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Do You Believe in God? Climate Change?

Ancient gods rain fire into
winter’s mythological mitt.
Inhabitants escape from the
tampered breaches to become
apprentices of harmony and
tell of wondrous kings–
the bestiary a cephalopod
might preach. Tell me
less of spirit, more of
body. Tell me hunger.
Tell me deserts, dry
open mouths.

James Croal Jackson is the author of The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared in Hobart, FLAPPERHOUSE, Yes Poetry, and elsewhere. He edits The Mantle, a poetry journal. Find him in Columbus, Ohio or at jimjakk.com.

Perfection

With the Dutch precision of an old master
or the concentration of a tool
with no soul
perfection is possible. It may be
photographic realism
or an edge so sharp
it bleeds. It may be an aria
that flies, or a cadenza straight
from the subconscious fingers of a soloist
whose bow is strung with lightning.
For those who never come close
the consolation lies
in the journey; the lifelong meditation
or daily discipline
on the yoga mat as the limbs
become liquid and flow
through the poses without ever
moving far enough east
to slip through the knot
and leave the body behind.

Dead End.

 
I’ve started catching myself
Offering my neck to people,
Stretching my throat muscles,
Slightly raising my chin.

They don’t seem to know what I’m doing.

I’m laying my throat bare,
Hoping to feel the touch of a hand
For an instant of grace
Before I give myself up
To the hard closing fingers.

I am offering my throat to any
Who will take it.

I have remembered
What lies at the base of me,
And even though everything has changed,
I know again what I can do—have done—
And I cannot contain this truth.

I will lay it in a small corner of my soul,
Cover it with fear and shame,
Stop searching for God.

It is a pity I have remembered again.
I was closer than I’ve ever been
To finally finding Him.

Eabhan Ní Shuileabháin is an Irish poet, born of an American father and Irish mother, who has lived as an outsider all her life in Ireland, Holland, America and Wales. She has had work published in a range of journals in Ireland, Britain, America, Europe and Australia.

FISH

The fisherman was utterly lost. The storm that had taken him so by surprise had also thrust him far out to sea. The waters all around him glowed darkly with an immensity of depth; the boat rocked to slow, massive currents. The night had been vast, the dark steep and impenetrable, terrible with swells and the constant terror of capsizing. In salmon robes, dawn had brought calm but also, in every direction, that sharp blue arc of distant horizon. Hours became days. His net and most of his provisions had been washed away in the storm; all that remained to him was a modest keg of fresh water that, fortunately, had been well tied down, a patch of canvas beneath which he could escape the sun’s fiercest rays, and a small square of net with some thread. He fashioned the fragment of net into a rough scoop trailed alongside the boat, hoping to snare some confused fry or perhaps a half-blind, tired old fish.

Not well nourished at the best of times, weakness soon descended upon the poor fisherman. It was the dusk hour, when ocean and sky seem to merge into one continuous translucence. A small silver fish strayed into his makeshift net. He felt gratitude well up in him at this unexpected and unlikely meal. On its side, caught up clumsily in the webbing and half out of the water, the little silver fish gasped gently and held the fisherman meekly in its gaze. The fisherman had often had cause to eat fish raw, and this tiny creature promised brief respite from the swells of hunger that surged through him. And yet, something in this fish seemed almost unnaturally clean and bright. It were as though the crescent of moon had fallen into the sea and cleansed itself of the merest tarnish before yielding itself to him. “I am sorry, little one. How innocent you are in this, my hunger – and yet I must eat.” The fish seemed almost to understand. It swivelled its eye to the skies without anger or judgement. Then, without thinking, free of any sense of the consequences of his action, and as gently as he could, the fisherman let the silver fish go.

The fish swam at once to the depths. He told his tiny school of silver brothers and sisters his strange dream: how a simple net had fooled him; how the huge man in a wooden boat had apologised to him for hunger, only to release him. The small huddle of fish was very still for some time, moving hardly at all and only now and then with the merest flick of a fin in the dimness. Then, one by one, they began to flutter upwards. One by one, over several days, they gently but insistently presented themselves to the fisherman’s feeble net. For a moment, the fisherman doubted his senses; but he knew the sea and its occupants too well to think this was some kind of coincidence or accident. When least expected, there would be a flash and flip of fish at the side of the boat. They gave themselves up softly, without struggle; and he ate with reverence, as though each little soul were the entire ocean, or the last crescent of moon that any woman or man would ever gaze upon. In humility, he accepted the many gifts of their small salt bodies. He ate until restored. The last fish of all was, he felt sure, the very one he had released. The salt of his tears joined the salt of the sea. He felt fresh strength dart silvery through him and, with a kindly breeze now behind him, the current firm beneath, the fisherman was returned to shore.

