anyone

yet E is still here and sits
in her corner overlooking Corbett’s Glen

everything distilled to the same measure—
names, connections,

unconditional care without an answering smile
family could arrange and speak to her but

her eyes hold a final gaze, a change of focus—
wishful

as if she needed a place
to reach before nightfall.

.

Reclamation

A stretch of river he paddles
smothers from impenetrable vines
spiky buds of the invasive hops stare
from the brisling mats of leaves
hungry alien intruders
ravage, over run
steal sun, suffocate, shroud
saplings and wildflowers
with dense tangles. Turbulent

flood waters thrust
into the dense plumage
with violent twists, wrench
the miscreant from the banks
there lays bare a pristine meadow
disrobed of a weighted corset
she gasps
catches her breath
from shock of sun
sparkles in her wet dirt, saplings emerge
with curious caution
dance with daisy fleabane,
ragwort, lush grass
depleted deer tread lightly
on her floral spring frock.

.

Barbara Leonhard is a writer, poet, and blogger at Extraordinary Sunshine Weaver.  Her podcast Poetry: The Memoir of the Soul explores universal themes such as Grief, Kindness, and Presence. She taught writing for many years at the University of Missouri and is the author of Discoveries in Academic Writing. She is also a regular contributor to Free Verse Revolution, Phoebe, MD:Medicine + Poetry , and Go Dog Go Café.

Poetry Blog: extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog
Poetry Podcast: meelosmom.podbean.com

What’s Requisite

What’s requisite
is water

and some shade
moving to

a time as slow
as roots

along a stream
where trout

swim slowly
in a dream

of knowing
not caught

but foreseen.

.

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.

Attend, attend

Attend, attend, pay attention, contemplate.
Open eyes of faith to days, minutes,
moments of miracle and marvel; there is wildness
and wonder wherever you go, present
in moments that never repeat, running free,
never coming again. Savour, savour the present –
small things, dull moments, dry prayers –
sacraments of presence, sense of wonder,
daily divine depth in the here and now.
There’s only here, there’s only now,
these are the days, this is the fiery vision,
awe and wildness, miracle and flame. Take off
your shoes, stand in the holy fire; sacrament
of the burning, always consumed, never repeating
present moment, knowing the time is now.

.

Jonathan Evens is Associate Vicar for HeartEdge at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Through HeartEdge, a network of churches, he encourages congregations to engage with culture, compassion and commerce. He writes on the Arts for a range of publications including Artlyst, ArtWay and Church Times. He is co-author of ‘The Secret Chord,’ an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief. He blogs at Between: https://joninbetween.blogspot.com/

Lead, Lights

Heading home, I rode my bicycle along
one of the fields of childhood at dusk,
gazing over fenced-in, knee-high wheat
at the lights of the Benson farm, and felt

something like a hidden immensity
rise within and beyond myself, at once
both yearning and fulfillment. Now
I wonder if such visitations

are only limited neuronal
explosions, fully measurable,
entirely explainable,
just the brain’s occasional

beautiful fireworks, streamers
of colored lights doomed
to fade to black. But here’s
a star on the wooded horizon,

and another, and my wheeling
heart persists, as if light from
a distant house, any
bright star slowly rising
might still lead it home.

.

F.W. “Skip” Renker has recent poems in Presence, Leaping Clear, and The Awakenings Review.  His poems have appeared in numerous journals as well as the Atlanta Review, Poetry Midwest, and Passages North anthologies, and he has a Pushcart Nomination.  His books are Birds of Passage (Delta Press), Sifting the Visible (Mayapple Press), and Bearing the Cast (St. Julian Press).  He lives with his wife Julia Fogarty in the beautiful lakefront town of Petoskey, MI.

FROM THE SUMMIT

You could take it in your arms –
so intimate, this silence
settling through the evening air.
It rises from enshrouded valleys
over long ridges shrouded thick
with trees, fills every space between
the mountains, turning the light
to haze, sound to almost nothing.

