New Writing Engaging with the Sacred
autumn breeze through the heart chakra
a gust of desire
for something eternal
flung open all these windows
inside me
exposing that place
that holds up the lungs
you know, the place where
fire is compressed into a point
and suddenly, the point
bounces forward
turns cool and hollow
a dancing tunnel of morning light
with autumn leaves floating upwards!
no two leaves ever identical
Shelina Gorain is a former software professional, a balcony gardener and a knitter. She writes from Toronto.
Love in Plain Sight
Are we entering a dark cave? If so, let's step in together.
You be my candle; I’ll be yours. We will generate warmth,
follow light we make for each other.
Let any darkness bring us closer.
Snow, a cold blanket, can sparkle once fallen.
It just needs to be open, in conversation with sun
or a full moon and stars.
Let love be revealed. Let's welcome the magical,
have faith in mystery. Not be diminished by misery—
it is just a segment of this journey.
Start with incantation; like a bird, sing it sweetly:
I want to find the love in front of me.
Marjorie Moorhead is author of poetry books Into the Thrum (2025), What I Ask (2024) and Every Small Breeze (2023), chapbooks In My Locket (2024), Survival:Trees, Tides, Song (2019) and Survival Part 2 Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (2020). Her poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Tiny Seed Literary, Moist Poetry Journal, Bloodroot Literary, Sheila-Na-Gig, Porter House Review, Poeming Pigeon, Verse-Virtual, What Rough Beast, Touchstone, others, and 20 anthologies to date, including The Wonder of Small Things (James Crews, ed.). Marjorie lives with her family and writes from a river valley at the NH/ VT border.
out of bread broken
out of bread
broken
blossomed the wood of Word
whose pulse was universe in nails
out of bread
broken
blossomed a flower
whose cup was so rare as blood
o Man
Who is Root of men’s naming
(someone called jesse)
to the earth condemned
was planted
the sower went out to sow
into the very field of words
He spoke
for all this field
this life and death
did voice
relentless as the grave is love
Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS is a former teacher and librarian whose writings have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Press 53 published her first book of poetry in 2015 entitled she: robed and wordless and her second, Writing the Stars, 2024. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. James Lee III composed “Chavah’s Daughters Speak” for a concert held on May 11, 2021, at 92Y in New York City for five poems from her book. Another concert was held in Cleveland, Ohio on March 28, 2023, sponsored by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society.
The Boy Inside the Whale
We leave certain things behind when we visit each other, like my dear friend who tells me his youngest son died, and leaves the dear boy roaming inside my body. I feel like the whale felt when Jonah was about to be freed from its belly, leaving behind, perhaps, a clavicle, a prayer he might have needed later, or the last remains of his hope that men and flowers will find their way to resurrection.
A boy rides the crest
of his parting, the taste
of salt still on his lips.
Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, and adopted by New York. His poems appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Worcester Review, Louisville Review, and Hanging Loose Press, among others, and also publications in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. He received multiple Pushcart nominations, and his chapbook, Contraband, was published in 2022. In January of 2025, he became Poet Laureate of Rockland County, New York.
When I Consider Your Heavens
(Psalm 8:3-5)
How does it feel to see the sky for the first time?
I never considered the question; an animal
posed it to me.
Of course, I take a sky for granted. I can’t recall
a world without it, without sun or breezes
or tops of trees.
North of here in the woods, a new sanctuary brings
together former lab chimps who were never
allowed outdoors.
The newspaper’s photo caption reads so simply:
Lance, the first chimp to go outside, gazes
up at the sky.
And I stare at the photo, at him.
I wonder what Lance is thinking. Like someone
with new sight, he seems absorbed in awe
of the heavens.
Ape experiments provided easy-to-clean floors
forming the earth and ceiling tiles framing
plain, finite skies.
When I leave work, it’s dark with a partial moon.
I sit in my car, wishing I could talk to Lance
of horizons.
The habitat eventually will let the chimps out
at night. How can anyone be prepared
to witness stars?
Ronnie Sirmans is an Atlanta modern media company’s digital platforms editor whose poetry has appeared in Sojourners, Fathom, Ekstasis, The Windhover, The Clayjar Review, Heart of Flesh, and America: The Jesuit Review, in addition to non-faith-based magazines.
The Dry Stane Dyke Project
i.
The dry stane dyke stands. Barely.
Stretches far off. Crumbling Ashkirk whinstone
dappled with velvet olive lichen,
held with feather-moss, flanked
by scrubby birch and rowan.
The dyker stands. Barely. Kneads his back,
then kneels to study before stripping out the stones.
He re-builds, weighs each stone in the hand, stilled.
Huge throughstones help him bridge.
Coping stones protect, lend an aesthetic touch
with hidden hearting, vital for equilibrium.
He patiently lays them side by side
grades by size and shape,
in character with the Borders landscape.
ii.
The dyker looks tenderly to place where each belongs,
examines each virtue, each fault
to maintain integrity, avoid collapse.
He’s practised the skills in every circumstance;
second nature, with steady cadence
to re-connect with people and place.
He takes his time - a wall built right allows others to thrive:
mosses, lichens, purple thrift and saffron saxifrage,
beetles in the damp warm spaces between courses,
even wrens can nest, just as St Cuthbert
tamed ducks to rest near his cell and chapel.
After winter, sleepy snakes slither from wall to grass.
The stones flourish for future generations,
all as kin, all as neighbours.
Inspired while teaching Religious Studies, Barbara Usher now cares for retired ewes who bring their lambs at foot, and ex-commercial hens on her 8 acre animal sanctuary, Noah’s Arcs. Her poetry has been published in Borderlands: an Anthology, Amethyst Review, the Catholic Poetry Room, Dreich, Green Ink Poetry, Last Leaves, Last Stanza, Liennekjournal, and in the Amethyst Press anthology Thin Places & Sacred Spaces. Her work is included in the Sonic Museum, Heids and Herts Scotland. She writes on Celtic saints, ex-farmed animals, and her local area, and is the representative for the Fife Poetry Stanza. Her website is: barbaraushernoahsarcs.com.
Salmon River
An eagle perches on a low branch
waiting for herring in still, clear
water at the riverbend.
The speckled loon rushes through verdant green
lily pads to purple bloomed pickerelweed,
her dark downy chicks close behind.
Veiled by beech trees,
red-eyed vireos
serenade without ceasing.
Blue dragonflies dance
above the water catching
prey mid-flight.
Sundown on the Salmon River
casts its spell—
where the river goes, I will follow.
Angie Kinman is a writer, reading interventionist, and retired teacher living in Nashville, Tennessee. She has always been passionate about teaching poetry, but it was not until her daughter, who had special needs, passed away on March 2, 2023 that she began to write poetry. She has found healing and a divine connection through writing.
A Bat in the Pantry
A life hidden in seclusion is like what?
– Bai Juyi
No warning
just a soft flutter that skims /
the top of your head
like a plump putto / not quite
touching down and even softer /
swooshes then darting
this direction and / that
into the too-bright light
rushing to / find its way
out the door into fading / dark
of first morning blush
But at least it / didn’t land
like a horrible webbed hand /
in imitation of a human hat / some
misshapen mammalian beret
or / kite-like yarmulke clinging
like a pat / on the head
from a pedophile priest as /
creepy and reassuring
as corrupt / religion can be
as soothing as a / nightshade cap
or an angelic evasion / of the truth
We are no longer scared of / such
surprises that no longer surprise / but
you never know what’s next / ? ? ? / bull
frogs with long tongues in the toilet / men
with long guns in the aftermath / stealthy
copperheads in the rocks / healthy wolf
spiders scaling bedroom walls / and now
these indigent bats lost and down / on
their luck demanding their squatter’s rights /
indignant in furry flight after hanging
out / all night in the pantry
It took some doing / to get it out
safe and ultrasound as / it kept banging
its fangs against windows / and screening
swooping here and there as if / it knew
what it wanted but not how to get it
/ searching for something the pantry did
not / have nor the kitchen nor the house
nor the / woods nor the world as it
flitted upon / rosy dawn air on down
Sherwood Road toward / Buggytop Trail
and home to Lost Cove Cave.
Richard Collins is abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple and lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he leads Stone Nest Zen Dojo. His recent poetry has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature and appears in Amethyst Review, Clockhouse, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, MockingHeart Review, Pensive, Sho Poetry Journal, Think, and Willows Wept Review. His books include No Fear Zen (Hohm Press), In Search of the Hermaphrodite: A Memoir (Tough Poets Press, 2024), and Stone Nest: Poems (Shanti Arts, 2025).
Nur
I’m in love. But not
the kind of love you’re thinking of.
I’m a snowflake melting
devoted to the first spring’s sunlight.
A houseplant aching for a window—
thirsting,
wanting.
The sun beams within my vessel
with everything I consume.
Cucumbers, basils, spearmint,
and amaranth leaves.
Borage, marigold, nasturtium,
and anise hyssop flowers.
