Category Archives: Uncategorized

How to Monk the Morning

In younger days a longbeard told me the sun will rise without my help but every monkish praise and prayer followed the zodiac of 

the Egyptian sky and even the milking-goats and hen-lays/leaven here and everywhere every 

earthly cell makes the daily round from 21 to 28 hours and splits the difference, you get the sharps and flats 

in the melody of days and the quarter-tone chants right the wobble, when the empty moon barren of 

clouds and shadow shines the brightest the howling desert is filled with silent music stirring and swept, 

ridden by single notes and simple songs, the out-breath of the fertile cosmos blows on our faces just the same. The mystics of the east 

rise one morning at a time, boil the water for tea. The wisdom of the desert is no more no less than the here and the now. Make your own monks 

or become one yourself: all that breathes and beats together/on each other follows the asceticism of hop-toads 

the ways of widow skimmers and bacterial blooms heron struts and bobs bobcat
whiskers woodchuck whistles slow clams/marrows 

and jams, bucksnorts gnatcatcher wheezes homewoods liturgies of whippoorwills (and like jackals/ruffian doves of the 

Sahara) evening coos and coyotes. Give your palms to the dawn and fingertips to the moon and give a little push,

bend at the knees feel the springs in your hips, pogo your chakras and belly-up 
the sun, wake with the dawn and the dawn with you. 

Jack Phillips is a Lebanese American poet and founder of The Naturalist School, an organization devoted to intergalactic ecology and wild creativity. He has published numerous poems, articles and a few books on ecology and ecospirituality. He teaches ecopsychology and ecospirituality at Creighton University School of Medicine.

Altar of Spice

Grandmother created with cinnamon and salt.
Scents of baking live in the deepest brain
forever. Like prayers we taste even in our dreams.

We use and are ourselves the usefulness.
Words another fragrance, indelible.
Someone’s wheel forms the idea 
of a vase. A threaded loom
the bones of a beautiful blanket.

My neighbor is out planting with faith 
there will be sweetness. Down the street, 
someone is grooming a horse. Its whinny 
of pleasure echoes all the way to my back door.  

I hold a comb, a needle, a measuring cup,
a pen, to feel the body’s urgency. 
Our talents form the altar of the world.

Joanne Clarkson‘s sixth poetry collection, Hospice House, was released by MoonPath Press in 2023. Her volume, The Fates, won Bright Hill Press’ annual contest and appeared in 2017. Her poems have been published in such journals as Poetry Northwest, Nimrod, The Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review and American Journal of Nursing. Clarkson has Masters Degrees in English and Library Science, has taught and worked as a professional librarian. After caring for her mother through a long illness, she re-careered as a Hospice RN. Currently, she teaches writing classes at a farm for retired and rescued horses.

Solstice Hymn

Glory to the troposphere,
	precious ring of loving air—
Glory to the thunderstorm,
	greening winter into spring —
Glory to the stratosphere,
	shielding ultraviolet glare—
Glory to the water’s course,
	cycled through each living thing—

May the shortest day
	show that our time is full
May the longest life
	share every beauty known

Glory to the mesosphere,
	burning errant meteors—
Glory to the rocket’s flare, 
	subatomic fairy ring—
Glory to the thermosphere,	
	buffering ionic force—
Glory to the colored air,
	borealis glimmering—

May the longest day
	stretch possibility
May the shortest life
	stimulate urgency

D.W. Baker is a poet, father, and teacher from St. Petersburg, Florida. His work appears in Sundog Lit, ballast, Overtly Lit, and Green Ink Poetry, among others, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He reads for several mastheads, including Variant Lit and Cosmic Daffodil. See more of his work at http://www.dwbakerpoetry.com

Common Ground
(An Atheist, a Presbyterian, and a Catholic Take Out Their Garbage)

I can hear my neighbor singing, 
the one whose house I can’t see 
for the golden leaves of the old 
maple, singing soft to herself 
as she carries out her weeks’ worth
of things to be reduced, reused. 

Across the street the tech guy who 
works from home, another neighbor,  
the one with the big heart, foster 
father of cats, raises his hand 
in greeting, grins, and looks skyward.  
We three stand silent, gazing up.

