Author Archives: Sarah

On the Ongoing Insistence on Proof

I’d seen the painting before. As I stood in front
of Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas,

I again took note of the glow bathing the figures
from just outside the left edge, and the ambiguous,

black background; the lack of a halo above Jesus’
head and the solidness of his flesh; the two other

disciples craning to get a better look; the hunched-
over Thomas receiving exactly what he demanded,

his forefinger knuckle-deep in his friend’s side,
feeling the warm tissue between his ribs. Thomas’s

other hand clutches his own side, as if the Roman spear
pierced him too, the wrinkles in his forehead undulating

into sandy dunes of shock, regret, astonishment, elation,
wonder; his wide eyes staring past Jesus, thinking some
unknown thought—

……………………….I stepped back. It was quite a moving scene,
……………………….really. Though I doubt it ever happened.

I suppose Thomas claimed he needed to use his fingers
as the nails and spearhead before belief, and who

can blame him? After all, the hill had been so far off,
his palms pressed to his eyes; he couldn’t be sure of

anything he’d seen that day. Remarkable though,
how swiftly those thunderheads had dissolved, how

his friend is standing before him now—never mind
the locked door—with color in his cheeks and breath

in his lungs, gesturing, while sunbeams scud across
the dusty floor, shouting with light, inching ever closer.

Ben Groner III (Nashville, TN), recipient of Texas A&M University’s 2014 Gordone Award for undergraduate poetry and a Pushcart Prize nomination, has work published in Appalachian Heritage, New Mexico Review, Third Wednesday, Gnarled Oak, The Bookends Review, Gravel, and elsewhere. You can see more of his work at bengroner.com/creative-writing/

Prayer for a bridled mind

I want to be free range, to lope in the wake
of wind kissing me good morning, as if nothing
besides my alignment
with the slow turning earth
matters. I yearn to know in my marrow
the immense truth of this “as if”
a place of being
louder than any ringing phone, ticking clock
in my head, my slice of our collective
clamor.
Thoughts would soften into wordless sensing while
words, when used, could take flight
from a place wholly foreign
to small dimensions of logic or prescribed
meaning. We could say what
we can’t now, what can’t
even be thought.
I would like to shed the belief that anything
is obvious and swim in
a fluid in-between where everything emerges and
fades, all ultimately unknowable and yet
so delicious to explore, co-invent
and witness. I could
discard the need to understand, agree
or disagree and live
unbridled.

Jenny has lived in the Pacific Northwest for 13 years having moved here from the New York metropolitan area with her family.   By day she is an international tax lawyer, but day and night, a poet, loving to write poems and share with anyone who will read them.  Her work has been in included as part of the yearly Bainbridge Island Poetry Corners celebration in which poems are posted on local storefronts, Ars Poetica, a juried pairing of poems with the work of local artists, several anthologies published by Diversion Press, two publications out of the Grief Dialogues project, “Just a Little More Time” and “Grief Dialogues, the book”, The Cascade Journal Vol. II, of the Washington Poets Association and others.

Ganesh

Beloved Ganesh, elephant-headed Lord
of Letters, you who penned Vyasa’s epic,
the Mahabharata, I call on you—
if I may be so bold: be my scribe.
Coil your eloquent trunk around the moon
and hold it overhead to light our work.
Dip your single, most auspicious tusk
into your deepest, darkest pot of ink.

Light candles, burn incense, sweep away the dust.
Trumpet Om. Write my words on all
the rivers, lakes, and oceans of the world.
Scatter them to the winds, the fields, the stars.
Whatever spirals back, intact, inscribe
it on the heart and mind of humankind.

John W. Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher and graduate of the MFA Poetry Program at Western Colorado University, where he studied with Julie Kane, Ernest Hilbert and David Rothman. His poetry has appeared in Amethyst Review, Boulder Weekly, Blue Unicorn, The Lyric, Society of Classical Poets and Verse-Virtual. One of his poems was nominated for a 2017 Pushcart prize, another won The Lyric’s 2017 Fall Quarterly Award.

Say God’s love is like eating your Wheaties

Say God’s love is like eating your Wheaties.
against Merton’s angst, equate the two. now,
say it aloud: ignore the dissonance.
conflate them in a pious confession
of grain cereal and divinity—
eschew the Eucharistic connection
as too easy, too obvious. now stop:
see, taste the inherent absurdity
in sacramental simplicity— how
language, like life, is a short series of
decisions to ascribe small sanctities;
to hold as holy the milk and honey
daily adorning our tables; to call
the ordinary, host, the carnal, blessed.

MEH is Matthew E. Henry, a Pushcart nominated poet with works appearing or forthcoming in various publications including The Anglican Theological Review, The Other Journal, Poetry East, Relief Journal, Rock and Sling, 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.

