New Writing Engaging with the Sacred
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Timothy Berrigan works in adult and community literacy at the Brooklyn Public Library. His work has appeared in Columbia Journal, The Maine Review, The Perch, SPECTRA, The Scores, SPAM Zine, and elsewhere. He lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
How it Began Voice entered earth 1.5 billion years ago through cilia, a foundation for life’s awareness for sound waves. Before that, the roar of thunder, turning tides, wind howling its music across mountains and plains had no audience. Sometimes on a walk far away from roads and human contact you catch it, that feeling of being the first to hear.
Cilia (or stereocilia) are hair cells found in the inner ear. They respond to fluid motion in animals and humans for various functions, including hearing and balance.
Heather Walker is a London-based writer of poetry and short fiction. She often writes about the human connection with earth. Her work has appeared in several anthologies as well as Ink Sweat & Tears, Visual Verse, Seaborne and Popshop.
Thankyou small life in half darkness, tasting leaves, sweeter sweet decay as the swollen morning opens, parts of myself. I have given every one over in sleep to this healing, poetry the edge of me, the only shape left hanging on my hollow, I try to braid as I braid long hair in the dark. Just like my mother, I have longed to be what I already am. This redness a fire I’ve known better with my fast tongue than any other quickness. Until this morning. I have been emptied. What is left is Thankyou. As I swallow & swallow it brims my body with warmth, with salt the most frustrating & forceful are elementally submerged underneath it’s eclipse. I walk to the window, unsure of where to put my hands now that I am oceans of Thankyou. The pinkening hills. My words survive as small dark seeds & are buried. I have little to say.
Aiyana Masla is the author of the chapbook Stone Fruit (Bottlecap Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Cordella Press, the West Trestle Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Vagabond City Poetry, Rogue Agent Journal, and as a part of the collection So Many Ways to Draw a Ghost. Based in Brooklyn, New York, she is an interdisciplinary artist and an anti bias educator. More of her work can be found at www.AiyanaMasla.com
THE SYMEON PROPOSITION St. Symeon Stylites, A.D. 389 - A.D. 459. Symeon Stylites, the elder, the most famous of the pillar saints, lived about 30 miles or a twelve hours' ride from Antakya, Syria in the mountains. There he made his home for forty-two years on successively higher columns, the last one sixty-six feet tall. Telanissos, Syria. March, A.D. 459 I. after Thighbone to heaven... and I am climbing, even in the huddled light of nightwings, skyward. As far away as "now" you will want details. As close as "then" they came curiously staring, pointing, seeking. You must somehow see particulars as irrelevant. That is the message: neither noun, nor verb, nor adjective, but preposition; and in the disposition is everything. Balanced precipitously, purposely, you may take me too seriously, finding fun, my message intolerable. This pillar I built beginning with an outcrop of rock, pulpit to the distant valley; the rocks rolled heavenward, mortar and trowel working a circular ascension, the sand path wrapping its way around the whole. That was the beginning. You desire to know the miraculous; I shall resist your temptation. II. inside Grained, concentric around the radiant purpose, purposing, in the narrowing of years, mined of purpose, scoriaceous in the wound’s flesh, I serve to heal, leaving the escutcheon of my memory as gift. There is no reason to begin in the preface in order to arrive. The possibility is alive even in the preposterous preposition. III. about So what, you will say, if the fellow has climbed a furlong to heaven? An excited ecstatic, you will think, worth only the view. It was a small decision, a few feet at first: the preposition disposed; yet in fervor, the heart spills its abundance and is enlarged. Running away from or toward, I needed to be with you but not with you: reachable but out of reach. In your day, I would make the tabloids as astral figure, a supernal lightning rod. You want to know details: how I ate, slept, whether my bowels churned, as if it matters. You think I knew everything wrapped in ethereal haze, the sugared hush of sanctity. I knew nothing. IV. beyond Behind my squared patio, balustrade against the winds, a canyon gorge. There stone cliffs shadow the swift river, green with