It is as if the circling hills
linked arms around you, from
coastline through the inland ranges
back toward the bay. Their colours
softening with the last pink sun
before they all subside beneath
the billowed covering of dark.

.

Tony Lucas has lived and worked in inner South London for many years.   Hs work has been published both in the UK and America, with the most recent collection of his work, Unsettled Accounts, issued by Stairwell Books in 2015.

That Something

Something inobvious hovers
about the memories of dearly departed
grandpas and grandmas, uncles and aunts,
moms, dads, brothers and sisters,
something scarcely known
suffusing all that loss like sunlight’s
slant through stained glass windows.

Into that something pain transforms.
From that something solace flows:
kinship like a river winding
that joins the family to one.

High, deep and wide surrounding,
yet elusive to the touch,
a wordless poem, a soundless song,
promise without any object.

Something we wear, eat, make love to.
Something like wind fresh at our backs.
Something like you behind this veil
whose willing breath sustains me.

Not quite mystery. Not quite joy.
Almost a home where all abide.
A dream fulfilling. Clearing skies.
Something we die for to attain.

.

Darrell Petska‘s poetry has appeared in journals such as Muddy River Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Star 82 Review, Clementine Unbound, and After the Pause (see conservancies.wordpress.com). He’s tallied thirty years on the academic staff at University of Wisconsin-Madison, 40 years as a father (seven years a grandfather), and longer still as a husband.

What If in Some Alternate Universe I Had My Heart & Lungs on Display?

The girl I am descends
heart-first under the last October sky.
I’m a deity of the rivers raging.
God, I’m open.
I’m a salmon swimming back upstream,
cut & bruised, leaping against waterfalls—
strong—my only dream to return
to the source, & in that thought, my iron age turns
golden & suddenly I’m a hero,
my nature seeking the nature it once had,
though wholly lost yet remembering the whole.
I, silver salmon, sparkling fierce
under the blue belly of sun,
speeding through the mountains
immovable in that same blue.

I can feel the iron & thundering,
half-moons rising in my palms seeking
to catch an echo or a rainbow.
It’s true other years bore other fruits,
there to remain forever sweet—
how my first bite of fruit always tastes best.
Year after year I’m unable to divine the good
because rain & tear are not the same.
It’s true every tale must end,
somehow remain behind,
the same dreaming never enough.
& sometimes my fear calls loud
as a sleepless owl, regenerating life
as a bird crooked at the wings.

I must dive as an anchor into the past,
though arm’s length from it,
for fear of being dragged back home.
Here, I only see what isn’t & what isn’t me.
(I’m half-hell & half-morning.)
How I fear the world for dividing & dividing
into things without ever being born.
I want to believe it’s natural to give, to generate,
to take something and make it new.
I wish I could break
& leave nothing but a kind mess.
& you’d be with me in that world.
& I’d let you touch me.

.

Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections, twenty chapbooks, three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir. She hopes you’ll fall in love with her words.

Prayer to the High Priestess of Pain

for Frida Kahlo

o, holy mestiza
……………mirror
……………mirage!

how many are drawn
to the bedded isle
to see her lace-lined face?

pilgrims’ sighs infuse the house
reverence is a honied song
around this bright retablo

tin hands beckon from the altar
once the offering is laid
now kneel amid the marigolds

and light a yellow candle
cradled in her flaming gaze,
speak the thing you seek

i wish to make peace with pain
drape it in bright colours
and dance with its crooked form

around the portrait roots climb
caress like a lover’s rough fingers
from the cracked earth

a mystic answer echoes

some are born under a star
but others explode from earthquakes
bleeding glitter

.

Jennifer Brough is usually writing, editing or reading. Outside of these wordy pursuits, she is learning Spanish and dreaming of Mexico. Her work has most recently appeared in Re-side, RIC Journal, Burning House Press and is forthcoming in Barren Magazine. She can be found @Jennifer_Brough and on jenniferlbrough.com.