Author Archives: Sarah

Moths and Oak

A corral of dun moths are brightened by the hose
and when wettened lift themselves from leaves and
hop softly onto some other, drier surface. It’s a

mast year here; the oak that’s their shelter is
heavy with nuts. Later in the year I’ll be cursing
them – as will my neighbours! – when seedlings

sprout from every spare inch of earth. I’ve pulled
on the smaller branches, cut them to thin out those
within reach. I’m not tall. Most of the tree is beyond me.

Living in Wales, UK, John Gimblett is primarily a poet and novelist whose work has been published widely. He has read at the Hay Festival (‘The Woodstock of the mind’ – Bill Clinton) and elsewhere. His novels are crime/thrillers set mainly in his home city. #NewportNoir @johngimblett

Just Ahead

I wander through the wide wild world
that beckons me,
not knowing where I am,
not knowing where I go.
This might be the place I seek,
these sloping hills and valley shadows.
Their close embrace could keep me
sheltered from cold, safe from harm.
But I pass them by with scarce a look.
The way must be ahead.

This way lies a verdant field
laden with flowers golden.
The wind rolls gently
over the new spring grass,
caressing its silken green.
Maybe I should settle here,
live in grace, die in peace.
But I have no way of knowing
if this is It, if It is this.

As I travel longer, weary, worn,
the trees before me bow,
humbled by my noble search.
The birds salute me
with songs strong and stately sung.
Then the bowing branches sweep high.
There the ocean awaits,
its jeweled glory shining:
liquid diamonds,
melted silver, opals bright –
they mirror the sunlight.
The sand lies warm and white,
a welcoming place to finally rest
my worn out Self
from my search out-worn.

But I do not stay.
I cannot stop.
It must lie ahead.
I must keep looking.
So I still seek the Promised Land,
always searching, always searching.
It must be waiting just ahead,
unless It’s now behind me.

Cynthia Pitman, a retired English teacher, has been published in Amethyst Review, Third Wednesday One Sentence Poem Contest (finalist), Ariel Chart, Vita Brevis Press, Leaves of Ink, Right Hand Pointing, Ekphrastic Review, Postcard Poems and Prose, Literary Yard, Adelaide Literary Review, Quail Bell, and others. Her poetry collection, The White Room, is forthcoming.

3.1.19
8.00 a.m.
22 degrees

Pristine pond…not a track, not a windblown ridge; I am
obliged to whisper give thanksfor this most gentle snow.
Noiselessness is an image in this softest flurry, as two robins
drink from the chill stream, my presence just another piece of the drama.

3.2.19
8.38 a.m.
29 degrees

  a       Snow 3-5 predicted.

Purifying snow, steady and in relief on all the branches, and yet
our thoughts this morning are of the coming warmth; your days are
numbered snow storm, and although the pond is a flawless white,
days of emergence, of new life, days of color are right there, almost in sight.

3.3.19
8.37 a.m.
3 degrees

 
Pussywillows have blossomed, heralds of spring, though a storm is in the
offing — six to eight inches overnight.  Three creatures have made their
nightly crossing over the pond, or one creature has crossed three times,
deft and as lithe as my boot-prints are emblems of a lumbering thing.

3.18.2019
11.51 a.m.
25 degrees

a         W.S. Merwin
                        September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019
 

Point to any tree, any snag for that matter, all gradual, all named,
occasions so insignificant, so intimate, that their creating went un-
noticed, will go unnoticed unless it is to say, in a whisper to myself, the
denotation of each of these trees is that they are William’s trees, here and everywhere.

3.19.2019
11.51 a.m.
25 degrees
 
Phonetics fill the air all day every day.  The
oozy red-winged black bird, the purty-purty-purtyof the
northern cardinal, and these days the pond is no longer
dominating metal gray, but somber soft shades, tones of movement.

3.21.2019
2.23 p.m.
49 degrees

Paragraph of starlings, grackles, cowbirds, red-winged blackbirds —
ogling them from her blind at the stream’s shore, Girl-Lilla Cat
notices every movement of every bird, and every bird screeches its
demand that she stay put, enjoy the water in the stream, and pay them no mind.

