Author Archives: Sarah

deluge

 
 
i stop
& nod

to the cement-truck
driver……crossing

the farm to market
road…….—huge tumbler

…..rolling

I think…….about
ingredients:

shells
shale

limestone

too much
or
too little

causes

—disintegration

how many roads
we’ve travelled

~
 
the day…….you
announced:

i’ve joined the army
 
how i thought
this………might

harden……you

how it did:

pills for rage
pills for sleep
pills for pain

~
 
too much

………for years

you wouldn’t
look up

your back
to every wall

~
 
have you…..ever
 
prayed
 
for rain
for a job
 
for a soul
 
      ~
 
today…….you call

full
overflow

of the old…….you
the one…….i knew

mama
 
i want
 to tell you
 
i have     
so many
ideas
 
      ~
 
I think…….about
intersections:

of faith
of mistakes

how i
came to
call you

my son

by making one

~
 
I think…….about

the time…….you
& i………prayed

…….for our lives

—perpendicular
…..roads

in front of
the cement plant

that day
the tornado

turned up
trucks

only yards
from us

~

how we shook
how the deluge

(almost) overtook

how we bow

to a god
neither of us

understands

 

 
d. ellis phelps’ poetry, art, and essays appear most recently or are forthcoming online and in print in The Enchantment of the Ordinary; Texas Poetry Calendar 2019; Poets & Dreamers:  Dreamers and Displaced Issue; & Voices de La Luna.  She is the author of Making Room for George, a novel and of the blog formidableWoman.  She is co-founder and animating director of the poets for peace, San Antonio reading series. recently serving as managing editor for the inaugural anthology of that group, The Larger Geometry:  poems for peace (peaceCenter Books, 2018).

The Imams Pray at Auschwitz

“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” – Adorno
I
Once you enter these gates
you know there is no place
to hide in the safety of metaphors.
The sky above you,
the earth below you,
the graves stretching all around you.
If you were to recite
all the names of the dead,
your lips would become numb,
you would lose your voice.
In the shadow of the chimneys
you must not submit to anything,
not even as you kneel at the Wall of Death.

II
Once you enter these gates,
you cannot escape
the factory of symbols,
churning out images day and night,
gestures of meaning,
left or right,
life or death.

Pity, love, reverence
will not save you,
your call to witness
will be studied, weighed, judged.

Yet every prayer is a question
with no beginning, no ending.
Pray you must, for the limits of prayer,
the betrayal of words.
Pray for the sky, the earth, the questions.

 

Phebe Jewell is a writer and teacher from Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in Bindweed Magazine, Crab Creek Review, and Crosscurrents.

The Light Tears Loose

Every now and then/ I see a sunset / and I want to crawl inside of myself / and match that kind of glowing. —James Diaz

Evening sun divides the horizon,
shadows whispering the lawn,
that last blaze burning the sky.

The air sparks –
the cosmos no longer contains me,
and my soul twists in longing . . .

A bend in the road surprises with fields of poppies –
awe swelling when I breathe wren-song,
listen to violets unfolding.

And when the light finally flares, then disappears,
I am the craggy mountain, the grain of sand
lapped into the ocean. An ember
arcing, illuminating the deep.

KB Ballentine’s fifth collection, Almost Everything,
Almost Nothing, was published in 2017 by Middle Creek Publishing.
Published in Crab Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal,
among others, her work also appears in anthologies including In Plein
Air (2017) and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017).
Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.

Maple

Walking
in the cool air, searching
for joy – I find it in a
maple tree’s fiery mane situated
in a secret place atop
a hill against
clear blue sky
I feel closer to holiness
than the broken glass pressed
into clay soil at
its feet.

Jessica Rae is a perimenopausal, solo and childfree undergrad student, writer, and poet with chronic illness. Currently, she works at the campus library to help pay tuition, enjoys riding her bike along the Erie Canal, and writing about the environment, social justice issues, and other topics.

THE STARS WILL WELCOME YOU, BROTHER

In the tear tuned lustrous night
When water is blood softly hammering in the earth’s old veins
And dew sobs into the bone end of hours like a lullaby.
I am the smallest note, the quietest, in this unsung magnificat.

Light calls from behind the cirrus curtain
Muted moon
Alto comets
Plastic satellites synchronize their electronic pulses to four four
Sweep in metronymic precision left to right, right to left;
Held between earth and the infinite by a thought, a notion,
And gravity’s steadying hand.

