Author Archives: Sarah

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/

DAWN CHORUS

After the cock-crow,
counterpointed by a barking dog,
cue the precentor, blackbird solo,
with responding voices swelling
from antiphon to chorus
– thrushes and finches, chiff-chaff,
warblers, even a honking crow,
until song verges on cacophony.

Fresh rhythms break through tumult
shaping the daily glossalalia;
deep underlying currents
voice this pentecostal speaking
of the birds, as light unfolds,
spreads iridescent wings that
open up the eastward sky

.

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.

Anattā: Promenade Beach, Pondicherry

I sat meditating in my
pale and painless blemish-
gray garb in the alabaster
prayer-porch beneath the
pointed and water-stained arch
of a placid aquamarine dome.
Early morning surf had passed,
and if one cannot disbelieve
the incessant cadence of
thunderous clamor, the gusting
and rushing winds, the goading
summons of the sea—it is
hard, to say the least, to
disbelieve in
the sea.

So much more so my self, so
singularly like the shimmering
skin of seawater, within my
own body, immersed in its deep,
biting heat—the heat of
the dazzling tides, perhaps,
or the sun; the heat of the
burning brine; or for those
who don’t like to see things
that way, the chill of the
disorienting, eternal
solace.

.

Though born in humble circumstances, Clarice Hare received a privileged education and has lived a fascinating life, traveled widely, and never said no to an opportunity for exploration or enlightenment. She currently lives in obscurity in the southern U.S. with an assortment of furry and scaly pets.

DIVINE COMEDY

Writing can be opening the gate latch of our inner being so we can start to understand how our life on an outer and interior level can align. If we are not balanced we become neurotic and destructive. Psycho spiritually speaking, keeping in touch with our soul keeps us in harmony with who we are in our most natural form.

Having a nurturing relationship with oneself is having a life-giving relationship with the world. We can’t operate lovingly on a humanitarian level if we can’t connect lovingly with ourselves.

Writing is either a conscious or unconscious pursuit. Many writers fill their pages and swear black and blue that their narrative means nothing more than what is literally understood. Even though all writers are unconscious of at least some of what they write, the danger lies in being barely conscious of our narratives as a whole. Even those who write for escapism instead of confrontation leave a great deal of wealth buried in their pages for those who can sugar soap the walls.

One way to discover what is burning in the collective is to hook up the similar themes prevailing in writing. These are similar to nocturnal dreams in that they reveal the sacred in us. Similarly, the problems of the collective can be lifted by analysing the dream content of our times.

The collective unconscious runs underneath the personal unconscious like the thick foil base of a tiered cake. Conscious writers ploughing their personal complexes eventually reach the foil base. This is where we realize that many of our inner wars overlap with the struggles belonging to everyone. This analogy can also be compared to the earth’s physical structure. If we deal with the underwater currents to confront our sea monsters we eventually hit a common floor.

Wrestling with our demons under this ground is as hard as hell which explains why Dante described Inferno as being inside the centre of the earth. Processes stirring from the earth’s solid core can drive through volcanic activity that form islands. Symbolically, these islands represent a new consciousness which aim to dilute the collective and propel humanity towards evolution.

Analogously, if we as humans don’t experience great pressure or an extreme disturbance from our depths through the experience of, for example a breakdown or a death of a loved one, it is not possible to experience the type of transformation which is fluid enough to erode the collective. It is only from this deep hole in us – this cold bath of fitful sleep, the breaking up of our childhood roads and cities and this grinding fear of complete loss that consciousness is able to finally gush to the surface.

What point is there of literally reaching out to the stars via a rocket when we don’t even know our own soil? Why worry about living on Mars if we can’t even live receptively on earth? It is easier to pretend to be passionate about what is outside of ourselves because then we don’t have to stand nakedly in front of the mirror.

We can only reach the sacred if we, as Dante, through Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, explore the meaning of what we’re doing. Writing for escapism is like believing in science without emotion and intuition. Writing consciously can help us take a leap of faith so we can trust in what we don’t yet fully understand. The sacred is largely unknown and more powerful than us. If we allow it to flow through us with hope we take the wick of the candle in the dark and give it light.

.

Annie Blake (BTeach, GDipEd) is a divergent thinker, a wife and mother of five children. She hopes to one day publish her chapbook ‘Studium Spiritus Sancti’. She is an advocate of autopsychoanalysis and a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne, Australia. You can visit her on annieblakethegatherer.blogspot.com.au and https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009445206990.