Author Archives: Sarah

lessons from a peach

let the woody kernel bleed its pigment
into your flesh

ripening can be savoured 
but not rushed

when it’s time, let your body fall away 
with an ease that calls forth
celestial juice

delight in this fleeting season
then crawl into dark grooves
like an ant searching sweetness

hold the seed
in the palm of your soil
nourish it 

Shelina Gorain is a former software professional, a balcony gardener and a knitter. She writes from Toronto.

Come Sit with Me

When my small blue flame
was barely flickering, 
still in the wind of adversity,
you came to visit me. 
Without any words of advice, 
you kept vigil, still believing
as doubt and fear were busy 
building their nest, chirping away.
There is something to be said 
for just sitting quietly, our hearts 
breathing to the same rhythm, 
it can be the best prayer offering
You may be wondering how 
something that seems so small
can mean the world to me.




Michael J. LaFrancis is a trusted advisor, advocate, author and connector supporting individuals, groups and organizations aligning purpose and capabilities in service of their highest ideals. Writing poetry is a contemplative practice providing him with insight and inspiration for living a creative life. His poems are also appearing in Amethyst Review, Avalon Review, City Key, Mocking Owl, One Art and Last Leaves, Seraphic Review now or in the coming months.

By Our Hands And Days

    There is so much to do 
in a garden -  
   unlike back when 
it was done for us. Pruning, clearing 
 all the thorns 
and thistles - getting it ready for 
this year’s new plants. And the birds complain 
when I 
     work near the feeder. I give them 
     names - Daniel, Judith, Ruth. 
Pausing - I need 
to straighten my back - I look to 
the other 
side of the yard - three more chores pop out. 
Work to be done - for another day.
Back to planting.
The sun shines where it wants - 
     the best spots 
    must be 
 divined.
    Plant one here one here 
   one there otherwise we won’t 
be able to 
see them. Dig a hole - 
 painful toil - amend the soil, 
    put 
   in a plant, backfill. Not enough 
dirt - need some more from somewhere else.
I swear the Earth will slowly 
 disappear from gardening.  A 
    butterfly - small angelic - appreciates 
the 
newly planted 
    flower 
 in front of me.
Working the way back.
It’s bad for my spine but the sweat of 
 my brow is good for my soul.

Fred Briggs is a graduate of Stony Brook University where he majored in English Literature with an emphasis on 17th Century poetry. An award-winning poet, his work has been published in several journals and online.

See more of his poetry on Facebook: The Poet’s Cloak – The Poetry of Fred Briggs

In Her Sunroom

The recliner all but swallows her up now. 
Approaching from behind, I must
look from a certain angle to see if she is there.

Her lap cradles no Sunday paper,
no junk mail. Even her decrepit Bible 
sojourns on a nearby chair. She must be asleep.

Then I see her blue eyes 
gazing blankly ahead of her
through the window to the woods.

She sits as still as a column of cumulus clouds
in late summer. Her face has been practicing 
its look for the grave all day long. 

I imagine the den has a whiff 
of ether about it. I don’t dare breathe 
it in or light a candle against the coming dark. 

I can almost hear the scratch
of match against box, and then
an explosion of light 

that might take me, too.
But now all I see are the pilot lights 
of her eyes as they burn

through the woods behind the house,
across the black water beyond the woods,
to a place I cannot see from where I stand.





Ralph F. Matthews is a high school English teacher and poet living in Columbia, South Carolina, with his wife and three children. He has published poems in Visual Verse and Time of Singing.

Seed

The roaring, the cry in daytime,
in the season of night. Seed time.
 
The bulls circle me, the bulls
of Deuteronomy, gaping
mouths, ravening.  
 
My bones are numbered
and allotted. I am poured
like molten metal. My heart
melts like dirty snow along
the city curb. I am dry as
broken clay, as corpse teeth,
as dog dust.
 
At McDonald’s, an assembly
of the wicked, a court of
miracles, a communion of
saints. My feet, my hands.
The song of Moses.
 
My bones converse. My
garments keep time. My
work shirts are the color
of vestments, white for
death, red for wonders,
green for the sun on the
field at dawn.
 
The mouth of the lion, the
horn of the bison, the
sparrow beak. In the
midst of the congregation,
the seed.
 
My beard, my vows.
The meek and the kindreds. 
The fatted calves.
 
Soul seed.
 

Patrick T. Reardon, who was a Chicago Tribune reporter for 32 years, has published six poetry collections, including Darkness on the Face of the Deep, Salt of the Earth and Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, A Memoir in Prose Poems. His poetry has appeared in Commonweal, America, Spiritus, Heart of Flesh, Amethyst Review, Rhino, Burningword Literary Journal, Poetry East and other journals. His new poetry collection Every Marred Thing: A Time in America, the winner of the 2024 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society of New Orleans, is forthcoming from Lavender Ink. Reardon has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize for poetry.

Capsule

Expecting the sommelier to swing
in glee when one is on the water wagon
is placing him in an unusual position.
Unfurnished fittings
seek furnishings:
I understand once-overs.
Bereft of bliss,
some find it in birdsong
or shadow and its spryness.
Concision in the corporeal slot
prods me to consecrated halation.
Unsure of His insignia 
in day-to-day settings:
I push myself to others for picayunes.