There is a rhythm to the universe
A chord played below the level of the noise,
That resonates across the strings of those attentively listening
And resonates across those that aren’t.

 

Marc Janssen is an internationally published poet and poetic activist. His work has appeared haphazardly in printed journals and anthologies such as Off the Coast, Cirque Journal, Penumbra, The Ottawa Arts Review and Manifest West. He also coordinates poetry events in the Willamette Valley of Oregon including the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, and Salem Poetry Festival.

 

THE ANCIENT WORLD

“To imagine the sounds and smells of the ancient world
is to bring that world to life.”
-Robert Koehl

The ancients believed that demons
haunted thresholds.
The bells sewed to the hem
of the High Priest’s knee-length ephod
announced his entrances and exits
into the Tabernacle.
He made his presence known
so he might not die.
Alternating with the bells
were pomegranate-shaped tassels
of blue, purple, and crimson yarn.

Outside the Tabernacle
was the altar anointed with the blood
of animals offered in sacrifice.
The fires, the meat smoke rising
from the altar pleased the Lord,
fat and flesh consumed in smoke.

Over his fine garments
of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet yarns
held by a woven waistband,
the High Priest wore the breastplate
of Urim and Thummin,
used to obtain God’s decision
on important questions
where human judgment
was found inadequate.

As the High Priest moved,
the bells tinkled softly,
and the smell of the meat smoke
and wheat cakes
mixed with frankincense
rose in the air.

 

Anne Whitehouse is the author of six poetry collections.  Meteor Shower (2016) is her second collection from Dos Madres Press, following The Refrain in 2012. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love, as well as short stories, essays, features, and reviews. She was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and lives in New York City. You can listen to her lecture, “Longfellow, Poe, and the Little Longfellow War” here.

Charlemagne

Oh, father of Europe,
purveyor of Christianity,
father to me, Gisela-
you cherished us, all eighteen,
your daughters explicitly,
a smothered spinster like
my sisters, I write in
Carolingian minuscule
to reveal I’m broken,
a lost little girl who
cannot hold a shield without feudal circles,
cannot mingle without manors,
multiple wives & multiple mistresses,
you left me wary of men.
Alcuin taught me the skies,
I treasured the constellations
in his eyes, and for that he called
me Delia, nothing more,
You would not allow it,
You would not allow me,
and so I’m preserved
in his poetry,
and in this poem,
living on, but
never lived.

 

Nancy Byrne Iannucci is a historian from Troy, NY. Her work is published in numerous publications including Riggwelter, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Gargoyle, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her first book of poetry, Temptation of Wood, was recently published by Nixes Mate Review.

Unflowering

Buds know their potential
to bloom
and remain closed
dormant because of this.

The last time they blossomed,
allowed petals to unfold,
stamens to reproduce,
the world soon
withered them,

and now, inside petals
is the only haven,
the only thing to flourish,

and when someone new,
hovers nearby and gently caresses,
there is the flinch, the risk of unfurling for another,

so, buds enclose protective leaves tighter,
because they know too well
that it takes rain
as well as sunlight
to flower.

 

David Hanlon is from Cardiff, Wales, and currently living in Bristol, England. He has a BA in Film Studies & is training part-time as a counsellor/therapist. You can find his work online in Dirty Paws Poetry Review, Into The Void, Impossible Archetype & The Rising Phoenix Review, among others.

After Goya’s “St. Francis Borgia Helping a Dying Impenitent,” 1788

the intervention
of a human operator,
evidence, and burning coal.

synonymous with the cheap thrill,
the work of the soul, exquisite science,
unaware that the world will know who is right.

rebellion against this foul process of harvesting.
haunted cases? midnight sun?

there is a way to show everything without blood.
and yet the need, obligation of murmuring
shadows and light, interplay.

Andrew Rihn is a writer of essays, poems, and scholarly articles. He is the author of several chapbooks, including America Plops and Fizzes (sunnyoutside press) and The Rust Belt MRI (Pudding House). Along with his wife, the writer Donora A. Rihn, he co-authored the chapbooks The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: An Election Cycle (Moria Books/ Locofo Chaps) and The Day of Small Things (Really Serious Literature). Together, they live in Portage Lakes, OH with their two rescue dogs.