Author Archives: Sarah

Prayer

An old brick house I
felt a connection to—
(We were both dust and
the pages of books)—

It was September and
……………..there was no optimism left in me.

In the old house: ……..Cereal and a carton of
eggs, coffee and milk,
heavy wooden doors
and a subtle smell like
stale laundry.

I started thinking about
how other people see God,
if they kneel with their knees
planted firmly on the ground,
speak quietly with their eyes

…………..closed and their head down,
spines curved like tall grass.

The house reminded
me that, in some ways,
I long for time to pass,
that I will never regret my age,
that I will always
…………………………..welcome ash as a gift—

Near the house was a
restaurant with high tables
where I talked with people I’d
only recently met……..but already loved.

Conviction is my own natural remedy,
all…………………milkweed and lavender—

……………………Religion is the sea
……………………I am lost in—

Kristin LaFollette is a writer, artist, and photographer and is the author of the chapbook, Body Parts (GFT Press, 2018). She is a professor at the University of Southern Indiana (Evansville, IN, USA) and serves as the Art Editor at Mud Season Review. You can visit her on Twitter at @k_lafollette03 or on her website at kristinlafollette.com.

Out from the Epicenter

A turbulence of earthquakes
has etched rivers through
my stucco plains.

Its engravings thread,
lightning forms, from the
epicenter out into vastness.

Not until some determined
handyman caulks them white
will they dry up.

And where they disappear
will flow other rivers,
long in new courses.

The daddy longlegs and
trestle builders will direct them,
and replenish my plains.

Phoebe Marrall, orphaned at the age of nine, was a survivor of The Depression and of a grueling childhood. When she died in 2017 at the age of eighty-four, her daughters Jane Hendrickson and Camille Komine inherited hundreds of poems she had written. They remained unpublished during her lifetime, but it is the intention of her daughters that a collection be compiled for readers to appreciate. Relief, Have You a Name? is currently a work in progress, being edited by Gayle Jansen Beede.

Oh Mortality,

I am left graying. My amber
blush swept away with last year’s leaves.

My smile is my smile, but there are folds and lines.
Time steals my molecules and you my energy.

I keep watch on the longest night of the year,
my candles counting the seconds in pools of wax.

The Wheel turns and so does my body—a slow
moody dance that ends in a tilted,
shuffling waltz.

My hair has a strand of silver—do I burn or bury it?

When do we begin to call ourselves old?
Mother, Maiden, Crone?

If I run from you, will you still whisper of Autumn leaves,
leather satchels, porch swings with tucked in blankets?

When I am old, will I only know it with the aches of my bones?

And then there is this damned hair.
When it is silver, do I shave it off,
or do I let the rainbow dangle
…………….like the moon
………………………….on the edge of the Big Dipper?

Kim Malinowski earned her B.A. from West Virginia University and her M.F.A. from American University. She studies with The Writers Studio. Her chapbook Death: A Love Story was published by Flutter Press. Her work has appeared in Faerie Magazine, War, Literature, and the Arts, Mythic Delirium, and others.

Epiphany in January

Do not be enamored by blue skies and
fast-moving clouds, and sun glittering
on white-capped waves swelling over
the pier’s jutting stone.

…………………………..Nothing survives
its place—sand lies strewn upon wind-
licked grass— & tucked among ruffled
turf, dandelions lift  their heads to weather’s

warm confusion.

And, you are struck by
wonder, stepping into a natural scene that
has been going on without you for hours,
and you want to embrace this as if it were

only yours . . .

…………………………..Alas, alone—and
out of place— you see smoke, issuing
from a cabin’s chimney, inviting you
in to warm up by the fire.

…………………………..No one is there, except
a visitor’s ledger, asking you to sign in,
using its blue pen and the possibility of
holding this new year to a turned page.

