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No Face but My Own
—after Santa Josefina, Peter Hurd

It seemed no accident when the walk
up to the doorway where scientists
had gone before was littered with sticks
assembled into Day of the Dead figures.

This, the entrance to Los Alamos
in 1942 prior to the drive up the hill,
where everyone who worked on the bomb
had to pass through the door.

I bought a charcoal of Santa Josefina
down the street in the superstitious way
you cross yourself long after you’ve attended
any church service. Even the extreme color

of geraniums in the courtyard spooked me
as if magenta, orange and pink could provide
a kind of lightning feared would detonate a test
so bright a girl blind since birth had seen.

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 six nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and France. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.

The Day You Kept Me from Harming Myself,
I Embraced You as You Left My Side

—for Tula & Jenn

I remained silent, my movement & stillness familiar,
your voices light over me, laughter leaving me no strength

to end it all.

My heart sparked despite itself,
& your warmth dusted me; you held my eyes

to yourself, cupped my ears
in your hands until I heard God wash

against me, hold me abandoned in floods,
wounds cleaned & smoothed.

How clever we molded together,
reached depths no light touches. You each drew me closer,

hid me within you, not from you: the last look of you filling my eyes
with yours, & I remember the looks,

how it told me you both would never leave.

 

Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections, nineteen chapbooks, three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir. She hopes you’ll fall in love with her words.

On the Way to the Basilica of Saint Francis

 

To say they were like pigeons—that little flock

of Asian nuns hurrying down a narrow street

in Assisi—is to say their gray cotton habits

looked layered and pearly in feathered April sunlight.

It is to say also that Francis would have loved them

as he loved the tiny sparrows, the small and certain

industry of their prayers, their unmistakable chirps of joy.

 

Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry has appeared in Florida Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Cave Wall, SWWIM Every Day and other journals. Her first book won the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award. Among other collections are The Light at the Edge of Everything and The Hours I Keep. She’s a four-time Pushcart nominee.

Gourds

Grace laughs at beauty.
Even the misshapen squash
has its own season.

 

Jen Stewart Fueston lives in Longmont, Colorado. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of journals, most recently Ruminate, Rock & Sling, and The St. Katherine Review. Her poems have twice been finalists for the McCabe poetry prize, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, “Visitations,” was published in 2015, and her second, “Latch,” will be released in early 2019. She has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as internationally in Hungary, Turkey, and Lithuania.

Midnight Ministers
“Are not all ministering spirits
sent out to serve…?” -Hebrews 1:14

Just like that—
we imagined later—
the quick flick of blue,
the sly leap of yellow,
the sharp prick of red
revving up into fiercer flames
and escaping from our
chipped brick chimney to our
cold 20’ x 20’ square of space,
rough floorboards where we
—only the night before—
huddled our child bodies
together for warmth while—
inches from our sleep-deprived
but truth-telling eyes—that specter,
muscled guardian of light—spread
like a shield his shimmering wings
before the dilapidated fireplace.

The next night of long-remembered,
only ash-left destruction,
after heat flung itself from floor
to curtains to outer door,
and the entire structure of our home
crumbled, we knew—though away
and unaware at that moment
of the blistering dangers of the hour—
yes, we knew as children know, the wide,
protective arms of angels, the blazing
gratitude of the saved.

 

 

Winner of America Magazine’s 2019 Foley Poetry Prize, Lock Haven University English Professor Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation and True, False, None of the Above—What She Was Saying(prose); children’s books; Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); Presence (assistant editor). See www.marjoriemaddox.com

Russian Sage (Pervaskia)

I have to get close
to breathe in with my eyes
the astonished quiet brightness
of the lavender flowers
that have come to stay with me.
I watch how they endure
the worst of storms
lashed about and bent
by whipping winds
and slashing rains
only to stand upright
the next day
on their feather shaped
leafy stems, tall in strength.
They teach me how to cope
and how to enjoy the sun.

 

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. In  May, 2018 her poem, “A View from a Window” was published in Amethyst Review.

Acrostic for Therese of Lisieux

Doctor of the Church
1873-1897

Trust in Jesus. Give
Him your heart. This simple truth I struggled to
Express. The “little way” I called it. From the inner
Recesses of my soul, I prayed my earthly
Exile would be brief (God’s will), begged for
Strength to bear peacefully and joyfully
Every suffering, desiring not my own consolation, but the

Opportunity to give pleasure to Jesus, to keep the
Flame of love burning. I abandoned myself to

Love, even when I felt nothing, abysmal
Indifference, so dense it threatened to
Suffocate my very being. Your yoke
Is sweet, Your burden light, I prayed, trusted that
Entering heaven, I’d be granted my fervent wish to be
Used for good on earth. Only one surprise: such
Xstasy, as is His, now is also mine.

Note: A Carmelite nun, Therese of Lisieux’ memoir, Story of a Soul, is a spiritual classic. She was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997.

 

Maryanne Hannan has published poetry in Magma, Stand, Oxford Review and elsewhere. Her first book, Rocking Like It’s All Intermezzo: 21st Century Psalm Responsorials, will be published by Wipf and Stock (2019). She lives in upstate New York, USA. Her website is www.mhannan.com.

THE LAST THING I SAW BEFORE MY ACCIDENT

The silver cross hanging from my rearview
mirror, blessed by an Esquipulan priest
with water from la Basilica, holy
Milagroso Cristo Moreno – Patrono
de Guatemala. Saved from the wreckage,
Enterprise Rental mailed la cruz in a
simple white envelope. In my Delta
’88 Oldsmobile, magnificent
replica of my sturdy grandparent’s
car, (the one I crashed in), a friend inquired
about its significance. I told him
my belief is la cruz protects my life.
It’s nice, he said, noticing its luster.
Tarnished I thought, and yet so resilient.

 

Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in central Iowa.  She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist Conference in Oslo, Norway.  Her recent poems appear in Appalachia, Hedge Apple, Pilgrimage, Potomac Review, Harpur Palate, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Ithacalit, and St. Katherine’s Review.  Her recent awards include a residency at Sundress Publication’s Firefly Farms, and a scholarship to attend the 2019 Sewanee Writers Conference.

RAISING THE DEAD

Reflecting on life to awaken to a fuller realization of reality is a thoroughgoing and painful undertaking. But also serves to relieve and reward as it involves stripping back the burdens and restrictions of old attitudes. Writing is engaging with the Pieta Covenant1 or a relationship with oneself. It is a condition where one is held safely as the other sheds what lies in and between consciousness and the sacred experience.

Building a relationship with the sacred is signing an agreement with faith. The writer’s ego needs to be humble and loyal enough to be able to descend into the shadowy aspects of their being. Under the aegis of the unconscious, messages between conscious and unconscious material, explicated through the art of writing, function as the vehicle carrying the writer as does conversing with an analyst in the therapeutic situation. The writer’s agency, when secure enough, replaces the analyst’s guidance and ability to contain the suffering of the analysand. The writing body and scope participate by taking the form of a receptacle handling the writer’s affects.

Since the sacred delivers to us psychological facts such as dreams,2 one’s individuation journey is, symbolically speaking, contained by Christ’s mother or a loving mother figure to assist in the healing and restoration of our most natural Self. The Transfiguration of Christ, as a harbinger of his resurrection, parallels this crossing over to rebirth whilst inserting an emphasis on its reoccurring and vivifying qualities. So the unconscious, the ego and the writing enters into a dialog and an experiment with language takes place, so that messages produce meaning and in turn, release energy and a life force or entelechy.

Syncretizing these fragmented parts of ourselves which have been formerly disavowed and rejected is akin to raising the dead. In other words, writing mindfully, unlocks the true course of language that has been interrupted due to denial.3

Renewal cannot be achieved without death. Death is not a literal event. Death symbolizes an opening, a threshold, a gate or a door to a consciousness which more generously compliments one’s natural capacity whereby suffering is transformed. It is like walking through a passage or a hallway with numerous doors. Or as depicted in many dreams, an invitation up a winding staircase or down a basement. Dreams are the main portal to the sacred because they present our inner state without resistances or defense mechanisms.

And heavily depending upon the associations and experiences of the writer, this experimentation with language, reconciles the tensions within the writer by breaking down one’s too confined experience of life.4 No single formula exists, or dream book or sermon or ideology which can direct this journey because when the interfacial process of consciousness and the sacred comes into play, an internal quest which is entirely separate from the mainstream, takes hold. And the process must remain in a state of flux so one must relinquish the collective’s proclivity towards brittle logic and rationality. Because the unconscious is like a sea which fluctuates and flows asymmetrically – it is, substantially, a feminine fluidity that can only prove creational if, through our own agency, we are receptive and nurturing towards our own vulnerabilities.

And that is how the sacred or the unconscious, for the sake of evolution, communicates with and sustains the writer. Creators rotate the eternal story of raising Lazarus from the dead because it adumbrates the resurrection of Christ. This constantly reminds us how the sacred urges us to fulfil and nourish this greater circular and moving narrative.5

References:
1. Grotstein J. S. Who is the Dreamer Who Dreams the dream? A Study of Psychic Presences. Routledge, 2009
2. Jung C.G. Dream Analysis–Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-30 (Volume One). Routledge, 1938
3. Dorpat T. L. Denial and Defense in the Therapeutic Situation. Jason Aronson Inc., 1985
4. Von Franz M. L. The Golden Ass of Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine in Man. Shambhala, 1992
5. Liew B.T.S, Runions E. Psychoanalytic Mediations between Marxist and Postcolonial Readings of
the Bible. Society of Biblical Literature, 2016

 

Annie Blake’s research aims to exfoliate branches of psychoanalysis. She enjoys semiotics and exploring the surreal and phantasmagorical nature of unconscious material. Her work is best understood when interpreting them like dreams. She is a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne. You can visit her on annieblakethegatherer.blogspot.com.au and https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009445206990.