Author Archives: Sarah

Faith is for Followers

(1)

In this circus of pursuits reverses
are marked on maps designed by
divinity. Some theologues brand
this to causations in other births.

(2)

Shortcomings cat-sit my conscience
as I splurge on fourflushers who lure
me to regions of no-return. Bounties
in belief rescue me without reproof.

Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His poems are in venues around the world:   A Restricted View From Under The Hedge, Pantry Ink, Bonnie’s Crew, Morphrog 16, Mad Swirl, The Penwood Review, Faith Hope & Fiction, Communion Arts Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

ode to the shopping mall in december

 sleep in heavenly winter white noise, I wish I could / I’m caffeine awake / my body stillborn in the bustle of “what can I help you find today”

(can i help you find the rotten heart of it all / the ground floor of Macy’s / where I go on my breaks to disassociate / the back hallway intestines / behind doors marked “authorized personnel” / the string and tin can veins of it all / where no one sees me cry)

here, the endless Christmas Eve service / forgotten summer hymns forgotten again / altar of fake plants / benches like pews / empty like every day but Sunday

burst outside for long awaited cigarette break / the forever tinkling / sound of snowfall to an insect / ceaseless Salvation Army bell

Rebecca Kokitus is a part time resident of Media, PA just outside Philadelphia, and a part time resident of a small town in rural Schuylkill County, PA. She is an aspiring poet and is currently an undergraduate in the writing program at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She has recent work in Rag Queen Periodical and Moonchild Magazine, and more work in other places. She tweets at @rxbxcca_anna.

Flamboyan

You say it must come down
(Inside is the orange red where roots take hold)

What would happen if the flamboyan
Spread its roots beneath the house
Burrowed through the foundation
And appeared unannounced in the living room
Like a new baby, leaving pollen on the table
Petals, stamen, arrogant pistils

August sun burns the asphalt
Dogs sleep protected under its fronds
before it comes down

Maria Marrero was nurtured on pablum and poetry by her mother who sang her “las
Nanas”, little verses in Spanish. She is a lover of poetry and a lover of
words in both Spanish and English. She has taught writing for over 30
years, and now that she’s retired she finally has the time to write
poetry every day.

In A Silent Way

Steel-blue feather, with white
chevron tip & ready quill, lies
on my doorstep . . .

By what logic do I pick
it up & twirl perfection
between my fingertips?

I think for something so
light, it has heft.

Long ago in winter, you
gave me a gift of feather
earrings, and beneath

..the porch light full of dizzy
..snow, you said: Taking off
..is the first step . . .

And I thought
you were talking
about poetry.

M.J. Iuppa ‘s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past  29 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.

Spirit in Matter

This was the morning when I saw through their grey veils
The souls of the stones.
Suggestions of weathered faces
Peered from beneath hoods of moss and the detritus of fallen leaves.
One bore a beard of pale lichen,
Another sported a downy cockade of unfurling fern.
A slick quartz boulder revealed itself the group’s leader;
The others encircled, it heeding a silent homily
Imparting the wisdom that accrues
To a being that has lodged for centuries in an earthen hollow.

Round about the trees kept watch,
Drawn up erect, all cellular senses honed;
Their alert intelligence vibrated
With the hum of a tautly-stretched wire.

Regiments of bloodroot
Massed on a southward slope
With green mantles folded beneath snowy helms,
Awaiting the high-pitched blast
Of a fairy trumpet.

Meanwhile, a grateful pool slowly filled
As a replenishing brook rushed down its throaty channel.

To be here at such a time each year,
To be silent,
To perceive the world with unnamed senses;
This is my commitment.

Emily Peña Murphey is a retired psychotherapist who has published work in several literary journals. She was recently designated a finalist in the short story and essay categories of the Adelaide Voices Literary Contest. She has family roots in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Texas’ Río Grande Valley.  She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the U.S.A.

