Category Archives: Uncategorized

Walking

I go walking barefoot every night.
I want to feel the path my life follows:
the touch of dew of the new green grass,
the crisscrossing pine needles, thin and sharp,
the brittle brush of bushes, piercing
the pads of my feet.
All of it, all of it, I want to feel
so I might know where I go
as the heart of the earth
beats strong beneath my feet,
guiding each step, leading the way
to the End of Days.

 

Cynthia Pitman has had poetry or prose published in Amethyst Review, Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Arts (Pushcart Prize nominee, 2019), Third Wednesday (contest finalist), Vita Brevis, Leaves of Ink, Ekphrastic Review, Adelaide Literary Review, Right Hand Pointing, Dual Coast Magazine, and others. Her poetry collection, The White Room, is forthcoming.

Waystation
—after a photograph by Barbara Jabaily

Sun burns a cross into the frozen lake
century old bristlecone pines circling round
as audience to those who left prints in the snow.

The sun did this, not as it rose but as it set into
Wet Mountains in the Sangre de Cristo Range.
I look at it over and over because it feels a rise

as if there is a tomb tucked into the limestone cliffs
and the irregular circle at the base is where people
stopped to pray at a waystation to the other side.

This is before the melt, when what was underneath
was solid, when all you’d known since birth held
its stance, when even if you hurt, you were loved.

Still, this is where you ventured, the base of mountains
where everything becomes symbolic, even the melting
of a winter lake outside the season of Lent.

 

Kyle Laws is based out of the Arts Alliance Studios Community in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.

 

Ocean Whispers

I believe in the ocean.
I worship quietly
in her liquid comfort without fanfare,
in her smaller bodies of saltwater,
the inlets and the bays,
along her shoreline where seaweed
skids into a foamy paste,
exchanging a few sacred whispers,
a heavenly sun to illuminate her presence,
an impromptu hymn from the saints
to commemorate her lasting grace
and a succession of minor miracles
that pass slowly from one wave to the next.

 

Mark Tulin is a former therapist who lives in California. Mark has two poetry books available at Amazon, Magical Yogis and Awkward Grace. The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories will be published in August of 2020. He’s been featured in Poetry Village, Oddball Magazine, Poppy Road Review, among others.  Follow Mark at Crow On The Wire.

For the Sorrowing

There is a tree down by the river.

By a stubborn piece of bark
a solitary branch clings to its trunk.

We are so frail,
yet by a stubborn piece of hope
we cling to a life dug deep.
At a given moment
we may be seized
by a wind so strong,
or ice so cold,
or heat so unbearable
that it may be too much.

Too much.

But let it not be so much
for the wayward mercy,
which comes
following
on a wing of the breeze,
that bears us up
in our sorrows,

and returns us
to our joy.

.

Melissa Chappell is a writer native to South Carolina where she lives on land that has been in her family for over 130 years. Besides writing, she also loves music, and plays guitar, piano, and lute. Music and the land are her great inspirations. She lives with her family and two miniature schnauzers.

Who Stopped?

Forgetting begins
when we leave
a world of beauty, belonging,
imagination;
tactile closeness to clouds,
the stars, the leaves;
as if there’s no separation;
no distance to travel.
Reaching, reaching
yearning to touch; reunite.

We turn from the world that is a net;
a weave that holds us all;
all things.
Remember when you’d lie spread-eagle
looking at the sky,
and it was there for you;
rushed to meet you,
close as an embrace.
Who stopped hugging first?

 

Marjorie Moorhead writes from a New England river valley, surrounded by mountains and four season change. She is an AIDS survivor, and mother, who tries for a daily reverent walk. Finding a voice in poetry has brought Marjorie much joy, and a needed sense of community. Her work is found online at many journal sites, in several anthologies, and two chapbooks.

Southwark Cathedral

If the gnarled veined fingers
Of an old grey man,
Stretched up a hundred feet
Above my head,
With fingers interlaced,
And nails silver painted,
And wrists all decorated,
By the dead

Then I could believe
I was in the cathedral,
And it may say something
For the soul of stone,
That the cool crisp vaulting
Still conveys some benediction
From the trees outside
To the carved oak throne.

