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Matt Pasca is a poet, teacher and traveler who believes in art’s ability to foster discovery, empathy and justice. He has authored two poetry collections—A Thousand Doors (2011 Pushcart nominee) and Raven Wire (2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist)—and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor of 2 Bridges Review. In his corner of New York, Matt curates Second Saturdays @Cyrus, a popular poetry series, and spreads his unwavering faith in critical thought and word magic to his Poetry, Mythology and Literature students at Bay Shore High School, where he has taught for 22 years and been named a New York State Teacher of Excellence. www.mattpasca.com

The Parasol Parable

Summer sun forgave nothing that noon.
A block away, Mercy noticed the woman saunter
down the hill. Pink parasol,
spinning on its axis.
Necessity. Not affectation.
Okay.
Not a parasol.
Umbrella really.
It would have to do.

Blue on blue kameez.
Green paisley cuffs. Shalwar,
no particular color. So versatile.
Could have gone with anything.

Mercy decided the woman looked decidedly
out of place among:
Rundown brick rowhomes.
……………“Repoint. At a minimum.”
Cracked cement sidewalk.
……………“Patch it. A girl could trip here.”
Crumbly blacktop.
……………“Unfilled potholes. Repave already.”

In daylight. Broad. Broiling.
She thought about seeing things
as they are.
And then about starlight.
That infinite spark on a cool summer night.
Darkness. Distance. Exaggerating
the smallest points.

“Truth. Like starlight,” Mercy similied,
“always leaks out. And everyone looks up.
Eventually.”
Mercy was all smiles,
satisfied to wait for the infinitesimal.

 

Alan Toltzis is the author of 49 Aspects of Human Emotionand The Last Commandment. A two-time Pushcart nominee, he has published in numerous print and online journals including Grey Sparrow, The Wax Paper, Hummingbird, IthacaLit, and Poetry NI. He serves as a Contributing Editor for The Saturday Poetry Series in As It Ought to Be Magazine and as an Editor for the Mizmor Poetry Anthology. Find him online at alantoltzis.com and follow him @ToltzisAlan.

Sweet Taste of Beauty

I step outside and
my eye catches
…a beam of light filtering
through the tree branch
a red-breasted finch
…looks back at me
for a second
before it remembers
to be alarmed and flies off

in that brief moment before
thought claims the experience
beauty stuns my mind and I am
wedded to the finch,
the tree, the sunlight
thought intrudes and
names the nameless, calling it beautiful
calling it tree, finch, sky
calling it mine, splitting the moment
into in here and out there
but the sweet taste of
beauty rejoicing lingers and
somewhere in the layers of
carefully catalogued experiences
a space opens where the light seeps in
so I can find my way again.

 

Marilyn Grant taught Creative Writing at Cerritos College, CA, where she was an adjunct professor of English, and journal writing workshops for Orange County Hospice nurses.  Roger Housden, a published author, was her teacher for a memoir writing course, and she is a member of Writers4Writers in Orange County, CA.  She recently joined a nationwide group of spiritual seekers called “We Awakening Circle.”

Master of Tides

This night, the monuments of grace
outweigh the monuments of desire.
They shine in the moonlight
like twisted trees.
They fill with birds,
and spread out over the horizon
a tapestry of song.
Your sorrow leaves you.
Your fear wilts into a flower.
Certainty pours its milk
over all the doubts
in the ten-thousand corners
of your heart.
The ghosts grow silent
and take on the bodies of stones.
They mark the landscape,
become a path.
It’s not your power
that makes this happen.
It’s not your cleverness,
your serenity or rage.
It’s just this: the light
filling the branches,
the moon sailing overhead.

 

Seth Jani lives in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). Their work has appeared in Chiron Review, The Comstock Review, Psaltery & Lyre and Pretty Owl Poetry, among others. Their full-length collection, Night Fable, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2018.  More about them and their work can be found at www.sethjani.com.

Never letting go (of religious programming), or Agnostic lament

Despite my default atheism, I still find
myself stubbornly wanting to give into
the urge to spell the word Heaven
with an upper case H. To clasp my
hands in undulating prayer, at the
dinner table or just before I sleep. To
contemplate the afterlife and who I
might meet there. And to find the
company of other atheists dry, and
pontificating/mocking.

I wish that I could decide on an
answer to The question. The options.
But all I can say with any certainty is, I
rule nothing out.

