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Belshazzar's Feast


In the Dutch room amid Rembrandt’s paintings,	
I sit sharing my reflections with myself –
my woollen jacket no comparison with Belshazzar’s
mantle of ermine studded with jewels,
his silk turban, white and resplendent,
crowning his distracted gaze.

The room acquires the aura of a court in session,
members of the jury appear unmoved,
floating like creatures treading on the moon.
The wooden bench, the murmuring crowd,
the parched sensation in my throat,
deeper rumblings in my stomach,
tired eyes and cold feet, a bone-marrow fatigue
alienates me from the artistic feast.

The haloed hand, the writing on the wall,
offer unexpected food for thought.
Mene Mene Tekal Upharsin: You have been
weighed in the balance and found wanting!
Belshazzar’s face aghast with such a revelation.

Do not despair, one was saved; do not presume, one was damned.

I close my eyes thinking of God mercifully
adjusting the divine scales in my favour –
myself poised on one side, insubstantial;
my burden of sins on the other, weighing down
heavy, leaving me quite unbalanced.

So God kept adding extra weights of suffering
to help me overcome my unbearable lightness of being

like an ingenious doctor shrewdly intent
on restoring me to life by increasing daily
the bitter pills of my life in self-exile.

I had a vision of grace reconciling me
to myself, to see me poised and not wanting.

You may have mistaken my strength, dear God
to emerge from your gift of suffering balanced.

Shanta Acharya’s latest poetry collections are What Survives Is The Singing (2020), Imagine: New and Selected Poems (2017), Dreams That Spell The Light (2010). Her doctoral study, The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson, was published in 2001 and her novel, A World Elsewhere, in 2015. www.shanta-acharya.com

Angels in Late Summer                                                                                                                         
 
Sunset, in a field full of wild carrot, two lavender horses
stood side by side beneath an old sycamore’s shade.
 
They looked to be in deep thought, staring into distance.
A daydream dissolved to ashes in twilight.
 
Something was coming: their ears flicked; coats rippled
electricity to their hoofs. Wide-eyed and shining, they
 
turned to face each other with compassion, which
was without pity or reservation.
 
They galloped away— leaving me  
on the periphery of a world
 
I wanted to know.

M.J. Iuppa’s fifth full length poetry collection The Weight of Air from Kelsay Books was released in September 2022; and, a chapbook of 24 100-word stories, Rock. Paper. Scissors., from Foothills Publishing in 2022.  For the past 33 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

Rachel White (she/her) is an American-born poet and artist who lives and works on Kaurna land in South Australia. Her poetry has been featured in Kissing Dynamite and placed highly commended in the 2022 Woorilla Poetry Prize.  Her work also appears in Third Wednesday Magazine and Anti-Heroin Chic.

Cathedral view
June 2020
 
A chaplain came while I was on 3B,
the Orthopaedics ward. “Hi there!” he smiled
upon us all, the fractured – femur, knee,
a wrist, an ankle, pained and slightly wild.
We managed to respond, a wave, a nod;
he said he’d only come to let us know
that he was here, could visit, pray to God
with us or chat. We thanked him, watched him go
on sturdy legs towards the next-door bay
where one man had been roaring through the night
until the morphine hushed him. “You okay?”
we heard the chaplain ask, his tone still light;
no answer, yet. Day 1 is always rough,
just getting through the hours. But on Day 2,
perhaps some chat. We broken ones are tough,
and 3B has a nice cathedral view.
 

Felicity Teague is a poet from Pittville, a suburb of Cheltenham, UK. She has had inflammatory arthritis since she was 12 yet is able to work from home as a copywriter and copyeditor, with her foremost interests including health and social care. Her poetry features regularly in the Spotlight of The HyperTexts; she has also been published by The Mighty, Snakeskin, The Ekphrastic Review, The Dirigible Balloon, Pulsebeat, Lighten Up Online and a local Morris dancing group. In December 2022, she published a small collection of poems, From Pittville to Paradise. Other interests include art, film, and photography.

A Pilgrim’s Thirst

      
 
My heart thirsts for a pilgrim’s river,
its promise of sweet crossings

undisturbed by the sorrows
that shape the water’s edge.

Perhaps there is still a thanksgiving song,
a festival of hope

to redeem the promise life held at birth,
a promise still visible

as butterflies play in the wind
and lilacs open once again.

Each night I pray that I too
might wake

to embrace the gifts that open
in the morning light.
                  

