Author Archives: Sarah

Before
 
the sun slid around the house
light on window frame 
the dresser
the side of the cross
 
she looked down
for the umpteenth time
but could not see
for tears
 
he picked up his pen 
but the words slurred 
on the paper
as if in a dream
 
she fed him a spoonful
movements mechanical
from some place better 
than her heart
 
he could not speak
warmed her with
his smiling eyes
sun slipping by
 
finding no words
she looked through the window
at moonlit trees
indistinct but beautiful

Jane Keenan has been writing poems since the age of six, and has already contributed to Amethyst Review and All Shall Be Well: Poems for Julian of Norwich. She met Susan Brice and Viv Longley on the Open University’s MA course in creative writing. In 2022 the three friends published Daughters of Thyme.  (www.dotipress.com) and are now compiling a sister volume, Home Thyme. Jane lives in the Scottish Borders with her beautiful dog, Wellington. 

The Missing

Missing for more than half a century,
missing from the California desert
where you were born and lived three months,
from the bassinette I lifted my chin over
when you cried or seemed to laugh,
missing because of the hole in your heart,
missing from the drinking fountain
in the corridor of the hospital, where
mother poured water on your forehead
to baptize you moments before your death.

Baptism saved you from limbo, she told us 
later, where babies are happy but never
see God—you were saved for heaven. 
Now she’s missing too, she who enacted
the Church’s Baptism of Desire, reserved
for emergencies, no priest in sight.
Emanuel  Swedenborg, seer of the afterlife,
wrote that he often visited heaven,
that babies like you grow up radiant there,
reunite with siblings and parents.

Desire only God, Swedenborg and other
mystics say, because his desire is to
unite with us, even during those times
when we think we’ve missed 
the final boat, missed our life, but
just outside our door are white 
blossoms on the tips of saguaros, 
bougainvillea in full bloom,
the bright clarity of desert sunlight. 

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. 

Munificence: A Prayer Poem

The earth breaks open—
steaming like biscuits—
and the sunrise bestows
a rich mystic kiss.
The great ribbon unfurls
and we are enfolded,
joined surely together,
a vivid embrace.
Oh, God of our mothers,
our siblings, 
our sons-in-law,
Guardian of the shepherd,
the hillock, the lamb.
Lord of our longings,
our artistry, honesty.
Set the day’s table
with just what we need.
We are grateful 
for your vigilance.
We are thankful
for the very air.

Kathleen Brewin Lewis grew up among the moss-draped oaks of Savannah, Georgia, eighteen miles from the Atlantic Ocean, in a land crossed with creeks and rivers. She writes primarily about the natural world and family life. Her collection of poetry, Magicicada & Other Marvels, was published by Shanti Arts in 2022. 

Pantoum of Pilgrims Who Walk Beyond Their Destination  

We, the defectives, the dregs
Who didn’t know how to stop
Discovered hearts in our legs
Seek always the next hilltop

We didn’t know how to stop
Or where, didn’t find answers
Seek a further mountaintop
Skip on like spellbound dancers

We didn’t find our answers
Or were our questions wrong?
Trip on, enchanted dancers
We’ve searched our whole lives long

We got our questions wrong
Have further now to travel
We’ve searched our whole lives long
And shall we then unravel?

A longer road to travel
We go west, towards the sea
And there we may unravel
Pause now by the Judas tree

We go west, towards the sea
The track has possessed our feet
Rest under the Judas tree
We puzzle those we meet

The track has possessed our feet
We hold each other’s spirit
We frighten some we meet
The dark, we do not fear it

We hold each other’s spirit
We’ve found our hearts in our legs
The end, we do not fear it
We, the defectives, the dregs.

Bel Wallace is a carer who practises yoga and enjoys long walks. In a previous life she was a teacher. She started writing in earnest after walking 560 miles of a pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. Her writing has been short-listed in various competitions, including the 2022 Bridport Poetry Prize and published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Raceme, Allegro, Lighthouse, Magma, Gutter, The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar and Carmen et Error. She is trying to finish her first novel, but keeps getting distracted by poetry. Instagram @belwallace_writer

Glitz

Sol, the sire of life,
makes butter run.
We’re on the terrace.
Shaded. Breakfast.
Fruit and pastries. Coffee
creamed with Baileys.
Decadent. The street 
beneath, still sleepy,
muses why last night
we stopped mid-road to gawp
a moonless heavens
splotched down its middle
with a billion melded suns.