John L. Stanizzi is author of the collections – Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, and Chants.  His newest collection, Sundowning, will be out this year with Main Street Rag.  John’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Blue Mountain Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Rust & Moth, Connecticut River Review, Hawk & Handsaw, and many others.  His work has been translated into Italian and appeared in many journals in Italy.  His translator is Angela D’Ambra.  John has read and venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, and many others.  For many years, John coordinated the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT.  He is also a teaching artist for the national recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud.  A former New England Poet of the Year, John teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

Perestroika

The amphitheatre smells of dank chlorine and tired
old Soviet bricks. Late autumn sun lilts down
on briny water churning in a dingy pool.

Dolphins lift off the water’s surface, curve gray bodies
through hoops, over arcs of spray, jump in time
to strains of Elvis or The Beach Boys Greatest Hits.

We laugh and clap along to music. Ira rolls her eyes and tells me
every year for fifteen now, this show remains the same.
And still, we are transfixed, open-mouthed,

by beleaguered creatures leaping up from concrete pools.
Nothing dims it. It’s a cool September Sunday,
on the far side of an old map’s iron borders,

trainers pose on backs of dolphins, and I imagine
New Jerusalem, new heavens and new earth.
All those lions lying down with lambs.

Jen Stewart Fueston lives in Longmont, Colorado. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of journals, most recently Ruminate, Rock & Sling, and The St. Katherine Review. Her poems have twice been finalists for the McCabe poetry prize, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, “Visitations,” was published in 2015, and her second, “Latch,” will be released in early 2019. She has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as internationally in Hungary, Turkey, and Lithuania.

There Was a Certain Darkness in Me & I Couldn’t Curse It Because It’s Where I Found Myself

—for Jenn

I stopped searching for God in the far reaches of the sky.
I’ve always said being whole is overrated;

it’s the holes which make us beautiful.
I am not fire, an erupting volcano—

I am the phoenix rising from the flames someone else lit.
The same fire you ran into to save me.

She said crying is overrated, & I dropped my head thinking
of nothing more than happiness—

Crying looks like this: numb & cool & slow-moving grayish-white
fingers reaching for molecules of air like fine drizzle in spring.

There is no more room to cry.
Nothing can replace the pain of a moment or memory.

Teach me humility.
Heal me.

Decorate my doubt with iris instead.
Lace my body for sparrows to nest my ribs, perch my bones.

Oh, how you loved me so, lead me down steps & opened a gate
to the smoke & smiled. Stay here, you said,

between the volcanoes remembering
everything I say. The fire is set, she said.

You need to stop looking for answers in your tears.
Walk into the fire. It will keep you alive.

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, nineteen chapbooks, three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir. She hopes you’ll fall in love with her words.

eyeline / querencia

flying far over walls, caught in medias res
eyes bloodshot, wings
..gouged by the edge of a rooftop
windows below whine, turn
..opaque with envy
do the angels still come………………. here ……………loud-shouting the city?

on the table beside me, a cup full of coffee
look down, see the ripple;
………………………..are we still turning up?

the bones in his pocket crack saturday motion
he is pacing; in shy sighs he asks our attention

closer now, bone-crunching glimpses of movement
silica sand centers us, each toe extracts
…………………………………………………………………………………….grains
repent! sheer drop-off, senses serenade insincerely
pristine night, did he want this? will our angel
remind us?

change in direction now,
……………west wind to safety!
we were in the lobby
..of that
giant hotel
in chicago

Sitting face over face in
that kind of
……………stop-motion moment:

remember thou art dust; unto dust thou shalt return!

Henry Brown is a student and activist with the Democratic Socialists of America at Carleton College, where he is a junior-year Religion major/Spanish minor interested in Christian liberation theology. He is from Austin, Texas, where he is interning for Texas Impact, a progressive interfaith nonprofit. He has published poetry in Eleventh Transmission and his poetry will be featured in the upcoming issue of Bitchin’ Kitsch.