Sanjeev Sethi has authored eight books of poetry. Legato Without a Lisp is his latest (CLASSIX, Delhi, September 2024). His poetry has been published in over thirty-five countries and has appeared in more than 500 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He edited Dreich Planet # 1 India, an anthology for Hybriddreich, Scotland, in 2022. He is the joint winner of Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. In 2023, he won the First Prize in a Poetry Competition by the National Defence Academy, Pune. He lives in Mumbai, India.

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A poem from the Shatakatraya

What’s the point of the Vedas, received traditions, 
the reading of ancient tales and learned treatises?
Why these religious rites whose only fruit 
is a heaven as narrow as a village hut?

Compared with that alone which gives admission 
to the soul’s blissful innermost dwelling,
which burns in its fire the burden of suffering,
all the rest is merely a merchant’s haggling.

The Shatakatraya is a collection of roughly three hundred poems divided into three sections on worldly wisdom, erotic love, and ascetic renunciation respectively. They are single-stanza poems written in a variety of meters, ranging in length from 32 to 84 syllables. Sanskrit meters are quantitative, like Greek and Latin meters, and impossible to imitate in English. I have chosen to use a basically iambic meter with lines of varied length. These translations are obviously not literal, but they hew as closely as possible to the rhetorical and metaphoric structure of the originals.

Louis Hunt taught political theory at James Madison College, Michigan State University. He has published original poems as well as translations from Sanskrit in a variety of print and online journals including The Rotary Dial, Snakeskin, Lighten up Online, Metamorphoses, The Brazen Head, Interpret and The High Window. He is currently working on a volume of translations from the Sanskrit of Kalidasa, Bhartrihari and Nilakantha Dikshita.

Dusk

Dusk, that bridge between the light
and the world of voles, ferrets, bats and hawks.
No one can hear the miracle
of the great sun dissolving into mists
or slipping over those distant
honey-colored hills. For most of us
dusk comes down to drawing
the curtains as wonder itself flares out
as the trees tether the sun’s last rays.

But isn’t dusk a prayer? The time
when priests across the Levant
beg for the return of light in the fullness
of time? When Jews praise God for dusk
and thank him for the night’s peace?
When Muslims hearken to the muezzin's Maghrib,
that last call at the eastern end of the day.

Also the time when boys in old Chicago
neighborhoods played a game, the winner
shouting, “First to see the streetlights on.”
Dusk’s sad knell.


Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus) and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published over 40 books, including twelve collections  of poetry and chapbooks. Among his most recent titles are Emmett Till in Different States (Third World Press, 2015), Reaching Forever (Poiema Series, Cascade Books, 2019), Delta Tears (Main Street Rag, 2020), Wholly God’s: Poems (Wind and Water Press, 2021), and Americorona: Poems about the Pandemic (Wipf and Stock, 2021).

The Thin Places - Gunwalloe

I found it by chance.

Down through the heather
holding hard to the cliffs.
Lace topped crashing seas
thundering into the rocks then
smoothing over the creased sand
to just reach my feet.

High, rain-washed skies
white over the rim of the world,
spin drift salting my hair,
wind made sharp with grit 
burning into my face.

I turned away and saw a chapel
huddling behind the marram grass – 
doors held open against the gale.
Plain Norman arches, 
a wooden cross on a starched white cloth.
The prayers and pleas of centuries soaked into its stones –
a thin place resounding with quiet calmness
whilst the ocean raged.

Rooted in the niche of the bay
I let its solid affirming presence hug me, hold me,
open me up 
to listen quietly,
and just be.

I am steadied, resolve is reformed
to take up my yoke again,
the load lightened.
Ready again to turn
and brace.

Viv Longley has been writing for her own pleasure since she was a child. Later in life she undertook an MA in Creative Writing at The Open University, specialising in poetry. As well as having one collection (Tally Sheet, Currock Press, 2021) she is undertaking a number of collaborative publications, notably, Daughters of Thyme. She is also preparing a second collection of her own and a number of essays – the latter to be called I am in a Hurry. ‘Now nearing my 80’s, you just never know how much time you have left!’

carry the dark       

carry the dark
across the desert night
devoid of comfort 
devoid of life
drag your body
your dry bones
over endless, starless dunes
carry the dark
for it must be borne
though water and rest 
only cruel mirages
just beyond reach
still
carry the dark
until finally
emptied out
brought to your knees in the sand
your dust-strangled cry
breaks open the heart of the world
and you are carried
then gently laid
at morning’s doorstep

Jody Reis Johnson is an emerging poet from St. Paul, Minnesota, whose writing comes out of a contemplative practice of silence. Her essays and poetry have appeared in a variety of periodicals including Bearings, Amethyst Review, and Middlebury Magazine. Jody is a retired mental health professional who teaches contemplative practices, facilitates retreats, and provides spiritual guidance to individuals. She enjoys travel, cooking, and surfing with her family during winters in Hawaii.