Author Archives: Sarah

Ruined cathedral

There’s someone living in the haunted tower:
She sneaks in at night when the gates are locked,
Wakes every morning for a pre-dawn shower
In the spray of the sea and the breakers’ power.

It’s cold at night in the haunted tower,
It’s hard to work with the windows blocked,
And some solid citizen’s reported a sighting
Of a warm small halo of candlelight.

When the powers-that-be see the tower’s lived in,
They’ll confiscate the candles, have the doorway bricked in.
But the Spirit in Her wisdom is never going to give in –
Now She’s eyeing up the empty space in St Rule’s Tower.



Helen Evans runs two poetry projects: 'Inner Room', and 'Poems for the path ahead'. Her poems feature in Mariscat Sampler One (Mariscat Press 2024) while her debut pamphlet, Only by Flying (HappenStance Press 2015), was shortlisted for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. She holds an MLitt (Distinction) in creative writing from the University of St Andrews. Places her work has appeared include The Rialto, The North, Magma, and Amethyst Review as well as in anthologies, including Coming and Going: Poems for Journeys (HappenStance Press, 2019) and Thin Places & Sacred Spaces (Amethyst Press, 2024).

Winter Doves

Perched on a long limb,
these eight plump Buddhas
know the way
to welcome morning—
no calls, no scramble
for seeds, not one
preens.  Sunlight
honeys the bare branches
of the cottonwood.

We perch, the eight
seem to say, our 
faces to the light.
Blue sky billows, grace
rises through patient
roots, this ample day
gathers in our chests.

F.W. “Skip” Renker’s poems have appeared in Awakenings Review, Leaping Clear, Presence, and many other publications, as well as the Atlanta Review and Passages Northanthologies.  His books are Sifting the Visible (Mayapple Press), Bearing the Cast  (Saint Julian Press), and A Patient Hunger (Atmosphere Press).  Skip’s a graduate of Notre Dame and Duke, and has an MFA from Seattle Pacific University. 

Late Semester Talent Show


Steam wisps from the low roof
of the cafeteria next door.
I watch through chapel windows, 
where hanging Christmas wreaths, 
dark-rimmed eyes, gaze down at us 
sitting in wooden pews. I see her

behind a shadow of brown curls,
hunched over her guitar,
sparrow perched on the lip of the stage.

Her voice pipes above 
dozing students, her lyrics rising. 
Did I teach her well? Her writing
for class, pure struggle, her fingers 
wrapping the pen in a fist. Does her song lift
despite me, my clamp
on nouns and verbs and
form? I don’t know. Just

her single note, light blue,
shearing a line of sky
through this stippled ceiling.

Jennifer Hyde Dracos-Tice (she/her) has poems published in Witness, Psaltery & Lyre, Crab Orchard Review, Literary Mama, Whale Road Review, Still: The Journal (2016 Judge’s Choice Award), and elsewhere. Her first full-length poetry collection, Lodged in The Belly, and her first chapbook, Roar of All Septembers, are forthcoming from Main Street Rag. A long-time high school English teacher with literature degrees from Brown (BA) and Indiana University (MA), she lives in Florida with her wife.

Imperishable 

All life is vapor, as are our life stories.
All flesh is grass, and so are all its glories.
But there is yet a time to watch the mists,
To search the grass for beauty that persists:
For glints of that which does not fade or wither,
Cannot be bought and worn like gold and silver.
A sight which hints, instead, of things unfading:
Along the shore, a woman wending, wading,
She bends to gather shells she’ll stow away
Collected to give to someone, someday.
Or round the mountaintop, she gathers flowers
And greets a stranger, stops to talk for hours,
Returns home late, and stoops to prayer, not rest,
Refreshed by well-worn paths that guide the blessed.
A gentle spirit, with an open door,
Who gives the tea and bread she has, and more,
She gives an answer for her hope with glee,
That joy that lasts until eternity.

Sarah Reardon is a wife, mother, and former teacher. Her writing has appeared in Plough, Ekstasis Review, Reformed Journal, and elsewhere.

The Rites of Saints and Sparrows

31st August in the year of Our Lord 651,
Cuthbert sees a soul ascending star-shod 
As Aiden is called heavenward home - 
Significance only later learned
When Cuthbert knows his path to tread.

That path, transformed by indifferent tarmac, 
Pockmarked with chewing gum and fag ends,
Would take my teenage feet to town.
I’d search for a stone cross in the hedgerow,
Streakbacked with bird lime,
Marking where Cuthbert’s body lay,
Behind the cricket ground,
On his way to his final resting place,
As traffic transported shoppers 
To shiny out of town superstores 
For Sunday service,
Pilgrims seeking a different shrine.

I’d watch the dunnocks 
As they danced from branch to branch,
In daily defiant devotion, 
Shrill eleisons amid the exhaust fumes,
Shufflewinged detrivitores, 
Their ascetic life more survival than divine office,
Trilling their pater nesters.

15th September, 2024, Common Era,
This morning’s matins light,
Grey with a scuffling of early autumn,
Falls askance
As the organ,
Snoring with Sunday sanctity,
Shudders into being.

Mumbling our mimicked ministrations,
We shuffle eastwards.
There is a pain in my chest
I had not felt before,
Sharp like sorrow
Suddenly recalled.
Hymnbooks fan the air
Like hedge sparrows’ wings…

And there it is again, patterning my private petitions,
The stone cross in another county behind the cricket ground –
I wonder if they are dancing still, my dunnocks, 
Along the hedgerow.

There’s a bench there now
So that you can take time to survey 
The cross or the traffic,
Listen to the cricket or the birdsong.
Faith wears a different cloth depending on where you stand or sit.
But the effect is the same, I suppose, if the wood holds firm.

