Category Archives: Uncategorized

Julian of Norwich Leads Yoga

Settling before us skirts tucked
wool-shrouded legs folded
lotus blossoms.
 
She knows isolation—this one—anchored
within stone walls that block nothing—source, death
 even a hazelnut gets through. She brings
 
palms to center & we follow
moving mountain
pose to warrior one.
 
She explains, All will be well—
God said that, not me
while we wait legs trembling
 
until she lets us slide downward
dog arch up to cobra
straining serpents.
 
Hope is a stone we toss
into a deep question
& wait for a sound.
 
We fall to happy baby & she says
So I stretched, held those words
 like breathing.
 
We fumble into easy pose—not her,
 our lady of supple, reminding us
Now inhale now exhale now
 
again for a long dream of nows
until the muscles give.

Sylvia Karman’s work has appeared in Delmarva Review, Blueline, and Writing the Land, among others. She lives in the Adirondack mountains of New York and in central Maryland where she hikes and writes for the love of the journey. You can visit her at www.sylviakarman.com .

Elegy to the Serenity Prayer

God, grant me the serenity to accept the 
things I cannot change, courage to 
change the things I can, and 
wisdom to know the difference.

But I am no Solomon. And right now, I 
        have none of the answers. Lightning strikes 
                scar every cell, a tornado wrecking
                havoc in my stomach. My body a
        bomb just waiting to go off. 

I am a muse. I am God in these skies.
        Nothing will control me, 
        much less this body of mine.
                I grasp immortality in
                my right hand, turn
                back the clock, 
                        twist the jagged edge
                        that is the end.
        Who ever said the worst could happen?

Sometimes I wonder what it 
        will finally be like to fly. To taste July
                on my lips,
        my rage condensing into
            hurricanes in the sky.
                To hell with it.
        Finally, I will not be burned.

Finally, I’ve seen the light.
        There’s a reason why we can’t fly.
                There is too much holding us down.
        The weight of the world is too much
        for our shoulders to carry.
        But gravity will soon become a filibuster inside
                this dawdling heart of mine.

But even if I try to rewrite my ending,
        nothing will change.
        I’ll close my eyes inevitably
                And give in to the unknown.
        I will chase this thing called denial
                and release.

And in an instant, I will lose it all.
        Lose the onyx bubbling into
                the crevices where
                my lips once were.
        Lose my bones,
                        solidifying into calcite
                in between my ribs.
        I will lose it all with 
                eyes open against the light.


Perhaps death is beauty
        in certainty. But again, 
I am no Solomon. 
                        And my moral quandaries will
                        never stray from home.

Ashlyn Roice is a junior at Mountain House High School in California. Her poetry has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and has been published in Defiant Magazine.

The Tongue of Taliesin


These rocks
		creigiau’r
		dw i wedi gofiwyd

I am holding in my memory
		creigiau’r gorwyd
		ar fy nhafod a ganed

What if they are from
the falling cliff-face
		creigiau’r
		yr afonydd gofiwyd

And not the tall mountains 
or the green valley?

Notes

creigiau’r – “the rocks”

dw i wedi gofiwyd – “I have remembered”

creigiau’r gorwyd – “the rocks sit”

ar fy nhafod a ganed – “on my tongue and sing”

creigiau’r – “the rocks”

yr afonydd gofiwyd – “remember the rivers”

Andie Davies (they/them) is a London based queer poet, where they are beginning their MA in Creative Writing. They run the student literary journal Roey Writes On and have been published in that journal and in the UniSlam 2020 Anthology. They perform at spoken word events and share their work @thepoetandie

Devotion
 
At fourteen, you are hypertensive, 
partially blind in one eye,
and suffer from dementia.
Your feline fur is grey 
like the underside of a salmon fillet,
and your body stretches
like a sling shot,
on my tapestry rug. 
 
I swoop down, burrow my face
in the moist heat of your tummy,
white as the cream from an éclair,
kiss the dusting of moth wings
between your eyes, trace the silver rings
that spiral your lanky tail,
while you expose a cage of tiger teeth 
with a huge nonchalant yawn; 
you are safe.
 
Birth anointed you in anxiety.
When we adopted you,
fear was your perfume.
You still startle, and flee
on white gloved paws,
like a snowshoe hare.
 
Evenings, you are a curl 
waiting on my office chair.
You chide me for the late hour,
and escort me down the hall to bed.
 
There, you stumble about
like a clumsy toddler, mewl 
like a cantankerous drunk, 
climb me like a jungle gym, 
up over my head,
down across my chest,
unceremoniously step 
into my soft abdomen,
and knead my doughy belly.
 
Finally, you settle.
My legs are pinned, 
and all night, we dance
in an intricate choreography
of slides and dips, 
because devotion asks 
how many more nights
until the next life comes
to teach us
what we still haven’t gotten right?
 
Praise for the once abandoned,
who love anyway,
who find gratitude in unremarkable days
and nights shared,
watching leaves fall, 
chasing shadows.
 
We lay in darkness,
etched by a winter moon.
Marbles roll in your throat.
I rub the paper membranes 
of your ear tips, frozen,
like tiny mountain peaks.
I stroke your silky fur, 
feel the bony vertebrae and spikes 
along your slender head and spine;
how frail and delicate we are.

