Author Archives: Sarah

God’s Eyes Were Watching Theirs

God said:

they cannot be saved;
black, white, blue, grey

nature should preserve itself
elsewhere,

since peace cannot be attained,
since war cannot be arraigned…

He took an axe to the Tree, and
as it fell, every color caught
on a single bough, on an edge
sharper than any wisdom.

Cody Rukasin is an aspiring poet. He currently attends UC Santa Cruz in hopes of earning a BA in Literature with a concentration in Creative Writing.

The Door Finder

 
you can tell by
their step rather
than their voice
hesitant or barely
unpanicked they
often stop just
before or pass
just beyond me
before turning
asking “where is
the door?”
sometimes out
sometimes in
but I can show
them  I am
motze hadelet
the door finder

the walk around
the building inside
or out is usually
the most interesting
each step is auto
biography a siren
wails a toilet
flushes either
way they’re
glad to tell
it to someone
who doesn’t cover
his ears or hold
his nose then
we arrive “there
it is,” I say “your
door” you know
what happens
next “too soon”
“too late”” too
long a walk to
my car” their
today is married
to a tomorrow and
divorce is against
their faith,
as it is
most people’s.
it used to
bother me
this job
but I know
where the
elevator is
to the
basement
dARK and
bRIGHT to
the rooftop
and its
glorious vYOU

baruch ata Adonai
who gives every
soul its way

Post-Procedure Prayer
After Barbara Hamby

Comfort me, warm swarm of air, perfumed by newly mown grass–
sweetly surround my swollen jaw. In my dentist’s parking lot,

wrap aromatic fronds around my hurting places, tease me
with the hint of lavish glamour you exude. The sky swells

with romantic promise from your secret holds. Dribble your juices
over me as I resist the Garmin’s supplications, while alabaster petals

fall from Magnolia trees onto my windshield. Tempt me to eccentric
routes away from the highway’s hills and their odorless coats

of invasive honeysuckle. Allow me to be pungent and neighborly,
the way of the bratwurst I ate as a child, each butcher a conjuror

of distinct flavors. Discipline me into disobedience, shape me
into vapor, perplex me with possibility. Allay this ache.

Peggy Turnbull studied anthropology in college and has a master’s in library and information science.  She has written all her life, mostly in diaries, but after returning to her birthplace in Wisconsin, she began to write poems.  Read them in Ariel Chart, Writers Resist, and Verse-Virtual or visit https://peggyturnbull.blogspot.com/  .

Half Way up Etna

“Mind is the spell which governs earth and heaven”

Empedocles on Etna, (Act 1, Scene 2)

Matthew Arnold

I’ve come this far, my mind is clear;
there’s nothing left to savour now,

and though a death in Etna’s fire
is fearful yet I’ve made my choice.

My many friends have counselled me
to think again and weigh their love,

so, do I really want to crack
life’s riddle here and not go back?

*

The tidy vineyards flecked with green
in pale spring sunlight spoke to me,

the forests filled with bird song, too,
reminded me of happier days,

but when I reached the lava fields
I recognised life’s transience

and what it must be like to flair
back into dust and fiery air.

*

But, at six thousand feet I sense
a second wind, have second thoughts.

The view is fine below, the land,
the olive farms, contented lives;

the flowers of April nearly break
my heart with thoughts of love and loss.

Perhaps I’ll rest and go back down:
the risk is being thought a clown.

Simon Fletcher is widely published and is currently a ‘Poet on Loan’ in West Midland Libraries (ACE-funded).  He runs monthly live literature events and also tutors for the Workers’ Educational Association.  Author of 4 full collections, his most recent, Close to Home, was published by Headland, 2015. (www.simonfletcher.net)

When Spring Happens

There are bluebells the colour of ink.
A dog stops and waits, head
over its shoulder, not really looking.
This is what I came for,
the dimmed light of the wood,
blurring of blue and brown
into green. God didn’t say much.
Something like, Remember
before it happens,
I told you it would.

Carolyn Oulton‘s poetry has been published in magazines including Orbis, The Frogmore Papers, iota, Seventh Quarry, Ariadne’s Thread, Envoi, New Walk, Upstreet, Acumen and Ink, Sweat and Tears. Her most recent collection Accidental Fruit is published by Worple Press. Her website is at carolynoulton.co.uk

Yew Trees at Overton

These ancient trees mark out a playing card
of shadowed space, some used to call God’s field.
Two dozen yews, or thereabouts, have stood
on guard for fifteen hundred years, a place
of rest, defining peace, defying flood.