minerals, that flows joining the Orontes, joining the sea. In my view, the sweep of fields: the soft first blossoms in apricot orchards; rivulets filled with the last snows melting, overflowing shallow banks, washing the world; and nearer yet, an olive grove, leaves, green-gray, then Midas silver in the breeze. And always an outline of mountains, the muted colors, an irregular tapestry: background, a gray furze; highlights in mauve, green, ocher, punctuated occasionally with clusters of dark fir. To the southeast, Antioch spreading across the plain into sprawling suburbs, winding around the river, winding its way. And the people, every afternoon I see the people, begging for healing, begging. And I see the stalwart line held steadfast by my penance. V. despite And how was I fed and what did I eat? My table's fortune was supplied. Imagine: St. Anthony's raven offering a surprised berry; a gull, inland from the sea, bearing a flopping fish; a peasant wife raising, at sunset, a wicker basket filled with apricots or manna from the carob tree. It is a necessity to know? One either consumes or is consumed. I made the scarcer choice. A fire that burns through hunger, this choice; mind and spirit freed from flesh, for consider the apricot beneath whose soft, textured fruit lies the heart—a stone with wings. VI. for Dramatic action? It was not missing: the wayward bee, fat-pollened body, exploring an anthered vase of lily, its velvet halls, then flying, flowering the world; the antlered summer sky, flashes clashing like invisible wills working their want; the beetle moving slowly across jagged rock, finding its way carefully, leaving its green-bronze armor, vulnerable, in its exertion, as you are, as I was. VII. before At the monastery I slept outside the gate for days, begging, sure of my intention, the dusty evenings embroidering my aspirations. And when I would not go away, they let me in. I could offer everything, and so I did. I was suspect, watched, wondered at, a prize circling the confines in a cage of straw. Years leafed, unleafed the seasons. Leaving community, leaving... I chose a strange, stalagmite existence, chaining myself at first with a leg iron, later testing my courage in staying, by cutting it free, bolstered only by my spirit's plinth and plenty. How ridiculous I must seem, irrelevant in a world moving horizontally across time; my standing on one leg; the heron, landing, standing on one leg, too, eyes cast heavenward, as if mocking me. Laughing, I understood. VIII. into Always in my cyclopedic eye, Antioch: I saw ships laden with cloves and cinnamon, coriander and fennel, sailing from her river port to Alexandria, Athens, Rome. I saw the baths— solarium, tepidarium, frigidarium— sleek bodies resting in the ease of leisure rubbed with unguents, and perfumes. Saw the goldsmiths hammering effigies that rivaled those of Ephesus, the butchers, the wine merchants; saw the sailors following hearts incised on marble markers—mappings to languid prostitutes. Saw the splendors of a Dionysian feast articulated in mosaics, busy with beasts and garlands and grinning satyrs. Saw the Temple of Hecate, its jasper steps, a descent to the cavernous and polished rooms of Hell; and I have chosen, as missile of reversal, an ascension, further and future, beseeching with proximity. Saw before dawn, the 14th of September, in the bluing of the wind, Antioch crumbling around its uneasy ground, the quarter, Ostrakine, destroyed, the island palace, Diocletian's palace, with the Tetrapylon of Elephants collapsing; the colonnades, the baths, the clepsydra, trick and trickle of time, all destroyed; the city ablaze in its newly-shaped destruction. I heard the intercessions; I saw the dispossessed, the weary. IX. from Pillow and pillory, my pillar became an arrow finding aim, became a focus for affection. Obelisk oblation, from my vertiginous vantage, opening a window on verity, I, like a frail needle, am magnetized to wonder. X. toward Attendant, ardent, I await the briared rose that climbs the cliff of summer; await the hovering cloud, apricot and orchid, announcement of magnificent presence; await the horizontal journey, the side-wise severing, that begins after, ends with expectation. XI. until Visible bell, temple of fleche and flesh, burning wick on my great candle: syllable and sign for all who come to hear, to see— for you, deep down drawn to upward, I offer the preposition, the apricot. Observe my groaning who, in diametrical dissonance, falling found the rhyme's lay, failing found the strength of slight; held them, orb to the world, and felled the cedar gates of heaven's court.
