Author Archives: Sarah

The Man

Who does he pray for?
This older man who, unafraid
Walks to the front of the church
Kneeling,
Praying, as it appeared he had
Every day, for many days.
Perhaps, many years.

Had his wife gone ahead without him?
Had a dear friend been lost?
Perhaps his own soul had
Been broken, battered, in need of absolution?

I could not ask, to do so would violate the quiet holy place.
As he teetered and tottered,
Slowly rising from the hard tile alter
He glanced at me.

For one moment, we were connected, two sinners
Recognizing each other, for one cosmic instant not measured on any clock,
We were
One.

Christine A. Brooks is a graduate of Western New England University with her B.A. in Literature, and is currently attending Bay Path University for her M.F.A. in Creative Non Fiction. Most recently a series of poems, The Ugly Five, are in the summer issue of Door Is A Jar Magazine and her poem, The Writer, is in the June, 2018 issue of The Cabinet of Heed Literary Magazine. Three poems, Puff, Sister and Grapes are in the 5^th issue of The Mystic Blue Review. Her vignette, Finding God, will be in the December issue of Riggwelter Press, and her series of vignettes, Small Packages, was named a semifinalist at Gazing Grain Press in August 2018.

The Bitter Celebrates

Mention gateways and mythologies
and I see openings to paths
better left unseen. No choice is

choice,
but preparation leads us astray as well.
Take this bitter leaf.
Call it arugula.
Call it rocket.
Call it colewort or weed.
Dress it with oil and vinegar,
with garlic and lemon.
Add tomato, salt.

Though you try to conceal it,
the bitterness remains.

But back to gates and myths. Do they truly
lead us out, or do we
circle back, returning
to the same endings
again
and again.

Remove the snake, rodents return.

Seal the hole.
Take this leaf.
Voice those words.
Close that door.

Mary Magdalene

You know me.
I am long hair
and bare breast.
I am a flower—

a rose, a bough
with thorns.
I am creasing fabrics,
jewels, and parted

lips, a book open
upon my lap
or yours, a skull—
cold in my hands.

I am at the base
of that cross
in the hills
near the sea.

Fragrance, savory
and pure—I am
marble and silk,
pearl and myrrh.

I am your saint,
your whore,
a veil, a shroud,
your red, green,

blue. I am your
flame and fire—
penitent, defiant,
here. I am here

where you’ve
brought me
and molded me,
made me.

I am your creation,
your work of art,
and now you think
you know me.

Rebecca Guess Cantor’s first book, Running Away, was published last year by Finishing Line Press and her second book, The Other Half: Poems on Women in the Bible, is forthcoming from White Violet Press. Her poetry has appeared in The Cresset, Mezzo Cammin, Anomaly, Two Words For, Whale Road Review, Anomaly Literary Journal, and The Lyric among other publications. Rebecca is the Assistant Provost at Azusa Pacific University and lives in Fullerton, California.

Gifts

Why is it that, so often, we receive gifts
that we are not meant to keep?
Do we still thank the giver
for our wild and fleeting joy?
Do we steal the blessing home
and make space for it on a dusty shelf?
Yesterday I almost stepped on a turkey feather –
brown and white, slender and slightly curved,
longer than my forearm from shaft to tip.
I spun it between my fingers,
felt a slight give in the quill where it once
was joined with skin, and wondered
why it must hurt a bird so much
to molt this precious, deep-rooted part of itself
yet when we lose a strand of hair, we feel no pain.
So I gave the feather
back to the ground, where it belonged,
because no shelf, no picture frame,
no end table could replace
the warm and receptive cradle that is the earth,
because we have taken so much from the world
without permission
and now it is time to give something back.
Tell me, what would you have done
if you had stumbled upon such gold?
What will you do with that gift
if you know it can grace your hands
once and only once?

