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They are not Venus Statues 

It is her own self
that shape carved and pushed
into polished mammoth bone
to entice a soul from
the other place to this world
soft mounds of flesh
growing and plumping
fecund hopeful happy
bulges where they are supposed to be
for the life burgeoning within

Her eyes dance with delight
as sisters and brothers braid her hair
adorn it with herbs 
scents to lift the mood further
to cleanse, to promote
what they all want
a little one, helpless and soft
they long for the wail of the new

She caresses the small statue
that is giving life and strength
her strength for the birth
and the milk after
strength to the new life
hope for an easy transition
from there to here
a safe birth for both

All is preparation and happiness 
all is her
her own self 
shaped in the bone

Kim Whysall-Hammond is an expert in obsolete telecommunications arcane who believes, against all evidence, that she is a good dancer. She has been published by  Ink, Sweat and Tears, Amaryllis, London Grip and Crannóg amongst others. You can find her at https://thecheesesellerswife.wordpress.com/

Judith Adams Lagana‘s poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review,Naugatuck River Review and, the Paterson Literary Review, among others. She is the co-editor of River Heron Review and lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Follow her on Twitter at @lylacmuse. Website: jlagana.com

The Way to Holy Cross
 
Leaves are changing
as I take Route Seven 
off the Dulles Greenway.
Hills consider their rise 
into mountains while
cows in the valley rest  
by the shaded streams.
Cars slowly lessen  
along the pike, and I 
decrease my persistent 
lean on the accelerator.
 
Nearing the abbey,
roads like Retreat Lane
and Good Samaritan Vale
saunter into view
without asking for notice.
After a long bridge
over the smooth-faced
Shenandoah River, 
I turn off the highway,
roll my window down.
The road is dirt now.
The river glints
at my side between the trees.
Leaves of red maple,
elm, and oak
petal my windshield.
 
The sign marked
Holy Cross Cistercian Abbey
is easy to pass, 
but I manage to catch it  
out of the corner of my eye
and bear right onto the gravel road
of Cool Spring Lane,
where ripened wheat 
is waiting for harvest.   
Silence deepens in the shadows
of afternoon fields.
Beyond the expanse of planted acres,
the Blue Ridge ascends
its way into the orange
of Indian Summer.
 
Bells toll for midday prayer.
Softly, I shut the engine off.
Walking up to the sanctuary,
the sky unfolds 
like a vast blue possibility.
Monks are gathering in 
without haste or worry.
I dip in the holy water,
take my place,
incline my head.
The brothers chant,
“God, come to my assistance,”
and I reply,
“Lord, make haste to help me.”
 

Roberto Christiano won the 2010 Fiction Prize from The Northern Virginia Review for his story, “The Care of Roses.” He received a Pushcart nomination from Prairie Schooner for his poetry and was anthologized in The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry. His chapbook, Port of Leaving, is currently available through Finishing Line Press. Other work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Sow’s Ear, New Verse News, and Delmarva.

Kites

It’s light that first attracts
my eyes, a glint of fire overhead,
and then the tug of rufous thread
unreeled from earth to air – 
where twinned, entwining helixes			
unite the rhyming pair 		

in soaring dance. Down here,  	
a moor-patterning grid of pylons, masts
and wire-mesh extends its vast
design. The kites, astride
the bypass now, with fourfold wings
and forking tails divide

the sky between them. Swathes
of edgeland caught within their wheeling span,	
I see them scout and circle, scan	
the fields and tonsured hill		
with pinions poised, then pivot there, 		
anticipate the kill

and swoop. As daylight falls
I stand entranced beneath the reddened sky,	
a single figure, steeple-high,
exposed on open ground 
for savage, all-pursuing love
to run its rings around. 

Daniel Gustafsson has published volumes in both English and Swedish, most recently Fordings (Marble Poetry, 2020). New poems appear in Trinity House Review, The Brazen Head, North American Anglican and The York Journal. Daniel lives in York.  Twitter: @PoetGustafsson Website: www.poetgustafsson.wordpress.com

Setting Out
		Ireland, 500 AD


He sings this: wicker boat 
covered with skins, light among 
rocks and out onto seafoam. 


Swans overhead follow each other 
north past the far edge of ocean. 
They know they’ll find land there.

He used to trade without speaking.
Men offered oil, wine, amber. 
He countered—hunting dogs, 

wool, his beautiful slave. Now 
he owns nothing. Who is he 
since he buried his sword 

and shield, his silver bowl 
embossed with the story of Christ 
and the story of Venus? 