Ann Power is a retired faculty member from the University of Alabama. She enjoys writing historical sketches as well as poems based in the kingdoms of magical realism. Her work has appeared in: Spillway, Gargoyle Magazine, The Birmingham Poetry Review, The American Poetry Journal, Dappled Things, Caveat Lector, The Copperfield Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Loch Raven Review, Amethyst Review, and other journals. In addition, Ann’s poem, “Ice Palace” (The Copperfield Review) was nominated for Best of the Net in Poetry for 2021.
The Beacons Everywhere We exist in places where near-death lives, always right outside the walls, the mulling metal vessel, where fear is far less than feeling the flicker several light-years out sending signals our way, signals our way, signals our way. There's ghosts in all the components and radio waves and rays of light varying in size; spilled ink performing gyroscopic manouvres, fairies and will-o-wisps and spirits of the deceased providing comfort for the lone pilot, and Jesus spending his last days lighting the starship's corridor lamps for one more planet, one more star, one more star closer to the unpopped bubble of heaven.
Garrett Carroll is a poet and writer whose work has previously been in Star*Line and Utopia Science Fiction Magazine.
Snowfall With an attentive touch snow falls slowly on my hair, my face. I pretend to be St. Francis feeding a bird as the drops of snow anoint us. I wonder what else could sustain this moment of bliss. I think of what Murakami wrote about a circle with no circumference, a circle with many centers and feel I found it in the innermost center of my being as I stand in this stilled moment. Of course there is no circumference. The elixir I breathe in defies barriers.
Janet Krauss, who has two books of poetry published, Borrowed Scenery, Yuganta Press, and Through the Trees of Autumn, Spartina Press, has recently retired from teaching English at Fairfield University. Her mission is to help and guide Bridgeport’s young children through her teaching creative writing, leading book clubs and reading to and engaging a kindergarten class. As a poet, she co-directs the poetry program of the Black Rock Art Guild.
Secret Gardens
I feel that something is missing from most conversations I hear about spirituality today. How many times does one hear the increasingly trite recommendations to ‘live in the moment’, to ‘mindfully embrace the present’? It’s a strange thing to notice that even our most well-meaning, serious-minded ‘spiritual influencers’ seem to ignore or simply forget a fundamental truth. I find the omission to be glaring, most days. For what seems to be missing from so much of the popular wisdom about mindful living is the notion that we also live in the Past.
‘The human conscience is dependent upon time for its existence’, wrote the great filmmaker Tarkovsky. ‘Time… is a spiritual category.’[1] Tarkovsky, just like Proust, felt that human awareness was rooted in the Past, that our identities are bound up with our personal and collective heritage. It is surprising to me how little heed our contemporary commentators pay to this elemental truth. What little interest they show for meditating and building upon the living connection we feel to our own histories. Yet our body and mind, our biology and psychological make-up, all of these are the Past, they are the products of a very, very long history.
This neglect or even downright denial and negation of the Past is, of course, one of the stranger characteristics of our fiercely materialistic, capitalist culture. One which deprives us of the most elemental spiritual comforts. The creative act, be it writing or painting or crafting, allows us to gently and urgently reconnect with this truth. To begin a personal or even a collective conversation about the vital importance our histories play in the shaping of our lives. The creative act borrows its vitality, its intuitive spark from the same creative energy that flows through the natural world, past and present. In that crucial sense, it grounds us, it leads us ‘home.’
‘You can’t go home again,’ so goes the famous saying. Yet our ‘home’ is also the Past, and it lives within us. It breathes, it has a soul. It is our life’s work to cast a glance back into the depths of our elders and our ancestors’ richly woven stories and of our own authentic selves… I feel that in my own life, the creative urge to write and draw and paint invites me over and over again to discover a kind of ‘soul secret.’ Indeed, it is in the course of writing my book that I came across a particular philosophy that seemed to calm a basic restlessness of the soul. A restlessness I had always felt but never managed to properly name. I might sum it up by saying that it is rooted in the idea that it is Time itself which is the raw material of Zen art.