Sara Letourneau is a poet, freelance editor / writing coach, and columnist at the writing resource website DIY MFA. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Muddy River Poetry Review, Canary, The Curry Arts Journal, Soul-Lit, Eunoia Review, Underground Voices, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts. https://saraletourneauwriter.com/

Sliver of Power

We sheltered from August steam under fluttering oak leaves,
crescent moon shadows multiplying at our feet.
As moon began to overtake sun, we
stepped beyond shade to stand
where we were scorched
just moments before—
it was as if we stood
the same ground
on a different day,
twenty degrees cooler,
the sun’s light filtered
to a temperature more akin
to an autumn afternoon. Light
slipped from summer’s buttery yellow
to silvery sheen, the supernatural glow before
violent thunderstorms; birdsong silenced and crickets
soon filled the void with nighttime chirping. We hushed
as moon slid across sun, yet marveled at the power of sun,
who gave so much light with the smallest fraction of herself.

Ellen Austin-Li is a nurse reborn as an award-winning poet. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she participates in every writing workshop in her path. She has been published in Artemis, The Maine Review, Writers Tribe Review, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, and others.

Back

I found the back entrance
to the Garden of Eden
It’s made by slamming doors
not opening them
Slam! (step back) Slam!
(step) Slam! (step, turn)
And there you are
the unbelievability
of bougainvillea
the Baal Shem Tov
picks up scattered
alephbaits, JunoHera and
the Magdalene kiss as
fish and bicycles ignore
each other, Francis bathes
in Siloam, destigamatizing
stigmata, and I find
everything I lost. “Took
you long enough,” the angel’s
turned face smiles, one side
lit by flame, the other shaded
by the Tree.

Five Barley Loaves and Two Fish

Take my small offering
Make of it what you will
If it can expand the whole, so be it
If you need it to increase, increase it
But take it anyway, it’s all I have
If you need to keep it small for a time
I don’t mind, it will be transformed
When you are ready
To accomplish what must be done
I don’t mind being hidden
As long as you look after me
Keep me and my offering safe
Anything I can do for you
Is good enough for me.

Mairi Murphy is a graduate of Glasgow University’s MLitt course in Creative Writing where she was awarded the 2016 Alistair Buchan Prize for poetry. Her poems have been published in New Writing Scotland 30 and 35. Observance, her first poetry collection, was published by Clochoderick Press in March 2018.

Coronary Truth

My friend calls to tell me
he’s had a heart attack.
I pace with the phone,
and through my kitchen window,
I see the season’s first oriole,
darting along the lawn
as if nothing amiss has occurred.
I listen to my friend describe
the pain—the trip to the e.r., the fight
with the nurse—while a chickadee
checks out an abandoned bluebird
nest. Only this morning, I struggled
to ignore the heaving in my own chest—
the clenched fist tightened around my
broken heart that renders me breathless.
Outside, tiny hearts flutter as feathers
whir by my window, brown leaves
are thrashed, and seed falls to the ground.
My friend makes heart attack jokes,
but I know he’s afraid. I am afraid: for him,
and for our hearts, no longer protected
by pure being, but rendered fragile
as hummingbird eggs by a lifetime
of confinement in human cages.

Tortoise

What if you were sitting, folded forward,
your legs stretched out along the ground, arms splayed
beneath your thighs and wrapped around your waist,
fingers clasped behind your back, shoulders
clamped down by your legs, face down in
the dirt between your calves? If you find
it hard to breathe, relax. You’re no ordinary
tortoise. Even here at ocean’s bottom

you can bear the pressure, plus Mt. Meru
on your back, with ease—of course it burns;
those gods and demons yanking on the snake
coiled round the mountain, twirling it to churn
the seven seas—making the elixir
of eternal life—what if this is it?

John W. Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher and recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing / Poetry Program at Western Colorado University, where he studied with Julie Kane, Earnest Hilbert and David Rothman. His poetry has appeared in Blue Unicorn, The Lyric, Society of Classical Poets and Boulder Weekly. Blue Unicorn nominated his poem “My Grandpa Lost” for the 2017 Pushcart prize. His poem, “Ignis Fatuus,” won The Lyric’s Fall 2017 quarterly award.