Category Archives: Uncategorized

Living Room									

The cradle of my mother’s arms 
became the site of her second daughter’s
final breaths. 

There was built a bridge, moments
long, and mourning wide, 
housing them both, pearls of Child
and of Nurture, before gently dismantling

to return as the nook of an old, worn couch.

I am a woman of twenty-nine.

A third daughter.

Prayer and solitude linger, 
these alternating mechanisms spinning
the cogs of my worship,
not to be overridden by any ordinary
force. 

To this day when light catches 
in corners of everywhere, 
I want God to be there smiling.
For my body to cease its ticking and winding 
so that my sister can hear that I remain
curious as to what I was doing for three
years, or if we had once crossed, starfire to starfire,
before settling into His plan, 
all of us watching on while our mother

draws the blinds in the cave of the living room.  

Amanda Emilio is fascinated with and often writes about the strong ties between everyday life and spirituality. Her work has been published in The Janus Journal and The America Library of Poetry: Impressions of Youth. You can connect with her on her instagram: @sun_spotsss.

Older Than God


God might be the 80-year-old
with the dyed red pageboy
going pew to pew after Mass
picking up crumpled bulletins
donation envelopes scribbled on
by kids who ran out of Cheerios
and whose parents were praying
Mass would end before the baby
wailed oh God, she’s screaming 
make her stop Father is looking
saying hush does no good at all
what the hell is she crying about
forgive me for cursing but I see
the struggle in the Father’s eyes
as he fights between love for all
and frustration okay we’ll go out
Pageboy God remembers those days
but now everybody’s gone
and the old woman cleans
here’s a pair of sunglasses
put it in lost and found
I once was lost but now am
found in the box in the vestibule
the choir leaves lozenge wrappers
in the loft like fallen leaves 
it hurts to bend to pick them up
they should clean their own mess
she always taught her children
that but did they listen one
drinks too much another 
died the third lives in her house
with her wife oh yes her wife
but it’s all love fine with God
okay the church is clean enough
blow out the candles quaff the lights
breakfast oh look below the crucifix
that homeless man is sleeping
God wants her eggs and bacon
she nudges him arise he does. 
 

Sue Fagalde Lick has published two chapbooks, Gravel Road Ahead and The Widow at the Piano: Poems by a Distracted Catholic. Her poems have appeared in many journals, as well as the anthologies From Pandemic to Protest and Opening the Gate. She and her Zoom poetry dog Annie live on the Oregon coast, where she is a Catholic music minister. 

Life Cycle
 
Each second an unveiling
rich black tuber
 
coaxed 
into thin green air
 
red-winged blackbird
trilling in bleached bullrushes
 
her eggs    will break
and the nest     fall into dust

Ruth Chad is a psychologist who lives and works in the Boston area.  Her poems have appeared in the Aurorean, Bagels with the Bards, Connection, Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Institute of New England, Constellations, Ibbetson Street, Montreal Poems, Muddy River Poetry Review, Lily Poetry Review, Amethyst Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice and Poetry Super-Highway. Most recently, a poem has been published in Voices of the Earth: The Future of the Planet III. Her chapbook, The Sound of Angels, was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2017. Her forthcoming book, In the Absence of Birds will be published by Cervena Barva Press in 2024. Ruth was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2021.

The Goddess of Remorse

It’s full on dark night when
the bar of gold light sears 
across my heart. Coming 
from nowhere out of nothing 
right onto me. Coincidence. 
No meaning in it, a fluke 
of twisting beams that I 
can’t track its source. 
Hand across my chest 
now, the mark a layer 
removed: under the strip, 
my hand’s back and underneath 
that skin, bones, beating. 
The life in me, on a night 
I can’t sleep, anxiety stirring
bad memories with its 
nightmare stick and here
I am, marked by light, clothed 
and naked, part of me bright 
and honest, part the biggest
lie I know. What am I? What
is happening here? I am not new 
news. The voice between
time. Seconds tick, my chest 
thumps to move my blood, 
The life in me all shadows
and bright dreams, all the 
bustle of day punctuated 
by the lost and quiet night
of this. I want to lift this 
bar, turn my hand, hold 
its fire to warm my palm. 
Instead, I shift, let it spear 
back into my heart, let 
the light break me open, 
burn me alive. You will know 
my face by its shadows. Time
to get the shadows right, let
light fall shining wherever it may. 

Neile Graham is Canadian by birth and inclination but currently lives in Seattle, Washington. Her publications include: four full-length collections, most recently The Walk She Takes (2019) and a spoken word CD, She Says: Poems Selected & New. She has also published poems in various physical and online magazines, including Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Mad Swirl, and Polar Starlight.

Morning Song


The wren doesn’t care that it’s early dawn,
or that we can sleep in if we choose.
Its volume swells during a riff that becomes
the song stuck in our heads.
It has shed its own covers and entered
the play of light on the dogwood leaves.
Half-awake, questioning the songbirds’ urgency,
I place my feet on the floor, then stand and take
a brief inventory of my usual aches and pains.

The song, now silent, fills a space that reminds
one of an empty church sanctuary.
Coffee and the toothbrush await, my 
wife’s hair fans about her pillow.
The neighbors’ lawn sprinkler arcs strands
of water above our back fence.
Now the singing resumes – a jazzman
playing his horn, breath insistent 
with its melody of eternal notes.

Bruce Gunther is a former journalist and writer who lives in Bay City, Michigan. He’s a graduate of Central Michigan University. His poems have appeared in Arc Magazine, the Comstock Review, the Dunes Review, Modern Haiku, and others.

Summer Stock


We’d swim out to the tethered raft and dive
and swim down to the bottom of the lake.
You couldn’t see down there, but when your hand
met bottom stuff you knew enough to start
back up. It couldn’t have been far, but felt
like you were surfacing from boundless deep
and that you’d touched the bottom of the world.
Of course we never saw what lay there curled
up like a fiddlehead or stretched, asleep,
beneath the raft or sunk last night to melt
into the sandy murk. It was our part
to climb the ladder, shake off, then to stand
again with toes over the side and take
another blind leap, each performance live.

Dan Campion‘s poems have appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). A selection of his poems was issued by the Ice Cube Press in July 2022: https://icecubepress.com/2021/10/01/a-playbill-for-sunset/

When Oak Leaves Shimmy in The Heath



I can’t forget the few
               confused green
               sprouts that brighten 
naked blueberry twigs – nor,

embodied by claret oak leaves 
               pinned to branchlets – 
               the body. Each suspended 
hand is brittle, erect 

and slick as tanned hide
               greased by sun.
               I see multitudes waving
to be noticed. I see

the starkness of drought.
               As each palm sways 
               with skeletal abandon, 
I think I see spirit –

or just wind – release,
               as if to counter 
               porosity of bone, 
stiffening flesh.
 
I don’t forget the frailty 
               of bodies, mine, yours –
               too soon to join  
beneficent ghosts passing

silently through houses, wafting 
               over gardens 
               or waiting, abashed, 
with the blueberries, for their turn.
 

Kathryn Weld’s full-length debut Afterimage, is forthcoming from Pine Row Press (Fall 23). Her poetry and prose appear in American Book Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Cortlandt Review; Midwest Quarterly, The Southeast Review, Stone Canoe, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook is Waking Light (Kattywompus Press 2019). She is Professor of Mathematics at Manhattan College.

Deepak Chopra Speaks Word Salad


Those who close their eyes to what seems
strange will never change their minds to find
what rises up in dreams unbidden.

The dead wander old middens where shells
and bones piled up are seen near old fire pits.
Specters dance between flames.

In sleep, the lid is off the pot of consciousness
and any hot idea is projected on the inside
of your eyelids, a screen you cannot ignore.

What’s there? Invite more.
For those who watch the stream of thought
and images that pass through the mind from ear

to ear or prick the eyes with fear of what might
come next: a message from the you inside the you
you know, another show, a vestige

of a wiser self you’ve denied.
Seize quantum consciousness.
There’s wisdom there for you to share. 
 

Joan Mazza is a retired medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops focused on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, The Nation, and other publications. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.

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.

Hush


Is it by aging alone
that I landed in this
sparse, harsh forest,

where most branches are sharp,
all bark is sandpaper,
and even the birds.,
diligently practicing their scales,
can sometimes shake my equilibrium,
scrape my eardrums with their calls? 

Perhaps I’ve been led here
by my spirit animal, 
or my dead ancestors, 
or my inner crone,
because the time is nigh
to stand and receive 
my true names:

She Who is Now Highly Sensitive,
She Who Withers Without Solitude.

She Who Can’t Tolerate Crowds,
She For Whom The World is Too Loud.

She Who Craves a Private Island,
She Who Always Wants to Turn Down the TV.

I daydream of places 
called Whisper Town, Quietville,
Introversion Valley.

Is it a disorder, I wonder,
or the naturally 
wise reaction
to a world 
grown garishly turbulent,
jagged, obscene?

Melinda Coppola writes from a messy desk in small town Massachusetts, where her four cats often monitor her progress. She delights in mothering her complicated, enchanting daughter who defies easy description. Melinda’s work has appeared in many fine books and publications, most recently Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Willows Wept Review, Thimble Literary Magazine and One Art: A Journal of Poetry.