He takes bread for a journey, steps 
into a rudderless, oarless boat. 
He may come to an island 

and live there, a hermit, 
or end with the grandeur 
of nothing, the last bit of bread. 

He sings this: Water 
my desert. My wicker boat. 
Swans fly. I follow.

Suns


An owl that flew from the tundra 
waits on the ground, slowly 

turning its head almost completely 
around. If everything connects, 

owl to song, holly back to a quiet grove, 
can I return through vast galaxies 

to lie on the living room rug 
among fragrant pine needles, Mom 

and Dad asleep, the furnace wheezing? 
The elegant hand of Dad’s record player 

lifts and drops to scratched vinyl, 
Messiah joyously leaping the gaps. 

The sun comes up—beside it 
another sun, another, another.

Barbara Daniels’s Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared in Cleaver, Faultline, Small Orange, Meridian, and elsewhere. Barbara Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. 

Raised Beds


Some say it’s sacrilege to plant above the earth, but I believe
things can grow wherever there is sun and air.

And rather than bury the seeds like tiny graves I carve out of bark
little boats and punch holes in the base where water can travel through.

I am not a gardener or a creator but rather an inventor of ways
to let the light into dark spaces reserved for claustrophobic fear.

When my plants rise and send their roots down below like Persephone
flaunting her beauty to Hades, they will never for one second feel

That I buried them alive.

Sarah Clayville writes and teaches from the wilds of central Pennsylvania with a particular focus on moments of discovery. Her work can be seen in such journals as The Threepenny Review, Literary Orphans, and The Gravity of the Thing. For more of her writing and her literary adventures with her daughter, head to SarahSaysWrite.com.

Late September (2020)
 
There is a solemnity
to late September
as if the air itself is meditating,
You notice a certain stillness.
 
It is not mournful or abrupt
as after the shofar penetrates
distance calling worshippers
to temple, its measured lament
reaching back to shawled ghosts
swaying as they chant, arms raised
before crumbling heaps of walls.
 
It is a stillness that sets you
In a place beyond doubt, hurt,
heat, cold or fear where
you welcome the intimacy
of the sun, though you are pleased
to see it go for the clouds assist
the air in its autumnal prayer.

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.

Autumn Altar
 
“They cry out for an offering of flowers or of fruit”
                                                (after A.V. Christie)
 
 
invocation of oregano             mountain radiance
                        scent of moths                         bearing the breath of bards     
 
black paste     moldered walnut husks
                citric  tang              
henna’s  secret stranger  
 
 
wild cucumber pods
            mad prickles mellowed to lacy veils  
 
the spade-bitten earth 
a chalice   for roots   
 
 
to milkweed the memory of Mexico
 
 
ash samaras     the curtain lingers                   riddles under wide-eyed bark
never again    
 
 
phosphorus of the field    earth lanterns         
            possums    decay before dying 
 
 
vitis     
this our grape              twisting  
(de)pendent  on           the adamant other
             
 
pawpaw           just ready when easily bruised 
 

Susan Charkes, writer and poet, lives in southeastern Pennsylvania. Her poetry chapbook, sp. was published in 2017. She is a member of Montco Wordshop and Tenth Sky Poets. More at susancharkes.com.

Requiem 

Is it animal or simply human
to mourn the loss of what you wish to lose?

Gnats spinning in your steaming face
some bright August afternoon
swing hollow in stippled rows
on abandoned spider webs
in almost cold October wind.

You sweep the mess away. Your eyes water.
Again you are the dust-kneed child
heart-stung in the playground corner,
beguiled by the caterpillar crushed beneath
the careless bounce of a ball.

A teacher tells you life’s like that,
death and birth a cycle spinning
like hoops around your playmates’ bellies.
A tough-minded parent insists
this mad world will squeeze your soul to bursting
if such small things stick hard in your throat.

But they do. Some dim autumn afternoon
you watch dark birds by the dozens dip and rise
in synchronized clouds of motion over
the graying stubble of a farmer’s field.
Past the strange grandeur of the moment,
your first thought as their ranks disappear
is to wonder how many will fall from the air
before reaching some warmer destination.

A friend calls you morbid. Perhaps she’s right,
but you wish to think better of yourself,
so you label this grief for the least of us, fleeting,
an excess of love—soft as silk threads,
wide as a flying thing’s horizon.

Jo Angela Edwins lives and teaches in Florence, SC. Her chapbook Play was published in 2016, and she has poems appearing or set to appear in The A3 Review, Quarterday Review, Red Rock Review, and Thimble. She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, and the SC Academy of Authors, and she currently serves as poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. Aside from poetry, she loves animals, flowers, and far too many television crime shows.