Above us the heavy velvet sky 
presses out its saturated
crimsons, oranges, while the moon 
rises early above the pines
and problems. We sometimes – amid 
the garbage, the recycling – 
forget the bigness of the sky 

(as big as her song) shaking out 
(as big as his heart) into this
new season’s slow wheeling around 
the depth of cobalt horizon, 
pushing forward into the night
and toward the coming equinox.

K.L. Johnston is an award-winning author, photographer, and poet best known for works centered in spiritual experience, nature, and trauma survival. Author of three books of poetry, In Every Season, The Nature of These Gifts, and Grace Period, her works can be found in literary magazines and anthologies. A retired antiques and art dealer she currently lives near the Savannah River. Visit her online gallery at 1-kathleen-johnston.pixels.com.

The skeleton tree

Leaning silently to the right
It was as if the skeleton tree 
Was weighted down with winter weariness.
Fragile branches reached out 
As if there was some help and 
Gentle succour to be had.
Phalanxes brittle and desperate,
Spoke of remembered leaves and
Luscious red berries
Aflame with life and joy.
Even the bark looked withered,
Bleakly forlorn.
As I walked in quiet dawn,
I paused to breathe and inhale the frosty air.
Small buds whispered of resilience
And promised resurrection.
It was not a skeleton tree after all. 

Wendy Westley was a successful nurse and midwife for many years in the National Health Service in the UK, and now writes short stories and poetry in retirement. She belongs to a creative writing group and has had her poetry published in poetry journals and magazines- Amethyst Review, Pulsar Poetry webzine, Seventh Quarry Press, and Spirit Fire Review. Her first book Sun hats & staying home was launched on 1st March 2025 in the West Midlands

The Shofar's Call

gathers us up
with the sheep and the cows
to huddle together 
in barn, temple or home,
bleats the sustained distress
of all who need help,
releases the broken spirit
within its bent form,
soars like a gull taking flight,
leaves the echo of yearning
roaming across the sky.

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.

Civil Society


Unto you therefore, O kings, do I speak, that ye may learn wisdom, and not fall - Wisdom 6:9


When you say you are king,
I laugh. And ask, of what?
But there’s your retinue,
Your messengers, specks 
Against my moon’s horizon,
My brilliant sun and stars,
Here, demanding I listen.

A frequent book reviewer, Maryanne Hannan has published poetry in THE WINDHOVER, PRESENCE: A JOURNAL OF CATHOLIC POETRY, CHRISTIAN CENTURY, and elsewhere. She is the author of ROCKING LIKE IT’S ALL INTERMEZZO; 21ST CENTURY RESPONSORIALS.

Soaked

caught without an umbrella
the sky opening above me
each drop a cold hand
pressed to my skin

at first I hurry
shoulders tight
thinking of dry rooms
clothes drenched against skin

then I stop
let it fall over me
soak the seams
weigh my hair

what blessing is this
to be washed without asking
claimed again
by the open sky

I wonder
what else have I turned from
thinking it hardship
when it was gift
 

Baskin Cooper is a poet, visual artist, and multidisciplinary creator based in Chatham County, North Carolina. His work spans poetry, songwriting, sculpture, screenwriting, and voice acting, weaving together visual, narrative, and musical elements. He holds a PhD in psychology and previously lived in Cork, Ireland, experiences that shape his explorations of folklore, lyricism, and personal history. His poems have appeared in Rattle, The Avocet, Ink & Oak, Smols Poetry Journal, Verse-Virtual, and ONE ART, with new work forthcoming in The Khaotic Good, The Woodside Review, and others. His debut collection, The Space Between Branches, is seeking publication.

Herring 


Sometimes when a door closes, God doesn’t 
open a window. Then you sledgehammer 
through all the drywall, and still, you may break 
through into total darkness. I thought God 
was laughing when my mother said, I won’t
be your mother. I couldn’t hear God say, 
I’ll mother you instead. God is rarely 
the evidence and often the obverse.
Remember this: Do not let anyone 
tell you what God is or how to find it.
I informed the therapist I couldn’t 
leave my lover because I’d never meet 
someone better. She smiled, and there was God, 
and swimming behind, a school of bright fish.
 

Morrow Dowdle is the author of the chapbook Hardly (Bottlecap Press, 2024). Their poems have been featured in Rattle, ONE ART, Pedestal Magazine, The Baltimore Review, and other literary journals. They have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and were a finalist for the 2024 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize. They run a performance series which features historically marginalized voices. A creative writing MFA candidate at Spalding University, they live with their family in Durham, NC.