Category Archives: Uncategorized

THE STARS WILL WELCOME YOU, BROTHER

In the tear tuned lustrous night
When water is blood softly hammering in the earth’s old veins
And dew sobs into the bone end of hours like a lullaby.
I am the smallest note, the quietest, in this unsung magnificat.

Light calls from behind the cirrus curtain
Muted moon
Alto comets
Plastic satellites synchronize their electronic pulses to four four
Sweep in metronymic precision left to right, right to left;
Held between earth and the infinite by a thought, a notion,
And gravity’s steadying hand.

There is a rhythm to the universe
A chord played below the level of the noise,
That resonates across the strings of those attentively listening
And resonates across those that aren’t.

 

Marc Janssen is an internationally published poet and poetic activist. His work has appeared haphazardly in printed journals and anthologies such as Off the Coast, Cirque Journal, Penumbra, The Ottawa Arts Review and Manifest West. He also coordinates poetry events in the Willamette Valley of Oregon including the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, and Salem Poetry Festival.

 

THE ANCIENT WORLD

“To imagine the sounds and smells of the ancient world
is to bring that world to life.”
-Robert Koehl

The ancients believed that demons
haunted thresholds.
The bells sewed to the hem
of the High Priest’s knee-length ephod
announced his entrances and exits
into the Tabernacle.
He made his presence known
so he might not die.
Alternating with the bells
were pomegranate-shaped tassels
of blue, purple, and crimson yarn.

Outside the Tabernacle
was the altar anointed with the blood
of animals offered in sacrifice.
The fires, the meat smoke rising
from the altar pleased the Lord,
fat and flesh consumed in smoke.

Over his fine garments
of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet yarns
held by a woven waistband,
the High Priest wore the breastplate
of Urim and Thummin,
used to obtain God’s decision
on important questions
where human judgment
was found inadequate.

As the High Priest moved,
the bells tinkled softly,
and the smell of the meat smoke
and wheat cakes
mixed with frankincense
rose in the air.

 

Anne Whitehouse is the author of six poetry collections.  Meteor Shower (2016) is her second collection from Dos Madres Press, following The Refrain in 2012. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love, as well as short stories, essays, features, and reviews. She was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and lives in New York City. You can listen to her lecture, “Longfellow, Poe, and the Little Longfellow War” here.

Charlemagne

Oh, father of Europe,
purveyor of Christianity,
father to me, Gisela-
you cherished us, all eighteen,
your daughters explicitly,
a smothered spinster like
my sisters, I write in
Carolingian minuscule
to reveal I’m broken,
a lost little girl who
cannot hold a shield without feudal circles,
cannot mingle without manors,
multiple wives & multiple mistresses,
you left me wary of men.
Alcuin taught me the skies,
I treasured the constellations
in his eyes, and for that he called
me Delia, nothing more,
You would not allow it,
You would not allow me,
and so I’m preserved
in his poetry,
and in this poem,
living on, but
never lived.

 

Nancy Byrne Iannucci is a historian from Troy, NY. Her work is published in numerous publications including Riggwelter, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Gargoyle, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her first book of poetry, Temptation of Wood, was recently published by Nixes Mate Review.

Unflowering

Buds know their potential
to bloom
and remain closed
dormant because of this.

The last time they blossomed,
allowed petals to unfold,
stamens to reproduce,
the world soon
withered them,

and now, inside petals
is the only haven,
the only thing to flourish,

and when someone new,
hovers nearby and gently caresses,
there is the flinch, the risk of unfurling for another,

so, buds enclose protective leaves tighter,
because they know too well
that it takes rain
as well as sunlight
to flower.

 

David Hanlon is from Cardiff, Wales, and currently living in Bristol, England. He has a BA in Film Studies & is training part-time as a counsellor/therapist. You can find his work online in Dirty Paws Poetry Review, Into The Void, Impossible Archetype & The Rising Phoenix Review, among others.

After Goya’s “St. Francis Borgia Helping a Dying Impenitent,” 1788

the intervention
of a human operator,
evidence, and burning coal.

synonymous with the cheap thrill,
the work of the soul, exquisite science,
unaware that the world will know who is right.

rebellion against this foul process of harvesting.
haunted cases? midnight sun?

there is a way to show everything without blood.
and yet the need, obligation of murmuring
shadows and light, interplay.