A primal call to confront infinity?
Elements intuiting whence they came?
Or inculcation that the distant,
vast and barely comprehended
demands our awe?

It could, of course, be glitz -
the straining flame before us on the table,
oil oozing iridescence after rain,
a dusty shaft of sunlight through a crevice –
that lures the eye and later
we take home and,
granting our perceptions import,
flesh with meaning.

Daniel  P. Stokes has published poetry widely in literary magazines in Ireland, Britain, the U.S.A. and Canada, and has won several poetry prizes.  He has written three stage plays which have been professionally  produced in Dublin, London and at the Edinburgh Festival. 

Great Blue

I reach for my camera in the bow of the kayak
as living driftwood of exquisite thinness
senses me from shore with that great, watchful eye
keen for spying fish and frog, lifts, 
stays low skimming the silver gloss,
neck tucked, legs dangling,
curved wings silently rowing.

I’ve heard it said 
that the bird in any poem, in fact, represents the poet. 
Oh, were I that heron!
How I covet the instinct, the grace, the speed, 
the effortless transcendence—
one with sky and lake.

Katherine Edgren has two books of poetry: Keeping Out the Noise, by Kelsay Books and The Grain Beneath the Gloss, by Finishing Line Press, plus two chapbooks: Long Division and Transports. Her work has appeared in journals including: Coe Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Light, Orchards Poetry Journal, and Third Wednesday. Katherine is a former Ann Arbor City Council member. Her past work includes heading up the Health Promotion and Community Relations Department at University Health Service and serving as a Project Manager for Community Action Against Asthma a community-based, participatory and intervention research project through the School of Public Health, University of Michigan.  She has a Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Michigan.

Meditating While Recovering from COVID-19


Deep breathing is a challenge right now.
The virus has yet to seize me by the lungs,
but when I do breathe, the smooth swoop of air
scratches my throat, and the coughing
clutches me again. I do my best, though,
tilting my head back against the recliner,
letting fatigue flood my eyes shut
as the guided meditation begins.

Half of me wants to ask the narrator,
“Why me? And why now?
How long will I have to live with
the craving to sleep all day?
And could my boyfriend please be spared
so he never receives what I never wanted to give him?”
But the other half of me knows
these worries are futile.
So I listen as the narrator’s voice vibrates
through the soles of my feet,
as he reminds me to relax,
as he reminds me not to think,
as he asks me to do what is effortless	(close your eyes)
and what is not (breathe deeply).
Then he asks me to imagine my root chakra
as a sphere of red light at the base of my spine—

and suddenly I see it,
a tiny planet like Mars,
spinning on its axis as it centers me,
and that’s when I find the solar system I hold inside—
all seven energy centers, tiny globes
rotating on fixed points along my back, neck, and head,
each one shimmering in a color from the rainbow—

and only then do I notice
how I breathe with a river’s ease,
how I remain in my recliner yet have floated into a galaxy
where illness, questions, and fear don’t exist,
where the expanse that grows within blurs with the boundaries of skin
until the space I contain is limitless,
until all traces of disease seem to fall away,
until this lying back and listening is all I do for hours
because it allows me to feel well again.

The Meaning of Life

In the struggle between the stone and water, 
in time, the water wins.   —Japanese proverb

A formula came to me in a dream   
when I was desperate 
		a dream drifted
clear as an algaed pond
	in which mottled koi
	swim their scaley dance
meaning: fog-sighted,
self-contained,
meaning: this belongs inside
	my thought’s clay banks

	the dream sign stood clear 
to me
letters and numerals
moving verso to recto	
like a koi ballet
or the garnet veins
of a coral-bell leaf