Michael S. Glaser served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004-2009. He is a Professor Emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.  A recipient of the Homer Dodge Endowed Award for Excellence in Teaching and Loyola College’s  Andrew White Medal for contributions to the intellectual and artistic life in Maryland, Glaser has edited four collections of poetry including, with Kevin Young, the Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, (BOA editions, 2012).  He has published eight volumes of his own poems, most recently The Threshold of Light (2019) and Elemental Things (2023).   Glaser also served on The Board of the Maryland Humanities Council.  He writes book reviews for The Friends Journal and now lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina with his wife Kathleen who facilitates retreats for Parker Palmer’s Courage and Renewal network.    More at   http://www.michaelglaser.com

Artifacts Rattle in the Closet of Academia


the sum total is shrouded by the cleft sliced
into one asteroid midway through the roller
derby match at the center of a galaxy.  feats
define our cosmos.  a space rich in frontiers
should make room for a probe into whether

a vacuum inside seminar rooms exists to be
filled.  one scholar asserted energy may not
be birthed nor will it vanish.  yet, an outlier
weighs on balance.  what set alight the first
spark?  a glow-up added enough sweep and

reach to string out cosmic handiwork across
a canvas of nothing.  test if the sense of awe
zips ahead of logic.  our star hugs the planet,
a goldilocks loops perfectly baked and never
too frosty.  atomic winds cannot strip a rock

of green growth.  the whirl of its iron-plated
nickel core whips up the shield in which this
flyer for useful design waltzes.  still, it is not
settled how the dust on a globe breathes.  we
reach for the coattails of infinity with further

study into patterns.  such a master class airs
the way of sunbeams looked on as slow, but
so bent on brilliance.  the multicolored bang
retells a vow to outshine every reflection on 
imitation gold oversold by the silvery moon.
 

Tonya Patrice Jordan is a poet, writer, and retired surgeon from New Jersey.  She is the author of Knowing Sunshine, a collection of poems and one short story.  Some of her poems can be read in The Halcyone Literary Review, Linden Avenue Literary Magazine, and Peace Poems, an anthology compiled for NJ Peace Action.  One of her stories was a semifinalist in Ruminate Magazine’s 2015 short story contest.  She recently completed her first science fiction novel.  The first short screenplay she wrote is currently in post-production.

Eyam


There is a window
            in a church
where fractured daylight
                              streams
through a ring of roses

there is a boy
          handing a tailor
          a sack of cloth
infested with plague-fleas.

On a hill
in a circle
                 a smattering of graves
Alice. Ann. William. Elizabeth.
John. Oner.
All buried
                  within eight days.

On the edge
of a village
                    sits a boundary stone
there to mark the gateway
between life
                      and beyond
six holes
like eyes in a button

watching from purgatory

a place where suffering
will only bring you
                                   suffering
but will maybe
one day
set you
             free



Eyam is a small village in Derbyshire which took important measures during the bubonic plague in the 17th Century

Eve Chancellor is an English Teacher in Manchester. Her poems have been published online and in multiple literary magazines, including: Acropolis Journal, Dream Catcher, Hyacinth Review and Seaside Gothic. Her poem ‘Two Girls on a Greyhound’ was the Ink, Sweat and Tears pick off the month, March 2023. Her short stories are featured on East of the Weband in journals, such as The Ghastling. Twitter: @eve_madelaine

Antidote 

On this jeweled journey,
the sheep kiss me on the mouth.

The sun rises and falls
into the lake with a splash.

I weep the loss of light,
yearn for a sun-kissed evening

when the world is wonderous
and I am a wife of the universe,

conceived by the clouds,
birthing love that cannot burn out. 

Bethany Jarmul’s work has appeared in more than 50 literary magazines and been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Spiritual Literature. Her chapbook This Strange and Wonderful Existence is forthcoming from Bottlecap Press. Her chapbook Take Me Home is forthcoming from Belle Point Press. She earned first place in Women on Writing’s Q2 2022 & Q2 2023 essay contests. She lives near Pittsburgh. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on Twitter:@BethanyJarmul.

History in the Abbey

On the angelic figures literally defaced on Wymondham Abbey’s medieval font. 

Difficult sometimes
	to find history
inside the Abbey. History
	has been removed,
temporarily; sorry, history
	is not working at the moment.

Above your heads
	sometimes history 
is waiting, or you walk on it,
	without noticing. History
will have nothing to say
	about your visit.

And then sometimes
	in the great silences between visitors,
history comes close,
	with obliterated features
stares blindly 
	right into your face.	

Martin Caseley has published two collections of poetry with Stride publications, most recently A Sunday Map of the World (2000). More recently, his poetry has appeared on the Agenda website, and he regularly contributes essays and book reviews to PN Review, Agenda, The Countryman and the review 31 and International Times websites. He lives in Norfolk, not far from Norwich. 

On The Block Where God 
Does Not Exist 

on the block where God
does not exist 
God is everywhere 
scaffolding news stand 
sidewalk street
at the diner lingering 
over donut and coffee
watching the clothes
in the dryer spin
in the laundromat 
after midnight 
guitar and singing 
in the half-dark at the
bottom of the subway stair
blessing the sunday cornbread 
and greens and ringed hamhocks 
he stands on the bus
sometimes next to us
his fingers tracing the 
silver chair there on the
back porch in the rose sky
at dusk a great joy
curves up on his lips
his eyes alit like burning 
incense everywhere. 

Deborah A. Bennett is an American poet who was long-listed for The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award for 2023. Her work is spiritual in nature and inspired by her lifelong love of long walks through the city and in the wild.