The Book of Sophia

1

when i was in high school
i sat in a pew at a church
in blue ridge, virginia
and asked for the gift of wisdom
i wanted to be immersed in the light
to be bathed in it like the colors
coming through the stained glass
illuminating dust particles in pinks
and purples and yellow golds
and heavenly blues

2

i had been baptized out of fear
at age seven and remember feeling
no different coming up for air
than I did upon the startling dunk
that threw me back and immersed
me in tepid water

3

in my early twenties
i studied in the basement
of that same church for a year
to earn a certificate from liberty
university but it was the same
stories, the same twists, the same plot
the same helplessness
the same blind faith
the same misguided self-righteousness
that the bible was literal and inerrant
the same superficial immersion
into the text and reading
4

i did not want to just read what the words said
i wanted to be immersed in the meaning
i wanted to sink right into the pages
of the bible and disappear into a true understanding
that i knew I could find beneath the pages
somewhere so deep that it only existed
between the india paper and the genuine leather binding
in the smell that wafted from the pages
every time i opened the book

5

when i was in high school
i had prayed for wisdom
ironically i would find it
in a spirituality of disbelief
that i found as i drowned
immersing myself in the space
that existed around the words

Raymond P. Hammond is the editor-in-chief of both The New York Quarterly
and NYQ Books. He holds an MA in English Literature from New York
University and is the author of Poetic Amusement, a book of literary
criticism. He lives in Beacon, NY with his wife, the poet Amanda J.
Bradley, and their dog Hank.

WOMAN (IN THE WOODS)

–after Louise Bogan

Woman you have wild in you.
And providence.
Content in the humid coop of your heart
to nosh pico de gallo & sliced mozz on French baguette.

You see the turkey emerge from the green summer grass,
though you do not hear
running water
only the whir of batteried fans.

Instead of wait, you return to journey.
Instead of stiffen, you bend like the palm tree.
Instead of taking man as friend, you turn
self-benevolent.

You think of goats bleating in the field,
or of clean wood cleft by an axe.
Your love is eager, earnest.
You’ve brought yourself here to relax.

You hear in every door knock,
three at 6am, six at 3am,
rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat/rat-a-tat─
a welcome chant.

And when you cross the doorsill
take your life back.

Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in central Iowa.  She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist Conference in Oslo, Norway.  Her recent poems appear in Appalachia, Hedge Apple, Pilgrimage, Potomac Review, Harpur Palate, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Ithacalit, and St. Katherine’s Review.  Her recent awards include a residency at Sundress Publication’s Firefly Farms, and a scholarship to attend the 2019 Sewanee Writers Conference.

Say the polygamists just understand

Say the polygamists just understand
the spiritual is always public,
never private. that shared intimacy
is the truest picture of the divine.
you’re welcome to join, but attitudes must
change, your selfishness has to be silenced.
He’s not only yours. you’ll have your own time
with the Beloved, as will all the others.
but never complain the bed is too warm
or sweaty. you’ll grow accustomed seeing
the satisfaction left on their faces,
the blissful daze you thought was yours alone.
when you know your place you’ll learn the Adored
has stamina to so love the whole world.

~ MEH

MEH is Matthew E. Henry, a Pushcart nominated poet with works appearing or forthcoming in various publications including Amethyst Review, The Anglican Theological Review, The Other Journal, Poetry East, Relief Journal, Rock and Sling, Spiritus, andThe Windhover. MEH is an educator who received his MFA from Seattle Pacific University, yet continued to spend money he didn’t have pursuing a MA in theology and a PhD in education.

I Can Fly

I watched a robin
walk back and forth
in the morning sun.
I asked him
why he walked
when he could fly?
He asked me
the same question.
But, I replied, I can’t fly.
Yes, you can he said.
Let your wings unfurl
and you will fly like me.
I take off, ego-free.

Milton P. Ehrlich Ph.D. is an 87- year-old psychologist and a veteran of the Korean War. He has published many poems in periodicals such as the London Grip, Arc Poetry Magazine, Descant Literary Magazine, Wisconsin Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Christian Science Monitor, and the New York Times.