 

Claire Sexton is a poet and writer who has lived in Wales, London, and Berkshire. She is a librarian by trade and suffers with long-term depression and anxiety. She has been published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Foxglove Journal, Amaryllis, Amethyst Review, Allegro Poetry Magazine, and others.

The Lost Divorce

If your Grand Canyon is man made
A creation of concrete and glass
If you are surrounded by pavement
And the gardeners use spray paint
If you will upload your brain into a website
Live forever or until McAfee mistakenly erases you

When all the promises of religion
Are subsumed by technology

Drugs will comfort you
Computers will let you live forever
Facebook will absolve you.

In that world
The old god is an itch between your shoulder blades
The inopportune rain
A night time cat that disturbs garbage cans
And weeds that grow in sidewalk cracks

 

Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Penumbra, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and The Ottawa Arts Journal. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, and the annual Salem Poetry Festival

Keeping Thyme

We are gone now. No second yesterday.
Spring sun runs, melting fast into summer.
Copper butterflies jig then lilt away,
leaving petals, frail blue wings, in tatters.
Breezes brush a sword lily’s unsheathed head;
through bows and shudders, shifting thoughts unread
when streams plaited woods splashed in rain.
Wrapped in holm oak’s dusty shade, here again:

We walk with bees on our toes, fear undone,
breathing together crushed pink silver thyme.
Across the meadow our paths, scented, climb
to overlook hills hung in stippled sun.
Clouds pass. No second yesterday will come,
for we were not there, dearest friend. Just one.

 

Jane Angué teaches English Language and Literature in France. Writing in French and English, work was longlisted for the Erbacce Prize 2018 and 2019 and has appeared most recently in Le Capital des Mots, Ink Sweat & Tears, Acumen and Poésie/première. Her pamphlet des fleurs pour Bach was published in August (Editions Encres Vives).

Prayer for Inflorescence

A single red spider lily, Lycoris radiata,
appears suddenly one September day,
its leafless bloom a tiny burst of fireworks
in my back yard. I planted the bulbs
twenty years ago; a few bloomed,
then disappeared beneath the soil,
presumed dead until now.

I, too, disappeared those twenty years
ago, into a life I would come to regret,
a life that would lead me into a dark place
where even the brightest blossoms lie dormant.

Now I stand in my yard, alone, soaking
up sunshine, like the Naked Lady, waiting
for the same process that coaxed the lily
into its fiery glory to gently force me
into plain view and restore my faded colors.

 

Diane Elayne Dees’s chapbook, I Can’t Recall Exactly When I Died, is forthcoming from Clare Songbirds Publishing House; also forthcoming, from Kelsay Books, is her chapbook, Coronary Truth. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

(http://womenwhoserve.blogspot.com)

Sacred Kitchen

The short-order cook
prepares his spiritual homage
in a sacred kitchen
between the grill
and deep fryers.

His ambition is full of flavor,
adding just the right amount of salt
to his tireless concoctions.

With eyes as bright as the sun,
he creates culinary magic
in his little cove of the paradise
with crispy home-fries
and Caribbean spices.

He flips the meat
into a garnished plate;
a grateful offering
to the Gods of appetite.

He spins his Dodgers’ cap backward
and prepares for the breakfast crowd,
topping off the omelet
with fresh hollandaise
that’s poured over
a perfectly cooked egg
in a drizzle of eternity.

 

Mark Tulin is a former therapist who lives in California.  He has a chapbook, Magical Yogis, and two upcoming books: Awkward Grace, and The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories. He’s been featured in Fiction on the Web, Ariel Chart, Leaves of Ink, among others.  His website is Crow On The Wire.

Ouroboros Festival

Mired in itself, the circuit goes:
All of the gods have died.
Here, in this ring, we worship,
not only them, but all of nothing.
Our mates are ourselves, centered
in a void. Outside the ring, yet in it.

All momentum is the same.
It will go. It will go nowhere.
The pianist forgot her strokes –
the birth of jazz. She is dead now.
Her child repeats. So does his.
No one clamors for salvation.

 

Patrick Key started writing seriously later in life, thanks to the help of a poetry class during his undergraduate years. His interests revolve around the absurdity of life and love, disillusionment, and the human tendency to struggle with impossibilities. His works have appeared in The Corner Club Press, The Penwood Review, and Argus.