Emily Peña 2016

Arête

I am, the voice said, speaking from the charred figure
of a small madrone, a lifeless thing.

I’m spent, not simply tired, exhausted,
but empty, un-animated, without.

I did, and did, and did, and now I’m done.
I know you came for inspiration,

for certainty in spite of your disbelief,
for one more fiery ignition of knowledge

or a rabbit of faith pulled out
of the magical natural world you conquered.

I’ve run out of flame, I’m extinguished.
I could only keep it going so long.

That’s why I said listen to the little voice.
That’s me. That’s all that’s left.

The earth is done, you know. Don’t think
you’ve killed it, though what you’ve done

with its magnitude of riches is remarkable
in a negative way. Perishing is part

of life, and even this wet marble of a world dies
or changes every millennia. Fickle thing,

creation. I didn’t exactly plan it
in the way you think, nor is it an accident

or an evolutionary spin in the way
you think, either. I can’t explain it.

It simply was, in the way you think.
But you came here on a hike

looking for beauty and solace.
I’m no agent of grandiosity any more.

But sit. Stay with me. Talk. I’ll listen, give comfort.
It’s what I do. It’s what I’ll always do.

Jeff Burt lives in California. He works in mental health, and has work in The Monarch Review, LitBreak, Terrene, Nature Writing, and won the 2017 Cold Mountain Review poetry prize.

Omens

The ancients saw omens
in the stones
and how oddly they settled
after the storm.
Observant of how the frost collected
on the timbers that eventually
they lopped down,
their splinters spelling doom.

They told of harvest
by way of firelight, their grins
reflected from the blood
that pooled at slaughter;
and trembled when
the ox bones,
chiming in the wind,
sang of famine and war.

But here, in the kingdom of modernity,
stopped in my car at a blood-red light,
it seems foolish to feel
connected with those pagan hands,
reaching in chants across the centuries
-their spirits and mine,
a confluence in my skin-
pointing at all these omens
found in each passerby:
sports car,
ambulance,
flower truck-
backdoor ajar,
petals spilling out.

D.A. Lucas is a poet and expat living in Changchun, China, where he teaches composition and rhetoric at Rutgers University Newark Institute’s business school at NENU. His most recent works have appeared in Barking Sycamores, The Blue Nib, and Three Line Poetry.

Emptiness

there is an emptiness which knows
the attraction of the clean sheet to the penitent
not the threat of the blank page to the poet
which sees the potential of the fallow field
not the blight of the vacant lot
which trusts in the dream, not the fantasy

a good kind of emptiness which doesn’t
lust or ache with desire or regret
but waits in readiness content to do nothing
except prepare itself by fasting
which hollows itself out to enable
the echo of hope to be heard

this sweet emptiness
hears the contemplative silence of the pilgrim
not the dull drumming of boredom or greed
it is an innocent in the desert
with nothing to lean on
but its own fragility

Anne B. Murray worked for many years in Glasgow, Scotland, facilitating adult creative writing groups  Now retired, she writes and performs poetry and organises public readings. She has had many poems published in several journals and anthologies in the UK and has self-published four poetry pamphlets. Her latest pamphlet The Colour Shop is due out in 2019.

An Offering

Here in the land of wild azaleas and darlingtonia,
fragrance moves down my body until
I feel like new love.
Roots spread through me downward
into the Siskiyou soil.
Yes, a special place.

The snowy peaks not so far away
stand strong against a late spring sky.
They are shouting to me!

“We have seen you before, Old Woman!
You huffed and puffed up our slopes and
across our monkey-flower meadows.
Swam joyously in our jewel lakes!
We are happy to see you still walking the earth.”

I fill not with regret at my frailty,
nor longing for what is lost.

Not this time. This time
I fill with gratitude for what has been,
and still is, somewhere.

Nostalgia frequently lies like a fog
over true memories buried deep in gray matter.

Thank you, my giant friends,
for offering me a true memory out of the fog!