Once I began to absorb the full meaning behind this beautiful, age-old aesthetic, I also began to reflect much more deeply on the absence of a true ‘sense of the Past’ in our modern-day, and in particular in our Western cultures. Surely, this constitutes one of our greatest spiritual losses. Because when our deep, organic connection to the Past is rarely mentioned or even thought about, it’s as if our sense of belonging itself were broken, irrelevant. And as the French philosopher Simone Weil observed, a sense of belonging, of rootedness ‘is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.’[2]
I believe that cultivating a sense of the Past and of our ancestors’ stories through the act of creating is like finding a door onto a secret garden. It is discovering that our souls have all been ‘pre-loved’, that we didn’t come from nothing. It is carving a way forward, discerning a healing process, a more authentically mindful path. It is choosing to lean into the ‘wind’ and ‘flow’, into the river of Time. It is finding a ‘home.’ Writing the Past, as it were, is one of the most important, deeply healing spiritual gifts we can give ourselves.
[1] Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses His Art, tr. Kitty Hunter-Blair, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1987, p.58.
[2] https://atlasofplaces.com/essays/uprootedness/ (Accessed November 29,2022)
Caroline Kerjean is a Quebec City-based author, artist and designer. She fell in love with art and culture at a young age and, after a life-changing experience restoring two medieval castles in France’s beautiful Alsace region, enrolled in art history at the University of Paris. After returning to Canada, she worked in the museum sector and published a first book. Kerjean now devotes herself full-time to her artistic and literary journey, aiming to pursue a rich and meaningful dialogue between past and present, one which evokes the weaving of a tapestry, an art form the author holds dear.
On Life as Water It would be nice to have bones during a worldwide resurrection but I’ve lived earth and firmament so long I’m thinking fluid might be a better state, a new life not as a container but uncontained, wild and raging at the source then sluicing through adamantium rock until a flat plain means I diminish in the sea, evaporate, then launch again to fall, to etch, to wear, to nourish. There would be places I’d be desired, deserts, farms, and watersheds, places I could clean and weather, and places repentance I could symbolize. Perhaps that is what I most desire, a way to turn from one way and live as another, be given a second chance to run through the rock of hardened people, sustain the weak, wet the dry, purify, abound in the endless cycle of delivering from torment, rising to grace, all those motions that my toughened self has often not permitted. Perhaps that is why, when, without a reason, I weep, joy, grief, sentiment, loss and victory, birth, death, sex and intimacy all bind in that slim meniscus of water, and I know myself deeply, briefly, in a drop.
Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife. He has work in Williwaw Journal, Willows Wept Review, Heartwood, and Rabid Oak.
Aria All of a sudden a soprano’s song wafts from my neighbor’s veranda over the mournful yelps of seagulls who swarm the cove for fish guts pitched from lobster boats. Tossing back their beaks they gulp the entrails of mackerel. A gigantic stone coated in brine and seaweed rises like a woolly mammoth with the tide’s retreat. I imagine it’s been there since the continents divided or since our eye muscles perfected their own evolution. I sat dead center recording the professor who paced the stage like a caveman in a lab coat, his eyes seemed locked on me – the English major who never took a note. For 500 million years the revolution of our eyes has not changed. With equal conviction he confessed – It’s why I believe in God – which is when a theatre of pre-med students all glanced up and blinked.
Bill Garvey‘s poetry has been published in Nixes Mate Review, New Verse News, Margie, The Worcester Review, 5AM, Slant, Diner, Concho River Review, New York Quarterly, Cloud Lake Literary, and Rattle in Spring, 2023.
Fish I'm a child on the pier with my toes in the cold lake water. I can see only fog about ten feet or so out ahead. My feet bare on each step, I walked down from the grass to the rocks. My own voice is muffled and returns to me changed when I speak. When I speak, it is words from the fog in the hollows of sleep — Things I do not remember, surprising me as they emerge. I can’t tell just how empty and large the inside of me is — It’s enough, though, to swallow the pier and the lake and the fog. This is where my interior deep was first sounded and pierced. This is how I was caught. I still carry the hook in my mouth.
J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis. He lives in a brick house with his wife and five children, his two parents, and a dog.
Amethyst Review 