Author Archives: Sarah

Never letting go (of religious programming), or Agnostic lament

Despite my default atheism, I still find
myself stubbornly wanting to give into
the urge to spell the word Heaven
with an upper case H. To clasp my
hands in undulating prayer, at the
dinner table or just before I sleep. To
contemplate the afterlife and who I
might meet there. And to find the
company of other atheists dry, and
pontificating/mocking.

I wish that I could decide on an
answer to The question. The options.
But all I can say with any certainty is, I
rule nothing out.

Claire Sexton is a poet and writer who has lived in Wales, London, and Berkshire. She is a librarian by trade and suffers with long-term depression and anxiety. She has been published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Foxglove Journal, Amaryllis, Amethyst Review, Allegro Poetry Magazine, and others.

The Lost Divorce

If your Grand Canyon is man made
A creation of concrete and glass
If you are surrounded by pavement
And the gardeners use spray paint
If you will upload your brain into a website
Live forever or until McAfee mistakenly erases you

When all the promises of religion
Are subsumed by technology

Drugs will comfort you
Computers will let you live forever
Facebook will absolve you.

In that world
The old god is an itch between your shoulder blades
The inopportune rain
A night time cat that disturbs garbage cans
And weeds that grow in sidewalk cracks

Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Penumbra, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and The Ottawa Arts Journal. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, and the annual Salem Poetry Festival

Keeping Thyme

We are gone now. No second yesterday.
Spring sun runs, melting fast into summer.
Copper butterflies jig then lilt away,
leaving petals, frail blue wings, in tatters.
Breezes brush a sword lily’s unsheathed head;
through bows and shudders, shifting thoughts unread
when streams plaited woods splashed in rain.
Wrapped in holm oak’s dusty shade, here again:

We walk with bees on our toes, fear undone,
breathing together crushed pink silver thyme.
Across the meadow our paths, scented, climb
to overlook hills hung in stippled sun.
Clouds pass. No second yesterday will come,
for we were not there, dearest friend. Just one.

Jane Angué teaches English Language and Literature in France. Writing in French and English, work was longlisted for the Erbacce Prize 2018 and 2019 and has appeared most recently in Le Capital des Mots, Ink Sweat & Tears, Acumen and Poésie/première. Her pamphlet des fleurs pour Bach was published in August (Editions Encres Vives).

Prayer for Inflorescence

A single red spider lily, Lycoris radiata,
appears suddenly one September day,
its leafless bloom a tiny burst of fireworks
in my back yard. I planted the bulbs
twenty years ago; a few bloomed,
then disappeared beneath the soil,
presumed dead until now.

I, too, disappeared those twenty years
ago, into a life I would come to regret,
a life that would lead me into a dark place
where even the brightest blossoms lie dormant.

Now I stand in my yard, alone, soaking
up sunshine, like the Naked Lady, waiting
for the same process that coaxed the lily
into its fiery glory to gently force me
into plain view and restore my faded colors.

Diane Elayne Dees’s chapbook, I Can’t Recall Exactly When I Died, is forthcoming from Clare Songbirds Publishing House; also forthcoming, from Kelsay Books, is her chapbook, Coronary Truth. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

(http://womenwhoserve.blogspot.com)

Sacred Kitchen

The short-order cook
prepares his spiritual homage
in a sacred kitchen
between the grill
and deep fryers.

His ambition is full of flavor,
adding just the right amount of salt
to his tireless concoctions.

With eyes as bright as the sun,
he creates culinary magic
in his little cove of the paradise
with crispy home-fries
and Caribbean spices.

He flips the meat
into a garnished plate;
a grateful offering
to the Gods of appetite.

He spins his Dodgers’ cap backward
and prepares for the breakfast crowd,
topping off the omelet
with fresh hollandaise
that’s poured over
a perfectly cooked egg
in a drizzle of eternity.

Mark Tulin is a former therapist who lives in California.  He has a chapbook, Magical Yogis, and two upcoming books: Awkward Grace, and The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories. He’s been featured in Fiction on the Web, Ariel Chart, Leaves of Ink, among others.  His website is Crow On The Wire.

Ouroboros Festival

Mired in itself, the circuit goes:
All of the gods have died.
Here, in this ring, we worship,
not only them, but all of nothing.
Our mates are ourselves, centered
in a void. Outside the ring, yet in it.

All momentum is the same.
It will go. It will go nowhere.
The pianist forgot her strokes –
the birth of jazz. She is dead now.
Her child repeats. So does his.
No one clamors for salvation.

Patrick Key started writing seriously later in life, thanks to the help of a poetry class during his undergraduate years. His interests revolve around the absurdity of life and love, disillusionment, and the human tendency to struggle with impossibilities. His works have appeared in The Corner Club Press, The Penwood Review, and Argus.

liturgy

beating of wings,
sky widens in iris
ears perk goosebump pent-up, is it sighing
or singing?

wondering wave of prayer to the streetlamps
from below, where the life is orange!
broke motion,

still-life,
…too many fruits.
……………silver plate.

Henry Brown is a student/activist from Austin, Texas currently involved with the Democratic Socialists of America at Carleton College, where he is a Religion major/Spanish minor. His poems have been featured in Amethyst Review, Isacoustic, and Eleventh Transmission, and will appear in upcoming issues of The Bitchin’ Kitsch and After The Pause.

The Path of Ghosts

huge night unwraps what folds silently
in the half light quivering
in the evening mist

losing the sense of day
the sound,
a different place to sway

familiar specters
with an eye to the next path
moving along losing a little

feeling the world roll beneath
knowing others are present
and coming, coming gently

so long a way from the start

Antoni Ooto is a poet and flash fiction writer.  His works have been published in Nixes Mate Review, Pilcrow & Dagger, Red Eft Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Young Ravens Literary Review, Front Porch Review, Amethyst Review, An Upstate of Mind and Palettes & Quills.

Goddess of Wind

She has a wingspan, chest shaped into kite
that can soar above limestone cliffs over the lake
formed of a river off the Continental Divide.

Puzzled that no one else knows how to fly, so simple
in dreams—stretch out your arms and step off
into a wind that carries you across the sky dotted

with cumulus clouds, soft white across a Colorado
blue once the sun has passed noon on the dial
from where you stand without shadow,

hips slimmer than span, belly rounded above
legs proportioned so that they will steer
you to the other side, land gently on the far shore.

Kyle Laws is based out of the Arts Alliance Studios Community in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With six nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and France. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.

Absence

Gone is the birch tree
that filled the corner window,
its white amidst the notches of black
quietly assumed peace exists.
I search for the tree in pictures,
lithe, drop shaped leaves
in spring, flurry of color in autumn,
and locked in ice in winter.
So locked in the present is the absence
of all I hold close. I hurry to find
the photo of my friend after we reached
the sky-filled tarn together,.
my mother gazing at her granddaughter
with a smile da Vinci could not equal,
my father feeding his grandson
for the first time afraid to smile for fear
he will lose hold of the fragile, pulsing
life force I placed in his lap.

Janet Krauss, who has two books of poetry published, Borrowed Scenery, Yuganta Press, and Through the Trees of Autumn, Spartina Press, has recently retired from teaching English at Fairfield University. Her mission is to help and guide Bridgeport’s  young children through her teaching creative writing, leading book clubs and reading to and engaging a kindergarten class. As a poet, she co-directs the poetry program of the Black Rock Art Guild. In  May, 2018 her poem, “A View from a Window” was published in Amethyst Review.