And the snarling gryphons
In their bright new livery
Watch the snarling traffic
In its jostling lanes,
But the cathedral echoes
To the peace of plenty.
And the organ echoes
With the growl of trains.

.

Edward Alport is a proud Essex Boy and retired teacher. He occupies his time as a gardener and writer for children. He has had poetry published in a variety of webzines and magazines. When he has nothing better to do he posts snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse.

The Second Hand

Names leap ahead like hunting hounds,
with the belief they clear the road
of the journey’s unexpected obstructions.
— Luljeta Llshanaku

 

When a mountain was reshaped by a wing,
coins fell from an emptied pocket,
and a second hand
shaped by Buddha’s breath
paused.

Names fell away as a gate opened
within an emptied jar. Ahead
a radiance, obscuring
thought, action, remorse.

Mirrors mirrored nothing;
words unrequired.

And when the second hand
turned again, Buddha paused
at the edge of a stream,
to watch our names sprout
from the loam at his feet.

Joseph Murphy has been published in numerous literary journals and authored four poetry collections, The Shaman Speaks, Shoreline of the Heart, Having Lived and Crafting Wings. He is a member of the Colorado Authors’ League; for eight years was poetry editor for a literary publication, Halfway Down the Stairs.

This Wasn’t What I Thought

Not orange leaves, but wings
called wanderer—black-veined brown
found resting  on winter’s lawn.

Perfectly still— this monarch blends
in. No harm done, in spite of its weight;
its barbed feet anchored to sand.

Left untouched, meaning
this wasn’t what I thought—
that I have never truly understood

how insignificant death is until it happens.

 

M.J. Iuppa’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017).For the past 31 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

The Uncertain Samaritan

The little brown bat was in my study
under my hat. I’d made a bat house for them
but it had never occurred to me that
one of them would work its way inside and
up the staircase to find its own dark place.

We took it to one of the windows,
opened the screen and placed it on a ledge,
hoping it wasn’t deranged by rabies,
and left it to find again the bat house.

There were no injuries that we could see,
no innkeeper to pay for food and wine,
and little chance that I’d ever see it again.

 

John J. Brugaletta edited South Coast Poetry Journal for ten years. He has published seven volumes of his own poems, the latest of which is Selected Poems (Future Cycle Press, 2019).

Feminist Angelus
Our Lady

Hail Mary
Woman of power
Prophet of God
Bringer of light
All generations have called you blessed
As mother
Lover
Resistance fighter
Pray for us as we turn to you

Gabriel reached out to Mary,
And trembling asked if she could, world
Yes,
she hugged her knees tight
And her belly became full

Hail Mary
Woman of power
Prophet of God
Bringer of light
All generations have called you blessed
As mother
Lover
Resistance fighter
Pray for us as we turn to you

Smoking by the bike sheds
Kissing boys with immature lips
Carrying, holding nurturing God
Her body shifting with fearful joy

Hail Mary
Woman of power
Prophet of God
Bringer of light
All generations have called you blessed
As mother
Lover
Resistance fighter
Pray for us as we turn to you

Through anger and shame
Hiding God under a school skirt
There came a light
Gushing waters of hope, and a gentle cry
That turned the world upside down

Hail Mary
Woman of power
Prophet of God
Bringer of light
All generations have called you blessed
As mother
Lover
Resistance fighter
Pray for us as we turn to you

Mary
Hold us like you held your baby,
A cry in one hand, bottle in the other
Those late nights when we encounter Christ, step by step
As mothers
Lovers
Resistance fighters

Always turning to you

 

Lu Skerratt is a non binary Anglican exploring embodiment through Christian leadership and queer non conforming experiences of faith. They are currently doing a DthM at Durham University looking at bodies and boundaries at the Eucharistic table, and are part of St Mark’s, Sheffield.