What hermit/ local saint decided then
he needed these grim ones for company?
Or was the yew thought powerful in lore,
bit gloomy, yes, but here since time began,
and thus to be protection ever more?

We need some time to sit and think
To watch the guttering candle’s flame;
Some pause to ponder, contemplate
Our flash-by culture in its frame.

The trunks are reddish brown and fluted, shaped
like columns seen in medieval aisles;
the foliage evergreen and dark as wrath;
the toxic seeds are held in scarlet cups,
their few remains are scattered on the path.

The oldest tree needs props and chains to hold
it up, has seen millennial goings on,
but yet appears benign for all to see
on this damp, bitter-blowing winter’s day;
a comfort, raft above the river Dee.

We need some time to sit and think
To watch the guttering candle’s flame;
Some pause to ponder, contemplate
Our flash-by culture in its frame.

Simon Fletcher is widely published and is currently a ‘Poet on Loan’ in West Midland Libraries (ACE-funded).  He runs monthly live literature events and also tutors for the Workers’ Educational Association.  Author of 4 full collections, his most recent, Close to Home, was published by Headland, 2015. (www.simonfletcher.net)

Bathsheba

I washed myself on the roof,
shrouded by a haze of flowers—
not provocative, just charming
and plain in my nakedness.
You watched as I bent and dipped
my hair in the pool,
built with stones, clouded with green,
the pool that hid more skin
with each step I took.

I moved quietly with you,
surrounded by a sunken bed
and a night thick with heat and spices.
The bed threw our two bodies together—
yours lusting, mine compliant.
A child awoke in me.

When my husband died,
placed before the fight by you,
the man who needed me,
I imagined the death was slow,
that he dug his fingers into the ground
to stave off the pain,
that as the fog covered his eyes
he knew what I’d done.

I mourned dry-eyed,
torturing myself,
not wanting you to see my pain.
You married me quickly
to hide the truth,
long ago bored by my charms.

When the child died,
taken as your lesson,
I stood beneath the sky unprotected,
and raised my voice to a God
I had never dared to face.
I fell to the ground, raking the dirt.
I was left without the husband I needed,
without a child to love,
left with a king
who needed me no longer.

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.

Numen

Inclemency turns on
the atmospheric pulse
to smudge the shift.
This is not a taint.

When stars bounce
you cannot bridle them.
At best you can alter
future spins.

Forlorn edges look for links.
Langue of a family stings.
In numbness of one’s inner self
fenestration oxygenates.

Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). His poems are in venues around the world:  After the Pause, Spirit Fire Review, Soul-Lit, London Grip, M58, Otoliths, Postcolonial Text, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Metaphysical Queries

Have you ever stopped to think of
the vibrational energy of your being?

How the naked human senses can
only see within a super-limited scope?
Hell, dogs sense more than us.

And then stop to think that maybe
you’re in more places than one
because of a potential multiverse?

I’m just sitting here thinking, where am I?
The possibility that my consciousness and
essence are actually connected to some
greater consciousness somewhere out in
the cosmos shocks me. And what of love?

Is love the highest vibration that
we humans can attain?

Is that why we all seek it?

Adam Levon Brown is an internationally published author, poet, amateur photographer. He is Founder, Owner, and editor in chief of Madness Muse Press. He has had poetry published hundreds of times in several languages, along with 2 full collections and 3 chapbooks. He also participates as an assistant editor at Caravel Literary Arts Journal.

Cardio Theater

This flock of birds feeds on willingness
to merge with others in a common flight
over our quantum terrain of meaning-
lessness, our perplexed transvection an
object for discussion or disdain or distant
mistrust, at least for as long as our fathers
are still around, seemingly always recited
in the King James translation, “who art”
&c., & who indeed, feeling like Geoffrey Hill
on a Monday afternoon, could be in heave-
n? & still a fixedness gets us, holds us in
arrears, tells me jokes but won’t help me
fix this tie or finish my eulogy, not mine but
one I’m meant to deliver, like fireworks or
cigarettes over a state border, a curve
these same birds traverse every day, some-
times even shitting on it, on the very idea
of separation, as their shifting cloud tight-
ens & then (at last) begins to disperse
into the reddish-pink of this finished day.

Tom Snarsky teaches mathematics at Malden High School in Malden, Massachusetts, USA