Andrew Rihn is a writer of essays, poems, and scholarly articles. He is the author of several chapbooks, including America Plops and Fizzes (sunnyoutside press) and The Rust Belt MRI (Pudding House). Along with his wife, the writer Donora A. Rihn, he co-authored the chapbooks The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: An Election Cycle (Moria Books/ Locofo Chaps) and The Day of Small Things (Really Serious Literature). Together, they live in Portage Lakes, OH with their two rescue dogs.

ALTAR

It’s all very well saying this table isn’t solid,
but it is—I bump my knee against it
and the hard matter of this world
is a stone there is no breaking
a fact there is no changing
as the light shines, exposing our eyes
to what we can no longer hide—the spirit
seeks us out for this reckoning
in our post-truth illusion, as we duck and dive
thinking we are free to lie without
being held to account by something so insubstantial
that is the soul of all substance: the Most Low and the Most High,
on this altar where I lay down my life.

Jay Ramsay
26.8.18

 

Jay Ramsay, who died in December 2018,  co-founded Angels of Fire in London in 1983 with its Festivals of New Poetry, was the author of 30 + books of poetry, non-fiction, and classic Chinese translation (with Martin Palmer) including Psychic Poetry—a manifesto, The White Poem, Alchemy, Crucible of Love–the alchemy of passionate relationships, Tao Te Ching, I Ching—the shamanic oracle of change, Shu Jing—the Book of History, The Poet in You (his correspondence course, since 1990), Kingdom of the Edge—Selected Poems 1980-1998, Out of Time—1998-2008, Places of Truth, Monuments, and Agistri Notebook (both 2014). In 2012 he recorded his poetry-music album, Strange Sun. In addition, he edited 6 anthologies of New Poetry—most recently Diamond Cutters—Visionary Poets in America, Britain & Oceania (with Andrew Harvey: www.tayenlane.com), as well as many collections for other poets, also under his own pamphlet imprint Chrysalis Poetry. He was also poetry editor of Caduceus magazine, working in private practice as a UKCP accredited psychotherapist and healer, and running workshops worldwide (www.jayramsay.co.uk).

AFTER THE SEVENTH DAY

The eighth day, well rested, the miracle of universe complete,
the dark dung of darkness and sad light cleansed and organized.
Forgive us our moment when all prayer becomes short stories,
shell shock inability to listen to vibrations of silence,
people wading into the brakes of words–
the sharp shark shard of vowels and their choking curves,
consonants threading into a grand forest choir
each stitch a slip in the wrong direction.
Forgive us our greed and simple idiocy, our lists,
our tears in flesh and psyche, our anger, our augers,
our metal plates, forgive us for taking the deeds
holding the great desk together, forgive us the robberies
of paper and light, of organization and disbelief,
forgive us for stealing purity in psalm and purity in image,
forgive us for every nine day week after week,
forgive us for forgetting where we are, where we come from,
where we belong, forgive us the miracle of rest.

 

Michael H. Brownstein’s work has appeared in The Café Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, American Letters & Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetry Super Highway and others. He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

Deer in the Suburbs

Stepping out the front door
I see a fawn standing not ten feet away,
its mother another space behind.
We freeze, the deer and I.
Startled, we regard one another
suspended in a long moment.

This is the fawn we found two days before,
curled in a nest of grass and brush
while the doe grazed unseen not far away.
We left it lie in its instinctive invisibility,
scentless, motionless to prey.

I am drawn into the fawn’s eye,
that dark infinity where life abides
with beauty, peace and innocence.
I want to know its depths, its secrets,
be one with its spirit,
feel the wildness.

The doe turns and walks away
and the spotted fawn runs behind
in its newborn rocking gait,
and we see them cross the street
and disappear behind the trees
of a neighbor’s yard.

 

Richard Green lives in southern New Mexico in the Rio Grande Valley. He writes about natural phenomena mostly. His poetry can be seen in The Almagre Review, Penwood Review, Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders, The Avocet, The Anglican Theological Review, and Twitterization Nation. His website is www.anewmexicanpoet.com.

God is Nervous Energy

God is salt water,
magnesium and calcium.

At sea level she is the
tide that causes bulges
and depressions in the
surface of oceans.

God is an aquifer.
Water soaks through
her, as do units of water:
hydrogen bonds and molecules
packed like inmates.

God is solid, liquid, and gas.

Her surface tension is more
than the force of any filter.

Solvent. Weathered. Ordered.

Floating around at room temperature.
God has a lot of nervous energy.

 

George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, New York (U.S.). His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, MORIA Poetry Journal, Chronogram Magazine,  Allegro Poetry Journal, Kalliope, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in Nonviolence Magazine, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pace e Bene, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, The Buffalo News and more.