The moonlight coils me within a silky cocoon
while crickets and frogs tickle me
with the chorus of their jubilation.
God’s light
cycling and recycling—
inhaling and exhaling
facets of nature.
Shahrzad Taavoni is a poet, artist, and licensed acupuncturist pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Baltimore. Her work explores healing, mythic consciousness, and spirituality, and has appeared in Soul Forte Journal, The Closed Eye Open, Persian Heritage Magazine, and is forthcoming in California Quarterly. She creates immersive poetry light shows, blending her poems, voice, and sculptures, shown at Maryland Art Place, School 33, Subtle Rebellion, and the Baltimore Public Works Museum. Follow Shahrzad: Instagram: @shahrzadtaavoni; Facebook: facebook.com/shahrzadtaavoni
Recovering Words, Language, and Stories – A review of Break Bow Burn & Make: A Writer’s thoughts on Creation by E. Lily Yu
Review by Jessica Walters
Each year before the star of a new, academic semester, I read Marilyn McEntyre’s timely book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies because it reminds me why words matter. Indeed, her book prompts the reader to love and steward words because they “are entrusted to us as equipment for our life together, to help us survive, guide, and nourish one another” (2).
McEntyre draws on several sources, notably George Orwell and George Steiner who both “lamented the way that language, co-opted and twisted to serve corporate, commercial, and political agendas, could lose its resiliency, utility, and beauty” (3).
And so it happened that the week I went to the library to find Steiner’s Language and Silence (upon which McEntyre draws) I began reading E. Lily Yu’s Break Blow Burn & Make. She, along with the three previously mentioned authors, encourages her reader to take seriously the gift of language and warns of the dangers of misuse.
Yu offers a variation on theme. She writes, because has noticed that stories no longer have love, intertwined throughout and she longs for incandescent writing, which she describes as such:
The writer begins with light, which is sometimes a steady white flame, sometimes no more than an ember that must be blown to brightness, and the dust and ashes left by living one’s life. Within and through the writer, this dust and the light combine to create the drafts of a book, one after another, each exhibiting an increasing internal order, like the instars of a dragonfly. If the process is carried to its final and most perfect point, a whole world emerges richly complicated, well-ordered, and entire. The book blazes forth for as long as it has a chance of finding a reader (5).
Yu rightly believes there is a kind of holy mystery, perhaps even a chemistry to the writing life, one that combines diligence, sustained attention, care for language, and deep and abiding love in a writer’s work and life. I tend to agree. And having just read Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River, I know just what Yu is referring to. But the problem, according to Yu, is that this kind of writing has nearly vanished and “a light [has] gone out of new books. . . They [are] sometimes entertaining, witty, competent, and comforting, and sometimes they were not, but they [strike] me as missing that vital flame” (6).
Is this a surprise? It shouldn’t be, not if Orwell and Steiner’s prophetic warnings about the co-opting and twisting of language are to be taken seriously. To make matters worse, the flippancy and misuse of language can be ruinous to ourselves and souls.
Wendell Berry (as quoted by McEntyre) says that there are two epidemic illnesses of our time, “the disintegration of communities and the disintegration of the person. . . My impression is that we have seen for perhaps a hundred and fifty years, a gradual increase in language that is either meaningless or destructive of meaning” (7). McEntyre adds that the disintegration of communities and persons is ever so closely related to the disintegration (and degradation) of language. It is then no surprise that disintegrated language has cheapened our capacity for storytelling.
While Yu nods to the above, her concern is with the degradation of recent works of literature. She points to several concrete explanations for this degradation. It’s an interesting and insightful list and I’ll summarize a few of her points.
It’s a dire list. And the reader wonders, is there any hope of a remedy. Indeed, reading Break Blow Burn & Make is in itself a remedy awakening the reader to exquisite sentences and carefully created images while also proposing several acts of healing (courage and solitude to name a few). It’s a worthwhile read, but reader be warned, it may just change your reading habits and your life!
Yu, E. Lily. Break Bow Burn & Make: A Writer’s thoughts on Creation. Worthy Publishing, New York, 2024
Jessica Walters was a hobby farmer in the Fraser Valley, Canada where she raised chickens, foraged for turkey tail mushrooms, and pruned apple trees. Her work has been published in The British Columbia Review, The Brussels Review, Scintilla, Solum, and Foreshadow, and her short story “Glass Jars” was shortlisted for the Mitchell Prize for Faith and Writing. She is the review and fiction editor at Radix Magazine.
Amethyst Review 