Author Archives: Sarah

The Desert Wind

There’s an eastern wind from the desert
that blows
dry air into a big swirl.

The wind whispers a strange
melody, a discordant rhythm,
an odd rhyme, a pause that could delay
or destroy.

It is a song of surprise and suspense.
It is a song of sorrow and dread.
It stops our lives.
It steals our families from the hillsides.

It blows the fertile fields bone dry,
engulfs our hearts, and softens our hope.
It disrupts our sense of place
and time.

It burns the browns and greens,
the yellow of the golden reeds.
It moves along the sloping mountainside,
blowing embers along the foothills,
burning flakes of smoldering trees.

It crosses highways.
It sparks old memories.
Flames that soar so high, it seems to touch
the roof of the sky.

We never know which way the wind
will head. We never know how fast or slow.
The fire is unleashed, set free.
A spirit that travels on its own accord.

Mark Tulin is a former family therapist who lives in Santa Barbara, California.  He often finds richness in the lives of the neglected and disenfranchised. He has a poetry chapbook, Magical Yogis, published by Prolific Press (2017).  His work appears in Vita Brevis, Page and Spine, Fiction on the Web, Friday Flash Fiction, The Drabble, smokebox, and Cabinet of Heed. His website is Crow On The Wire.

Last Sunday in Church
(Francois Villon)

The shunned offering basket gets even lighter
when it passes by you,
the sleight-of-hand unnoticed
as you slipped a coin
into a ragged coat pocket
while simultaneously crossing yourself.
A man of faith. No doubt.

But the bishop’s still searching
under the cushions of his overstuffed sofa
and in the black-out curtains of his cassock
for his dignity
that you pilfered and pawned
to buy a round for everyone at the pub.
They drank to you, called you a saint.
Maybe, but widows clenched their mites
tighter when you sauntered by…

I would’ve had coffee with you afterwards,
fellowshipped, as we say,
but you’d already vanished—
returned to the thin air you came from,
jittery with schemes,
the rope burns still red on your dirty neck.

Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks.  For more info and links to publishers, visit his website at www.don-e-thompson.com.

When I Awoke in the Mountains

When I awoke in the mountains
I sensed the green outside before opening my eyes.

When I awoke in the mountains
Scents of toast and bacon
Wafted from a linoleum kitchen.

When I awoke in the mountains
Big white mists were clearing in wisps,
Revealing the sun
In a bright blue sky.

When I awoke in the mountains,
Elders were gathering early below
Seated around a silver-edged table,
Sipping hot coffee,
Sharing their stories.

When I awoke in the mountains
I pictured at once the beloved surroundings:
Red soil dappled with shiny mica,
Spotted cows in an old hill pasture,
Blackberry bushes, a musical brook,
And a venerable black walnut tree.

When I awoke in the mountains,
Things awoke in me
That would never be shaded or silenced:
The mystery of families and places,
Humility of moving through forms that reach heaven,
The deep silent souls of rocks and plants;
A wish to enfold creation
In my childhood arms
Forever.

Emily Peña Murphey is a retired psychotherapist with academic training in psychology, social work, and Jungian psychoanalysis. She has family roots in Texas’ Río Grande Valley and the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, and sings and plays the traditional music of both regions. She has published short fiction in several online journals, and enjoys writing from a cross-cultural perpective.  Her current projects include a collection of short stories and a trilogy of trans-border novels. She lives in Philadelphia.

Sacristy in February

What to do with the Poinsettias
when Lent approaches?
Red leaves still velvet, still sumptuous,
gathered in a group of six,
they flow together like flames in a fireplace.
What to do with them now,
when the sacristan rousts them from the sanctuary,
relegates them to a cart in the hall?
Here, in the land where Poinsettias don’t bloom outside,
I can’t keep all these refugees in my room.
I can’t consign them naked to the cold earth
where their velvet will wither into black rags.
So I decapitate them,
deflower them,
pull their rootbound potshaped soil,
snowy with vermiculite.
I dump those clumps
onto the mulch gone ground
over the tulip bulbs.

Anne Higgins teaches English at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg Maryland, USA. She is a member of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. She has had about 100 poems published in a variety of small magazines. Five full-length books and three chapbooks of her poetry have been published: At the Year’s Elbow, Mellen Poetry Press 2000; Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky, Plain View Press 2007; chapbooks: Pick It Up and Read, Finishing Line Press 2008, How the Hand Behaves, Finishing Line Press 2009, Digging for God, Wipf and Stock 2010, Vexed Questions, Aldrich Press 2013,Reconnaissance, Texture Press 2014, and Life List, Finishing Line Press 2016. Her poems have been featured several times on The Writer’s Almanac.

The Nature of Prayer

A rosary of flowers,
a litany of birdsong,
cricketspeak and
traveler’s palm
percussion.
No need to light
candles as sun
illuminates the space
between branches
and leaves, warms
the petals of plumeria
and puakenekene
so they release their
fine incense to fill
the air with scents
of the sacred.

Nature’s temples,
uncontrived,
abide in silence
and beauty,
surrounded by
swirl and torrent,
cycles of tumult
and calm inseparable.
All part of that
divine, seamless fabric
imbued with
intelligence and spirit,
patterned and naked
awareness. No need
to pray or ask for
anything, just rest.

Carol Alena Aronoff, Ph.D. is a psychologist, teacher, poet. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and won several prizes. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart.  She published a chapbook and five books of poetry: The Nature of Music, Cornsilk, Her Soup Made the Moon Weep, Blessings From an Unseen World and Dreaming Earth’s Body (with Betsie Miller-Kusz).