Letter to a Bird Trapped in a Subway Tunnel

Inside the subway station
I write a letter
to the frantic bird who’s flying
to and fro,
“You have forgotten by this point
that the world is open on the outside.
That there is endless space.
Space that the sky represents.
You have forgotten fresh air.
You have forgotten trees.
Your little lungs grow spastic
as you tilt your head
absurdly standing centimeters tall
on a gray subway platform.
You have broken my heart, bird.
This would have never happened
if we weren’t here. Humans have doomed you.
You are God trapped in our small minds
searching for a way out.
You are an embodiment
of our existence
and that, for human beings
escape is possible
but improbable.”
The train arrives
and I leave behind the letter
on the metal bench
for the lost bird to build
a nest with and perhaps
find some rest down there.

Sean Lynch is a working-class poet who lives in South Philly. His poems have been published in various journals including (parenthetical), Chrysanthemum, and Poetry Quarterly. He’s the author of three chapbooks, the latest being 100 Haiku, published in 2018 by Moonstone Press. You can find out more on swlynch.com

Closed Systems

She says she feels as if she’s living
In an unused world. Awake from the ripe
World is this new world. Says she
Expects to bounce on tethers of a
Nexus. A luminous nevertheless in
Memory of what still lies in the worn
World. How the day she says doesn’t

Feel like the day of what’s inscribed on
A plate of glass in her pocket etched with
Function of province of what’s lack and
Having taken things too far. Forgive me
She says. For this fray and pretending.
For I am like the living of what’s used
In a world of fetish and memory and

Oh my how the system is, she says
Closed in a pocket so evenly matched
With the shape of my hand. She suspends
Disbelief. Makes a good best guess for how
Her mouth is not her own after the lustrous.
After the everything and the suspected.
Still, if you believe, she says, how a world

How the collision of two worlds and not
More than that—Well perhaps if I’m being
Honest, she says, then they are endless. This
Waking. This living on tethers stretched.
There are more worlds from which to wake
More hours in a full grown day. All
Which close themselves. She says close

And here she is suspended by a system
Of elasticity—of an array of dazzling Oh-my’s.

Jessica Rigney is a poet, artist, and filmmaker. Listen to her voice & see moving pictures here. She is twice a quarter-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry (2016 & 18.) Sample her poetry at Salomé and Cider Press Review. She is poetjess on Instagram.

Purple Finch at the Garden Feeder

Scamp of a bird
…………….once seen, rarely

forgotten: head
…………….dipped in red table

wine— birthmark
…………….that won’t fade.

He picks his favorite seeds
…………….& pitches the rest, letting

them fall among snow’s
……………………..flecks of

light & his shadow
………super-imposed

…………………silhouette—
…………………head tipped back, trilling

spicy whole notes, brighter
than one’s yielding heart.

M.J. Iuppa ‘s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017).For the past 30 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 Coming of Spring

Green gardenia bushes
line the butter-cream wall,
tended by a fountain goddess
standing tall on terra-cotta tiles
that are graced by painted fleurs de lis.
The still bushes await the spring,
when they will bear new leaves
and bring forth velvet white blossoms
that will saturate the air with sultry perfume.
We wait, too, for the coming rejuvenation
when we will stagger and teeter,
inebriate of our sodden senses,
after winter blows away.

Cynthia Pitman has had poetry published in Amethyst Review, Right Hand Pointing, Third Wednesday, Leaves of Ink, Vita Brevis, Ekphrastic Review, Literary Yard, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Postcard Poems and Prose, and Mused: Bella Online. Her first book of poetry, The White Room, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books.

Peregrination

Is peregrine not a bird
the word peregrination suggesting

wings, open spread of marvels,
feathered creeds

more colors beyond

our valises, black silver-gray
scuffed by rough handling, greasy, paunchy

filled and fed, packed, stacked,
returned, standing for the next

approximation – but that’s the problem.

Peregrination, I read, is flat-footed
wandering

what I, my children, my lovers
do with compulsion, then return unnerved

is two steps backward, stand
in one place aching with failure.

My peregrine is astute, attuned,
known by stillness more than motion.

My phantom bird; how lightly
meaning attaches to words.

Jill Pearlman is a writer and poet based in Providence, RI.  She has published in Salamander, Frequency Anthology, Soul-Lit, Crosswinds and others.  She writes a blog about ecstasy, art and aesthetics in wartime at jillpearlman.com

Passage

I heard the slap of river against the boat.
I was meant to cross the Nile
with my own thoughts carved
from the skeins of leaves.
My carriage was the scarves of reeds,
my temporal coffin, skin
of sarcophagus.
There were those on each side who guided me

across. There was no holding on to be done.
I was going as a bird might through wind.
I waited to be scoured clean,
to be bathed in natron, ibu.
But I was not

still. There was no other
sense I had so strongly
as that of movement.
Not the boat so much as my body.
Not a passing through so much as

the rush of what was eternal in me.

L.B. Stringfellow writes both verse and prose poetry, often exploring themes of transformation, woundedness, and interdependence in her poetry.  She grew up in the Southern US, has worked as a university instructor and as a professional tutor, and holds an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing.