Author Archives: Sarah

Leaving an Impression

I’d like the last impression to be sharp
and clear down to the cellular degree;
I’d like to think your gesture left my mark
upon the rough-hewn cloth, and on the street.
I’d like to know that tongues will wag - or swell
depending on the volume of the cry.
If you should show the courtesy to douse
and by your love and care, suborn my lie;
that is, I’d like the image transferred hence
to be enhanced by its highlighted flaws.
The blemishes infused by force of truth  
and rendered on a remnant, or a shawl.
I’d like to think that each and every climb, 
and every fall was crucial to the cause,
that what one human brings to his one term
is crucial in the grandest scheme of things. 
The crucial is the crux.  The crux the cross. 
Thus all are critical.  Each soul.  Each heart. 

Philip E. Repko is a sixty-three year old Pop-Pop, dad, husband and purveyor of poetry and prose. Professionally, he has held down the educational fort better than of the past 40 years. In the way of an ‘exciting update,’ Phil recently learned that his first book of poetry has been accepted for publication by Anxiety Press, and is in production.

Anchorite

	for Michael Miller


To find you in your realm,
not noticing I slipped through 
the front door you left open
a crack, bringing bags of groceries 
because you couldn’t go out, 
because you had fallen and were 
healing, my being careful not to 
crinkle the paper bags to alert you
of my entry into your apartment.  
You are revealed to me in 
the heat of composition, making 
your marks on a yellow pad, 
smiling comtemplatively, a faint 
glow around your face, exhibiting
deep quiet as you ply your trade
of making poems, as I accomplish
crossing your threshold to place
the bags of groceries on
the counter of your galley kitchen.
I am grateful to have seen you
in your true element, the practice
of poetry leading you to
your many layered solitude,
an anchorite annotating margins
in an illuminated manuscript,
drawing up the initial letters
to each verse of your poems
with their taut lines, scrubbed 
of any extra verbiage, their intent
to portray the rhythms of life 
in all of their fullness, opening
both the mind and the heart
with the pure strokes of your pen.

Wally Swist’s forthcoming books include If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from Rilke’s Book of Hours (Finishing Line Press) and Aperture (Kelsay Books), poems regarding caregiving his wife through Alzheimer’s. Recent essays, poems, and translations have or will appear in Amethyst Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, Full Bleed, Healing Muse, Illuminations, La Piccioletta Barca, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, and Your Impossible Voice. His book Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition.

Mother, Don’t Start Weeping Now

I hang on to the experience of the strange light 
shining through the fog
and when the ice melts 
I will find you in the vegetable garden
watching tomatoes grow.

You seem to enjoy walls built by silence
You seem to think that unicorns sleep
behind the moon

While I ponder on the things you didn’t teach me
I come across a path to where I used to be –
access a gurgling fountain spring
move through words, through time
through space -- through the majesty
and mystery of God.

Since yesterday becomes tomorrow soon enough 
and since today is nothing more than a dream
Mother, stop crying,

Your time is gone and I am listening 
to the language of my dreams
I know nothing of the new magnetic fog
the length of what is blue the weight of what is yellow.

Linda Meg Frith is a retired Social Worker and long time member of Green River Writers. She credits them with most of her growth and development as a poet. She has published poetry in eMerge, River and South Review, Rainy Weather Days, Women Who Write, and the Dallas Rainbow NOW newsletter. Linda Meg lives with her Chihuahua in Louisville, KY.

River of the Night

We call it the Milky Way – the gleaming 
sweep of stars that crosses, bridge-like,
the clear night sky. But through time 
others have done better.  
The ancient Maya called it the “World Tree”
and in the Kalahari Desert it is named 
the “Backbone of the Night.”
But most cultures see this rift of stars as 
a road or river in the sky.  The Incas called it 
Quechua – the “Sacred River,” 
the Chinese call it the “Silver River,” and 
in Japan it is known as the “Sky River,” 
or as the “River of Heaven.” 
These are better names than ours, by far, 
but still they sell the sacred river short. 
We know today the Milky Way is what we see
of our own galaxy from near its edge – 
and how do you aptly name the view 
of our vast celestial home, of heaven’s gate – 
the starry path that beckons us,
night’s shining river that
reaches to and from forever?

“Richard West” was Regents’ Professor of Classics in a large public university and has published numerous books, as well as many articles and poems, under his own name or various pen names. He now lives with his wife Anna in the American Desert Southwest, where he enjoys cooking and attempting to add flavor to his poems.

Good Neighbor

Morning cooler than usual, the dew glistening.  	
I decide to trespass to get a better look
Ceramic blue and burnt orange
Nicely glazed with fresh violets, marigolds 
And geraniums.

There I observe five pots of flowers 
On my neighbor’s porch
And the shadow of a passing sun
Casting thin draperies 
Of gray across the doorway.   

And now I know I must return 
And replace the stolen look
With something resembling hospitality.
Neighbor to neighbor 
Asking questions, speaking softly, asking

Of the generosity of light, the watering schedule
The ritual of shadow in the windows.
For today I welcome 
The chance to cross over, to be curious
To ask of the little miracles of day

The shadows of birds freckled in the grass 
The wind naming its likeness.
The artistry of returning friendship.
Asking what can a neighbor possibly know of peace?   
Everything it seems, her smile like a rainbow in the sky.  

Keith Melton holds a Master’s in City Planning from Georgia Tech and a BA in Economics and International Studies from the American University. His work has appeared in Amethyst Review, Compass Rose, The Galway Review, Big City Lit, Confrontation, Kansas Quarterly, Mississippi Review, The Miscellany, Pure Slush, Monterrey Poetry Review and others.

Sunday Morning

Night’s last winking star is tinkling out
On songs for strings and xylophone.
It dawdles down the scale
And brings back up a purple sky.

A voice that whispered loving words
As I was half-asleep
Still curls around my ears
And tickles in the cold of still-wet hair.

Today was made with bakers’ conscientious work.
With gentle palms He pressed
And spread the highs and lows.

All I see’s a mass of lacy veils
That’s moving to the church,
And sunlight cracking through the frost
And all I hear’s a cello strain,
Now close enough to silence it could wet its toes,
Yet rising. 

Anton Getzlaf is a poet living in Portland, Oregon. He works as a school custodian for a living.

Spiral


A silver spiral, the clean curve
	of a hand-crafted earring gaining weight
		as each loop orbits the first.
	Light lands gently,
lifts it like a sacred symbol, a sigil
	that is constant in nature —
		the whorls of a shell
	the core of a tornado.
I think of a labyrinth on a Scottish shore
	its journey of stones marked in the sand,
		how the path curled to a cairn,
        a feather, seaweed, driftwood
and how I stood
	not knowing who made it
		or what it meant 
        content to reach its still spot
feel myself unwind

Barbara Hickson’s poems have appeared in anthologies and journals including Poetry Salzburg Review, London Grip, Channel, Echtrai and Finished Creatures amongst many others. They have also won prizes in major competitions. She has two poetry pamphlets, A Kind of Silence (Maytree Press, 2021) and Only the Shining Hours (Maytree Press, 2024).
Barbara lives in Lancaster, UK, with her husband and is a keen fell-walker, organic gardener and nature conservation volunteer.

Aubade

4:00 a.m., wide awake. 
Coffee, toast, a book. 

By 5:00, exhausted, poor excuse 
for being human.

I slip outside into the last of the cool night air.

A breeze strokes the birch’s 
dangling branches into the mane 
of a tender beast.

Tell me, why am I on this earth?

I hear my good friend laughing, 
what she’d say,
You are here. Simple. 
That’s it.

And mostly she’s happy.

The rose petals of the impatiens
flare from the dark.

How long can I stand here praying 
and to what? 

To have loved, 
that is the thing.
 
The crickets churn like a quiet engine 
turning earth toward the day.

Kathleen A Wakefield‘s first book of poetry, Notations on the Visible World (2000), won the 1999 Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Her second book Grip, Give and Sway was published by Silver Birch Press (2016). Her poems have appeared in such journals as the Alaska Quarterly Review, Blue Line, The Georgia Review, Hubbub, HumanaObscura, Image, One, Poetry, Rattle, River Styx, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, and Visions International. She has taught creative writing at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Rochester, as a poet-in-the-schools, and share poetry through public libraries.

Confession in Gold

Once declared a deliverer 
from slavery. Once overlaid 
the inner sanctuary. On Dura’s plain 
brought threat of fire and fury. Still gifted 
to the child of Mary. 
Perishable, and stones could sing 
in praise of kingly glory; and yet 
your ways are infallibly sturdy. To descend, 
pure as glass, the street, the heavenly city. 
Yet still I speak foolishness 
to the Almighty. 

So arise Lord, 
silence my tongue, break my bones, 
refine me.

Andrew Senior is a writer of poetry and short literary and speculative fiction, based in Sheffield, UK. His work has appeared in various publications including Ekstasis, Fathom, Crow & Cross Keys and Postbox Magazine. Visit https://andrewseniorwriting.weebly.com/

What I have learned

always is
	as long as 	right now

forever is	the sun’s tall shadow
		across one grasp of	 green yard

it is today.

& i cannot break your promise-

i am told time expands		in every direction at once
there is a world	where this is the world,
but for every 	is			there is 	not:

so, in love-		do right	by both

fall laughing,		 & land	in the shattered mirror of
									grace.

swift is not certain

certain is	the sun’s tall shadow
		held loosely		in the copse where children
					turn branch to armament;

we are then called home.

surrender yourself,
	wager your full heart upon
		the game worth losing

	as the ocean gambles its fullness
	upon the shore,

		as the sun stakes its weightlessness
			upon the earth.




Stephen Joffe is an award winning actor, musician, writer, and sound designer based in Toronto. He has previously been published as a playwright, songwriter (Birds of Bellwoods, etc.), and poet.