The Prophet

The present turned into the past
almost too fast
to call it the present
as she stood transfixed there,
hiding from the future —
the future that always,
inevitably,
became the present,
then the past,
thus blending time together
into one prophetic vision,
searing the seer’s all-seeing eyes
that she hid behind her cowl,
the prophet’s cowl, that
always failed to veil them.

Cynthia Pitman began writing poetry again this past summer after a 30-year hiatus. She has recently had poetry published in Amethyst Review, Vita Brevis, Right Hand Pointing, Ekphrastic Review, Literary Yard, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Postcard Poems and Prose, and Leaves of Ink. She has had fiction published in Red Fez and has fiction forthcoming in Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art.

The Call

Geese take wing in choral cacophony.
.Each extending its…neck beyond the thump

of its breast...As a quiet wake

of backlit haze envelops the lake..With

the first calls of morning they say—On
….they say—the way is long

they say—and so—
……they say —
……………………………go—

To be human is to witness. Each day
you take your place. Be still. Be vigilant. Alert

to possibility. Aware of grace and pain.
How difficult not to know

what will happen next...The oblivion
stars unlearn the future all the time...Ages on

they turn to dust……&this dust
becomes you. Even at this distance you burn,

though slowly. Because ears are always open
we hear the call. This dust that is me

and the dust that is you awakens
to a kinship. Put aside

your memory of wreckage. Even what
is deep in your animal mind:

you must put it aside...With the gravity
of the first tumultuous

thoughts of morning you must
..walk—-no matter how slow—

but walk—
out into the sounding pool

of the arriving day.
If I knew another way—

………………I would name it.
Here is my only guarantee—

That I will

………………go too
for so long as I can

……………..— I will go—

Ash Dean grew up in Ferguson Missouri. He is a graduate of The International Writing Program at City University of Hong Kong. His work has appeared in Cha, Drunken Boat, Gravel, Ma La, Mason’s Road, Soul-Litand Afterness: Literature from the New Transnational Asia. He is the author of Cardiography from Finishing Line Press.  He lived in Suzhou, China for 6 years. He currently lives in Songdo, South Korea.

The Laughing Buddha visits our local Panera Bread

There goes Ch’i-t’zu
peddling his expertise to the girl with golden rain boots, an elf of
fourteen years
who would just like a week out of this lifetime that permits the
casual wear of ordinary flip-flops.
Mud between toes, a chocolate cake to corrode your sweet tooth
“There, there,” sings the monk of Fenghua,
“Tomorrow…a high of 83 degrees. Rain will sleep in bed, with a bowl of black bean soup
taking her temp. from the nightstand
as you climb these trees of oak.”

“Okay, Ch’i-t’zu.
What other tricks dance in that burgundy burlap messenger bag?”

“Well, let’s see. I’ve got satin bears, pinewood tops. Hot Wheels for boys, but I think what this Little Miss would really enjoy is this lavender My Little Pony. Friendship is magic.”

There goes my little Ashlyn
waddling forth to wisecracking Santa, giggling as if she heard a joke from
Mommy, away on a business trip
who would wag her finger at such an engagement, but within ten minutes
relent and return his black tea grin.
Our personal Boo Radley? The neighbors say so.
“I hail from miles beyond,” Ch’i-t’zu clears his throat,
“But I’ve heard this town’s bereft of cheer. Morning toast, without your favorite strawberry jam.
Tortillas. Without meat. Or salsa.”
We can only nod
while Ashlyn blesses his cotton tummy, rotund.

On the weekends, Kristine Brown frequently wanders through historic neighborhoods, saying “Hello” to most any cat she encounters. Some of these cats are found on her blog, Crumpled Paper Cranes (https://crumpledpapercranes.com). Her creative work can be found in Hobart, Sea Foam Mag, Philosophical Idiot, among others, and a collection of flash prose and poetry, Scraped Knees, was released in 2017 by Ugly Sapling.

Pebble and Stubble

That which gives often…
often receives nothing in return.
Do not be deceived by the
writings etched on stone pillars.
Corn often grows taller than words
words often grow taller than deeds.
The simple man strides upon fields
with stalks as thick as dictionaries.
We take a full cache and fill silos
forty suns per one field.
Horse hooves and wagon wheels cut
deeply into furrows of freshly turned soil.
Geese feed in flocks as finger-like
tendrils of wispy fog rises.
Wrung ones neck for our bellies
now we give it spit and hot coals.
At dusk, we watch wise men
gather petrified husk and stubble
to craft tablet and rope.
Field mice dart across the clods of
earth, searching out feed and trying
not to succumb to a Great Horned Owl..
Starlings, crows and ravens pick
clean all discarded pebble and stubble.
Within our breath, the sun reappears
another slow time within the solstice.

Ken Allan Dronsfield is a disabled veteran, poet, and fabulist. He resides in Seminole Oklahoma, USA. He works full-time on his poetry, dabbling in digital art. Ken’s poem, “With Charcoal Black, VIII” was selected as the First Prize Winner in a recent major Nature Poetry Contest from Realistic Poetry International.

SECULAR COMEDY

A cool moon chimes softly in the winter sky,
swelling like a bell in an empty church.
The stars twinkle as soft as some nun’s sigh.
Tonight is lousy with liturgy. I search
for secular symbols, untouched, unglossed
by doctors of divine arcana. Black
as an old cassock, torn, carelessly tossed
upwards, this sky is a tangible fact.
I sully it with nuns and bells, the dust
of my lost religion. It’s a disease
I can’t cure or won’t. I mistake stardust
for ritual, moon for meaning. Cease.
Enough. I will look at things as they are.
I’ll learn to walk at night and just see stars.

Mark J. Mitchell’s novel, The Magic War appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied  at Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work appeared in several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. He lives with his wife, Joan Juster making his living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco. A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/