 

Katherine Szpekman’s poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in: Waking up the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Crisis, Aromatica Poetica, Red Eft Review, Sky Island Journal, Chestnut Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Hiram Poetry Review, Rockvale Review, Connecticut Literary Anthology 2020, and others. She lives in Collinsville, Connecticut with her family, both human and furry.  

If you could have been here



we could have sipped elixir of sky 
in several shades of nightfall last evening.  
I won’t say blue or even indigo dye 
for those deep-sea toned waves of cloud
that floated over sun’s low gold.  

We could have been one, without talking, 
and seen the black-furred night sky 
steal in from the east, almost stalking, 
sleek belly flat to the ground, a power cat,
shoulders rippling for the pounce.

We could have seen winter-trees’ tiaras,
their enlaced limbs a black filigree 
delicate as sopranos’ high, high arias,
as ladies’ hands silhouetted, so many
long fingers reaching up, up: through fire.

We could have lifted our arms high 
and stretched our fingers and reached 
past tree-tops, clouds, moon, even sky
until we became all flame.

Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun.  She was born in the United States and lived there until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to England, where she now resides.  Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, The Windhover, The Ekphrastic Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Catholic Poetry Room, and other venues, both online and print. 

mindfulness clear and radiant

Like a theme park, as a kid
you run around
so much ground to cover
so much air and space
to fly through
and it’s all for you. 
 
Grown-ups usually 
use up land on stuff
that means nothing to you.
And yet they made all this 
for you. The world is rarely
yours, but this is.
 
And you can trust 
that no emptiness
will find you 
all day. 
Not in the sky
or waiting in line.
 
Returns.
Returns.
It keeps coming back to you.
You swallow it, flying,
wide-open-mouth in the air
never full-up,
 
like the magician 
eating his long balloon noodle
in one mouthful. 
You taste it in the cotton candy,
in the screams that fly
to the back of your throat. 
 
And if you ever know
this feeling again
you ought to use it.
Go see the world
in sunrise-hikes 
and wild swimming
 
and long bus rides
because the new worlds
outside the window
will be one large theme park.
The world really is all yours;
the beauty in a blue-painted door
 
the sun setting behind the supermarket
the car parking spaces
with lines painted white
and little flowerbeds 
planted by the side;
it’s perfect, it really is.
 
And it’s yours to move through.
It wasn’t made for you 
or with any reverence 
to the sacredness of humans
but that doesn’t mean it can’t be
the place where you realise 
 
that all things are perfect.
 

Elijah East is a support worker for disabled adults in Leeds. His poetry concerns queer bodies and the queer experience, whilst also contemplating the spiritual. This is his first published poem, though his work can also be found on Instagram @elijahjayx . 

Squall

I walk into a house I do not want.
My friend lives here. Dried flowers, stenciled prayers,
A jar of pasta shells dyed red — I hunt
For any living thing. She comes downstairs.

She wants to make a cup of tea for me
Before we go. She wants to give her house
To me before she dies. She wants to grouse
About death with her friend good naturedly.

I want to spread the butter on the scones.
I want to pour the milk into the tea.
I want to fix the marrow in her bones.
I want to spit in mud and make her see.

At once I’m lost. A wind blows shut the door.
I drop my tea. I weep. We clean the floor.

J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis, Indiana. He lives in a brick house with his wife and five children, his two parents, and a dog.

SMOKESCREEN
 
The way to god is where
everything begins:
 
smoke and perfect fire
a driving force,
 
abandoned for love
as it all ends.
 
   © Rupert M Loydell

Rupert Loydell is a writer, editor and abstract artist. His many books of poetry include Dear Mary (Shearsman, 2017) and The Return of the Man Who Has Everything (Shearsman 2015); and he has edited anthologies such as Yesterday’s Music Today (co-edited with Mike Ferguson, Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2014), and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: manifestos and unmanifestos (Salt, 2010)

The Drogue Chute


Slow down, the drogue chute says, Slow down, Slow down,
and then is gone, the big main parachute
in bloom, its shimmering the mission’s crown.
Eclipsed, the drogue chute’s final say is moot.
Unlike a sun or moon, it won’t emerge,
obscured forever by its own success
preparing its successor chute to surge
into that clement shape all watchers bless.
The drogue chute’s idol is the jellyfish,
whose mantle morphs, now drogue, now crown, now drogue
again, one smooth curve of salvific wish,
each phase enjoying equal time in vogue.
It doesn’t matter jellyfishes sting.
The dome and steeple shapes mean everything.

Dan Campion is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism and co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, a third edition of which was issued in 2019. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines. A selection of his poems titled The Mirror Test will be published by MadHat Press in February 2022. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Platonic Israel

It was with trepidation that I leapt
across the ocean to the desert sand
for which I had myself not even wept,
since I was foreign to the holy land.

Ancestral shores aren’t real to those who roam
awash in all the nations’ ageless squall;
we’ve lost our memories of hearth and home;
diaspora makes strangers of us all.

But special is the gladness of return
for those who’ve never tasted Zion’s air,
who can distill each joy for which we yearn
into a common dream to carry there.

Meanwhile, our God is blind to place of birth;
the true Jerusalem is not on Earth.

Andrea Kibel is a new poet and 24-year-old graduate student in biology. A child of immigrants from South Africa and Zimbabwe, she grew up in the redwoods of California’s Santa Cruz mountains before studying in Dallas, TX and South Bend, Indiana. Andrea draws on science and nature, strangeness and isolation, and Jewish experience and imagery to create poems ranging from free verse to blank verse and sonnets.