I wrote it down in a notebook
I no longer carry it with me	 

because to stamp meaning 
on one equation of life
makes an imperious whim
an emperor of argument

yet the finch goes on 
just being finch 
creating its sounds       
we soothe ourselves 
by calling song     	
instead of edict

our words become rock or water
rhetoric is a boulder
a tool to build 
laws or confidence
power or fear

poetry flows as human song
heart in throat—
evolved from ancient
circles of fire, circles
of stones, small tribes 
farflung under a shining dome
of alien galaxies—
hope with many feathers
truths free of greed’s chains

may our words, our acts, be a river
polishing smooth the stones
 

Susan Swartwout’s books are Odd Beauty, Strange Fruit: Poems, 2 poetry chapbooks, 12 anthologies, and a publishing textbook. Her work has been awarded a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, St. Louis Poetry Centre’s Hanks Award, and nominated for seven Pushcart Prizes. She taught creative writing and small-press publishing, and founded a university press. “Retired,” she copyedits as a freelancer and currently serves as editor of Delta Poetry Review.

The Fly’s Prayer

A fly joins me at the three-legged table. 
She appears to be divining, her miniscule 
forearms bent in supplication, her head 
steadied millimeters from where our dinner 
is served. Many years ago, when anxiety 
raged in my chest like a lion, 
I went to study meditation 
with a Buddhist monk. Every Monday, 
I’d sit in that stiff metal chair 
and listen to his high voice recount 
the inevitability of death, the humanity 
of suffering and the constancy of meditation. 
I’d close my eyes and try to hear 
the silence. When I opened them again,
this man’s eyes met mine, and I saw, 
in that moment, his burning 
sanctity like the center
of the sun. Now, as I gaze 
at the fly, I see that same fiery 
core, and I want to love her
before she flies away.

Sonya Schneider is a playwright and poet living in Seattle, WA. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in 3Elements, ONE ART, Naugatuck River Review, Catamaran, SWWIM, West Trestle Review, Eunoia Review and MER VOX, among others. She was a finalist for the 2022 New Letters Patricia Cleary Miller Award for Poetry and her micro chapbook, Hunger, was shortlisted for Harbor Review’s 2023 Jewish Women’s Prize. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Pacific University’s MFA in Poetry.  

Pearl Knotting

“The Latin word “bede” means to pray.  And as we stitch our beads one at a time, I hope we can find solace in this simple and loving repetition that somehow adds goodness to the cosmic soup.”  Beadwork Magazine

Put on your favorite music,
Pachelbel or Vivaldi recommended.
Prepare your space,
placing cloth on table that will hold all your 
vials of pearls, beads and tools.

Pierce the barely visible hole
of a pale pearl with fine wire
trailing gray silk thread,
snuggly place a precise knot
with sharply pointed tweezers,
close behind the pearl.

Thread a faceted crystal, 
a knot,
a smaller pink pearl, 
a knot.
back to the milky pearl.
repeat the mantra again.

At the center
place a large tear drop pearl,
return to pattern.
At the end join 
female and male parts of clasp.

Gems of water world,
clear crystals of earth
knotted together into 
a rosary,
no matter the order of the beads, 
a universe of rose petal prayers.

Eva McGinnis has written three books of poetry Strands of Luminescence: Poetry of the Spirit’s Quest;  Wings to my Breath and At the Edge of the Earth and has had her work published in a number of literary books and magazines, including Tall and True Tales of the Olympic Peninsula, In the Words of Olympic Peninsula Authors Vol 2 in 2018, Vol 3 in 2019 and Prevail in 2020; Tidepools 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2023;  Rainshadow Poetry Anthology 2016;  Wild Willow Women’s Anthology Project; Seattle Poems by Seattle Poets Anthology;  Woman as Hero Anthology; A Mother’s Touch book; Spindrift ’93,’94 &’95.  Her poems and photographs were displayed at the PA Public Library in 2018 & 2019 and in Fluidity (online) Art Show in 2020.  She has had Ekphrastic poetry displayed alongside artwork (or read from) at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, Blue Whole Gallery, Northwind Gallery and Studio Bob’s.  Her poetry has been part of the FAC’s Poetry in the Park for three years. She facilitates a writing group in her neighborhood in Port Angeles. Eva holds degrees from Michigan State (in English) and Iowa State (in Adult Education) and a certificate in Poetry from University of Washington. 

“The true capacity of poetry comes in finding strength and grace in everything life presents us.”