M.J. Iuppa’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017).For the past 31 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

The Ghost, the Angel, and the Boundaries of Belief

A ghost lives in the gaps
left by shredded ligaments
in his separated shoulder.
He calls the final result
of the could’ve-been-fatal crash
“miraculous” and thanks gods

of a half-dozen religions, despite
self-definition as an agnostic.
No questioning the debt owed
to SWAT-team spirits as the car
rolled three times and landed
upside down. The top of the torn

left shoulder is where an angel
once landed after he prayed
(yes, prayed) for protection
of his most beloved, seven
and a half thousand miles
away. Could that guardian

have sensed sincerity, unlike
during his only other prayer –
to save his dying father –
when even his teenaged
self knew the cri de coeur
was opportunistic? Perhaps

he should unleash the shoulder-
ghost to crawl and spelunk
his neural pathways, probing
personal history, upending
rocks, to maybe, possibly,
find how to summon the angel

once more.

.

Kim Peter Kovac works nationally and internationally in theater for young audiences with an emphasis on new play development and networking. He tells stories on stages as producer of new plays, and tells stories in writing with lineated poems, prose poems, creative non-fiction, flash fiction, haiku, haibun, and microfiction, with work appearing or forthcoming in print and on-line in journals from Australia, Bangladesh, India, Ireland, Dubai (UAE), England, Poland, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, and the USA, including The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Elsewhere Lit, Frogpond, and Mudlark. @kimpeterkovac – www [dot] kimpeterkovac [dot] tumblr [dot] com

Shavasana

Each on an adjacent plot,
our heads lie heavy. Arms and legs
splay wide and shoulders melt like butter.
We dismiss intrusive thoughts:
biopsies, broken shutters,
interest rates and aging eggs.

We die to each anxiety
and feel our hearts’ soft thrum.
We watch our bellies rise and fall
buoyed by breathing. Silently
we wiggle, roll our spines, sit tall,
reborn to life’s sure, holy hum.

.

Susan Delaney Spear is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Colorado Christian University where she serves as English Department Chair. She earned an MFA in Poetry with an Emphasis on Verse Forms from Western Colorado University in 2012. She is former Managing Editor of THINK, a journal of poetry, essays, and reviews.  Her collection, Beyond All Bearing, was published by Wipf and Stock. Her poems have appeared in The New Criterion, The Christian Century, Academic Questions, FirstThings, The Anglican Theological Review and other journals.

Hypothesis

Half moon ensconced in the atmosphere in this shattered one instant of breathing.
Bygone now are the contrails that earlier this morning
latticed the azure horizon. I lament how few birds we have here
and a new bird drops onto the back patio—about the size
of a sparrow—a dark bird with white tailfeathers,
harbinger of my surprise
hypothetical golf ball
whereafter the CAT scan sees no trace of the tumescent rutabaga in my head,
the reason why my old neighbor and love
of my life gardened on her hands and knees in a football helmet,
miniature moons arcing above the green.

Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Terminal Destination (Spartan Press, 2019).

Little Hands
for my nephew

Curling round the Earth with gap toothed laughter
squeezing oceans into space
holding the rain with matchstick fingers

stones all once rejected
come alive in your little hands

little hands pray in church
stained glass cries echoing with the virgin

……………….…I walk amongst the tombstones

tiny palms on bleeding knuckles
mortality in your little hands

little hands scratch spotty faces
shadows of women
dance on the canvas
eye meets cheek in the living room

…………………I wipe my nose at sunrise
groggy head and swollen hands

Paul Williams is a poet and musician from Chester in England. He currently lives and works in Milton Keynes. His music can be found here: https://paulwilliams2.bandcamp.com/

Seek

Do you see me search for you
in all the usual places?

Then catch you sudden
in the crowded car of the train.

You are never surprised and look back
with that wide smile.

Now
it seems you’ve gone
……..into a deeper hiding.

Perhaps these growing drums
have frightened you away.

Or maybe
you are leading me

………….into a darker corner
………….where it is harder
………….for me to see

so when I finally
find you,

I can see you shine
even more bright
into my eyes.

Jeffrey Perkins received his MFA from Bennington College and his poems have been published in Memorious, The Massachusetts Review, The Southampton Review, The Cortland Review, Mid-American Review, and The Adroit Journal, among other journals. His first book of poems, Kingdom, is due out in Spring 2020 from Spork Books. He was a 2019 Artist-in-Residence at the Watermill Center and lives in Los Angeles, California, USA. You can find him online at https://thekingdompoems.com/