Clare Morris is a performance poet, writer and reviewer, based in Devon, UK. Her most recent collection is Devon Maid Walking (Jawbone Collective, 2023). She is the editor of The Jawbone Journal (launch date, May, 2025).

Ambergris

conceived in the bowels of the whale
in the belly of the beast
shielding internal organs
from the sharp, steely beaks of swallowed prey
from rending pain and sorrow
laminated with layers of squid guts and bile
born soft, stygian
with the odor of rotting fish and feces
I am Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, 
unbending, impregnable
thrown into a fiery furnace
liberated by conviction
expelled, ejected
the dung of the whale
I am Noah
floating in the flooded wilderness
adrift in the vastness of oceans
that reflect the colors of teal green 
under the burning sunshine
and dark blood aubergine at midnight
I am Jonah
rebellious, defiant
vomited out
washed up on the shore
in the place I was running from
that I was meant to serve
becoming purpose and growth
I am Abraham
hardened from years of service
with a streaky greyish yellow hue
waxy, flammable
a burning candle 
a holy offering on the sacrificial altar
I am Lazurus
with a musky, earthy scent
sweet frankincense and myrrh
and my Lord smells the soothing aroma
incense, essence
offered up as a censer from my soul
and knows that my pain has infinite value
and that my sinful past has worth

After retiring recently, Mark James Trisko heard his muses yelling loudly in the night begging him to let their voices be heard. His work has appeared / is scheduled to appear in Valiant Scribe Literary Journal, Spirit Fire Review, Amethyst Review, As Surely As the Sun, and Down in the Dirt. He currently lives in Minnesota, with his beautiful spouse of 47 years, four wonderful children and eight above-normal grandchildren.

High-Rise Heaven

1.
Sunday evening slump, body
beat. Heat clings to the balcony
as if overlooking a cauldron.
Clouds clash on the horizon,
a wall of rain the vertical
demarcation between light
and dark. End of a long day
that began early. A fire-filled
sermon (without brimstone)
to dispel hell, the minister’s words
a generous reminder that the divine
exists even in the darkest places.

2.
I wait for the sunset, which
promises to be spectacular.
Summer is memory, trees
wear a tinge of orange-red.
Heat dissipates as dark
draws close. Patience.
Just now, Carolina wrens
rest on the rail to discuss
the evening ahead, then fly.
Distant planes align 
to make their descent 
into nightfall, into dreams.

Patricia Joslin is a poet and essayist living in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her chapbook, I’ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow: Poems of Loss and Healing, was published in 2023. Poems have appeared in Kakalak, Tipton Poetry Journal, New Note Poetry, Eunoia Review, Wilderness House Literary Review and the San Antonio Review. Patricia is a former educator and now an active volunteer in the community working to address issues of food insecurity. She loves live jazz, chamber music, solo travel, bold red wine, and her four young grandsons.

Horse Clams in Winter

Darkness pours over us earlier each day
lung lichens drape over branches nearby

I scissor down roots as my sinews splay
as moss clings to the bones of rock, frost shy

sorrow's ice scrawls God's cerebral riddles
as clams relent, shells open and life scours

us clean through the fog and cloud trickles
penance in cold struggle and snow showers

The wish for warmth touches my prayers as such
in a world dying but all around the remedies

are beautiful, there's God in despair’s touch
our damned hours turn wise with loss’s entreaties.

Shaped to be alone in God’s sanctuary,
the strongest prayers live in cold’s estuary.

Mary Winslow has taught writing at colleges and universities throughout the US. Her poems have appeared in Sparks of Calliope, The Clayjar Review, The Road Not Taken, the Antigonish Review, The Avocet: Journal of Nature Poetry, and many other journals and magazines. She is the author of one chapbook, The Dungeness Crabs at Dusk, (Log Dog Press, 2017) and the editor of a full-length poetry collection, Dea Tacita, (Log Dog Press, 2017) written by poet Jeff Stier. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.

Dew Aflame 

In the few moments
when the world’s spin
and the sun’s rays
align just so, maple
leaves shimmer and glow,  
hints of transcendence,
dew aflame on the grass,
leaves cloaked in light,
the air itself a breath
of the divine, affirming 
us all, like neighbors 
checking on each other
after a storm, smiling,
going back home
as the Earth spins
and the sun shines and 
the mundane marches on. 

after 'All The Diamonds in the World' by Bruce Cockburn

Gene Hyde is a writer, poet, and photographer who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He has spent most of his adult life finding inspiration, solace and strength in these ancient, verdant mountains. His writing and photography have appeared in such publications as Appalachian Journal, San Antonio Review, The Banyan Review, Raven’s Perch, Valley Voices, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene.

The Dry Bones 

I have seen the raising of the dead. 
The wind called and the bones danced up, 
out of the dry and dusty earth. 
They had no form, forgot how to articulate, 
but danced and whirled as the wind 
danced and chaosed all around.

One valley over, there was no wind, 
or else the bones there knew their place. 
I heard them creaking and whispering 
beneath the dusty earth, 
hearing the wind music 
and longing after all to join the dance.

Who calls the wind? 
Who calls the step time for the dance? 
Who shouts the whispered words 
and sets the bones beating out that rhythm? 
Standing at the valley’s head, 
revelling in the chaos.

Edward Alport is a retired teacher and proud Essex Boy. He occupies his time as a poet, gardener and writer for children. He has had poetry, articles and stories published in various webzines and magazines and performed on BBC Radio and Edinburgh Fringe. He sometimes posts snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse.