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God’s iPad

It is dark in the room when my son,
newly six, asks me to cuddle. I am

holding him, smelling his curls when he says,
(carefully and clearly, as though he understands
things I can't possibly, but needs me to hear)

God has an iPad
He watches us, all the people in the world
Billions of people
Seeing us in every moment, all the time
He can visit anyone he likes
He can replay a memory from anyone's life
He can see what we do, who we love, who we hurt
the mistakes
we make, all the bad and all the good
all he has to do is touch the screen
on a person's face to see the story
of their life play out
like a tv show that never ends.

I am quiet.
I don't know if I believe in God,
but I believe in something.
I believe in my son, who has lost his third
tooth and speaks with a lisp.

Does it make you feel comforted
I ask,
that he is always watching?
(I myself am unnerved, the unknown
shadows menacing darkly on the wall).

I am his mother
so I do what comes naturally, pull
him tighter, listening to the rapid thump
thump thump thump of his now six year old heart

Yes
he answers with absolute certainty
his voice calm,
Even in the times when I feel sad
he sees I am sad, it feels like
there is a creature inside me,
it's a small thing,
but heavy
it sits in my chest
God knows it's there
God understands it
It makes me feel better
knowing he is watching, listening
And then the creature will go away
And I'm not sad anymore

I hug my son tighter. He is
just six, loves easily, has faith
in a way I might not ever know
something he found inside
himself, maybe the creature
has it, maybe it can teach us
to hug a little tighter, imagine that
all of us, on God's iPad
embracing.

Lauren Meir is a writer and communications professional who works out of Detroit. She has lived in both Europe and the Middle East, writing her way through countries and cultures. Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post and the Detroit Jewish News, and she is currently submitting poetry and creative nonfiction to lit magazines while working on her book. You can find her at laurenmeir.com or on twitter at @LaurenMeir.

Bathing


in lavender-fragrant froth
broth-soothing warmth
the spigot a fountain
of water-to-water solace
a patient percussion
slowing the heart drum
reminding me

Float the day

broken stove
ruined quiche
forgotten bills
soured milk
leaf-littered garage
season shifts and endings.

Float the day

before sleep
in purple meditation
water-cocooned massage
my tub, an ocean
my body a raft, buoyant and brave
toes pointing out to sea 
and the next day.

Catherine Arra is the author of four full-length collections and three chapbooks. Her newest work Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2023. Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. Find her at www.catherinearra.com

Undergoing


In a moment still as air that holds smoke in one place
you wish to hitch to the likeness of prayer
—for an appointed god or goddess to register with.

But the twirl of the blood in the puzzle you are
brings pause—trying to figure which cathedral 
within you provides the best sound.

It’s like you want to prove the Lord never stops 
—bare maples to self-replenish
—an acrobat to lift daylight with every, almost-false, move.

Elli Samuels is a poet whose work has been anthologized and published in numerous literary journals such as Maudlin House, Pif Magazine, and Tulsa Review. A cookbook author and yogi, Samuels lives in Texas.

God, Capital She

Sometimes, an author or a theologist will speak of God 
as She. God has always been something masculine, 

or fatherly, or so far from me that He cannot possibly be human. 
But when someone says She -- a single added letter, 

a softening of that harsh “h” -- She draws closer to this world. 
She could look like my mother, curls sprouting from Her head 

like dandelions. Like V, the only female minister I’ve ever known. 
She could look like me. I see God in my grandmother’s hands, 

thin fingers whispering over pages of her Bible. I see Her
in the women of my church, preaching from passion 

rather than pulpit. I see Her in the female cardinals, pinked 
with pale feathers, the irises blooming violet, the hens 

warming their nests. God is abundant in what is soft, 
what is gentle. Maybe She is not so different from He after all. 

But I cannot help but feel that rush every time I hear She, a glimpse 
of my own femininity in the divine. I cannot help my desire

(however human it is) to see a sliver of my reflection in God. 
If God really is She, then maybe She is more like Her creations 

than I thought. It makes sense; who else can give birth
to the universe, the oceans lapping at white swaths of sand,

the verdant woods teeming with life, 
                                                                but She?

Annabelle Smith studies creative writing at Barbara Ingram School For the Arts. Her work can be read on Every Day Fiction and in a forthcoming publication by TRNSFR.

Absolution


Athens 


In the obscure district where we live,
my friends have been playing dice
for days, now they’re broke, repentant.
One is Serbian and the other Greek;
both desiring to expunge transgressions.

This morning, with map and water, 
they ride a train some miles up north 
and there locate the path that winds
upwards through dry hills to the church
of the saint who faced a martyr’s death.

Lips and fingers will smudge icons,
prayers rising like candlelit incense.
Later they’ll return with sparkling souls
and consciences pure as fresh bread
then next month do it all over again.





John Short lives near Liverpool again after a previous life in southern Europe. He's appeared most recently in Pennine Platform, Flights e-Journal, Foxglove Journal, Culture Matters and The Bosporus Review. His fourth collection In Search of a Subject is due from Cerasus Press in 2023.

An Accurate Account of the Ineffable



My bucket is fuller than it looks.
At least I’ve never seen it empty.
Sometimes I sip its refreshing water. 
But more likely, no; it has that briny taste—
Salty like tears.
I’ve adjusted to an everyday kind of thirst.
Sometimes I use the water from my bucket 
To sprinkle seeds I’ve scattered on the ground.
A few have sprouted but nothing to brag about—
Too puny a crop to satisfy ordinary hunger. 
One day I thought to scoop a cup of water 
From my bucket and sprinkle-spray the sea—
It dispersed without a trace.
No wave of joyful reciprocity 
Arose to meet my droplets.
Disappointing, that it made no difference. 
But the sun was shining that day. 
More light than I needed.

Maryanne Hannan has published poetry in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, The Christian Century, Windhover,The Curator and elsewhere. She is the author of Rocking like It’s All Intermezzo: 21^st Century Psalm Responsorials(Resource Publications, 2019).

Perhaps the hedgerows have it after all. 

When I was nine, I was jealous
that my friends knew God and I didn’t. 
I told them I would find him in a hedgerow. 
They laughed, but I persisted. Some nights, I prayed
to my bedroom ceiling by the apocalypse orange
of a suburban streetlight. Nothing. 

But summer days spent flat on grass, tracing
the arc of the sky with my hand, feeling the entire
rock of the earth bracing my spine, or afternoons
following root to stem to leaf and flower, watching
my shadow dance on every open page, 
warm evenings spent staring at stars 
millennia of light dappling my retina. . .
Those were the days of knowing.

Daniel Mountain (@danmtn) is a writer and teacher based in Cheltenham Spa. 

The Postulant

Mary Ellen Shaughan is a native Iowan who now lives in Western Massachusetts with her beagle, Zeke. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines and in her first collection of poetry, Home Grown, which is available on Amazon.

A Vice is a Virtue Occluded
 
 
A dam in the river where the blood won’t flow.
Debris piled up like misery at the narrow neck.
Boatman on the shore with shadowed face
doesn’t give a damn if you think you want to cross.
He extends a boney hand for your fare, asks
if you’ve considered it’s a one-way trip.
 
In Kundalini yoga, a snake coiled at the base
of the spine tenses with unreleased power.
The day we make accommodations for darkness—
offer her a warm meal and a bed,
look into her eyes over after-dinner wine—
is the day the snake will rise.
 
I’ve carried my desire in bucket-shaped words,
in a hardened knot of muscle braced against the past.
I have to hold it up in my hands
as my ribs hold up my heart,
let it fly with open wings,
innocent as a dove,
 
stretch my body until the dam breaks,
snake rising through a shower of grief,
rising like Egyptian sun—third eye,
flickering tongue tasting
mountains and sky.
White wings disappearing into night.
 
 
 
Based on a lecture by Joseph Campbell, incorporating a line by W.S. Merwin

 

Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer from Phoenix, Arizona. He coordinates poetry workshops for Connect and Heal, a local non-profit organization. His poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Third Wednesday, American Journal of Poetry, The Indianapolis Review, The Main Street Rag and elsewhere. On Twitter: @AlfredFournier4.

Time change


The clocks have been turned ahead
but I
haven’t caught up – my body’s not sure
when day begins; I wake before dawn
and can’t recall
if I’m early or late.

Some clocks got changed,
some didn’t. This one
on my shelf still tells me
the real time – as real
as time can be;
aren’t all clocks
an illusion, made to say to the sun
that we’re the ones in charge?

I know someone
whose watch is always wrong, and yet
he can tell what time it is.

I’d like to have that knowledge.
I’d like to never be confused
by worldly signs and symbols,
always aligning
my personal timepiece
with the big one in the sky.

Lory Widmer Hess is an American currently living with her family in Switzerland. She works with adults with developmental disabilities and is in training as spiritual director. Her writing has been published in Parabola, Red Letter Christians, Kosmos Quarterly, Ruminate: The Waking, Christian Community Perspectives, and other print and online publications. She blogs at enterenchanted.com.