         copyright Mario Petrucci

Award-winning UK poet, ecologist and PhD physicist Mario Petrucci has held major poetry residencies at the Imperial War Museum and with BBC Radio 3.  Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl (Enitharmon, 2004) secured the Daily Telegraph/ Arvon Prize.  Consciousness is his truest subject, and i tulips (Enitharmon, 2010) exemplifies Petrucci’s distinctive combination of innovation and humanity.  www.writingintofreedom.com

Holy Land

For my pilgrim mother

Faith might be easier
if it was simply a matter
of almond blossom,
of blood anemones
spotting the hill-side,
or the diamond blue
of lupins and violets
along the valley
still called Armageddon.

Prayer might come quicker
if the caves stayed unbuilt-upon,
if layer on layer of
begun by Byzantines,
destroyed by Persians,
rebuilt by Crusaders,
destroyed by Muslims,
of twentieth century wars
remained scattered dust
in the Samarian wilderness.

Abraham does his best,
yellow base-ball cap at a tilt
to beacon us on through traders
and treacherous steps,
where nothing is as
the guidebook describes it.

The tears come,
not on, unsurprisingly,
the Via Dolorosa
or the slow sepulchral crawl
past Calvary, the quick shove
through the tomb

but in a quiet place
of vaulted roof,
of white Jerusalem stone,
where a smiling,
West Cork Franciscan
guards the door,
where steps descend
to the cave your namesake
may have been born in,

where the notes soar as we gather
a rag-tag choir at St. Ann’s altar:

oh sacrament most holy
oh sacrament divine

and I join in,
try descant
to my mother’s alto tones,
find harmonies
I’ve practised all my life,
came all these miles
to sing.

Nessa O’Mahony is from Dublin. She has published four books of poems. Her most recent publication is Metamorphic: 21st Century Poets Respond to Ovid (Recent Work Press), which she co-edited with Paul Munden. She presents a monthly podcast called The Attic Sessions.

Transformation, a Foxtale

Born a fox. Fox in the hen house.

Foxhound. Foxtrot, a slow, flowing dance.
Three step, feather step, natural turn.

Silver fox. Crazy like a fox. Fox on the run.
Slick like a fox,
quick like a fox, hide in plain sight like a fox.

Whiskey. Tango.

Hunted like a fox, the out of breath
got to get somewhere, got to get under it,
got to go deep fox, when chased for fur or fun.

Fox in flight, chased by dog or horse.

Red fox, brown fox. Quick brown fox jumps. Fox in the night.

_______________________

In Japanese literature, elite and folk,
the fox is often a shape shifter, a symbol of transformation
and duplicity. The rice-god Inari has fox servants
and is said to be a fox himself.

Kitsuni, the outsider.
Myoubo, celestial fox.
Nogitsune, wild fox.

In one of the traditional Japanese stories, a man shoots a fox
with an arrow, wounding it, but is unable to catch it.

On his way home, he sees it running past him with a flaming brand
in its mouth. It sets his house on fire.

In another story, a man saves the life of a vixen who later visits
him, explains that she is only temporarily human and offers herself
as his brief concubine. Sin, he thinks, and says no, whereupon
he hears this song:

The hat thou lovedst,
…………….Reed-wove, tricked out with damask,
……..Ah me, hath blown away…

and the fox is free to become fully human, and she leaves
the man behind.

__________________________

Aesop’s fox, who says he doesn’t want grapes, never did,
after he tried to reach them and couldn’t.

In several illustrations of this scenario, the fox first walks
back and forth admiring the alluring grapes on the vine.

(It is the same with a man who loves a woman only
as long as she loves him and after that begins to call
her names and say he never loved her at all.)

Foxglove (splendid purple flower-bells
with sparkled throats — highly toxic,
also called digitalis.)

All this I offer on the word of a fox.

Tamara Miles teaches English and Humanities at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College in South Carolina. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications including Fall Lines; Pantheon; Tishman Review; Animal; Obra/Artifact; Rush; Apricity; Snapdragon; Cenacle; RiverSedge; and Oyster River Pages. She was a 2016 contributor at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a resident at Rivendell Writers Colony in August, 2017. She hosts an audio poetry journal/radio show at SpiritPlantsRadio.com called “Where the Most Light Falls.”

At Jacob’s Ladder, Sidmouth

Stones on Steps

Stones are creeping up the steps but they’ll
never make it all the way – no tidal ducks and
drakes can propel pebbles beyond the sand and
water of their belonging. Even metaphors climb
just so far before real hands and shovels come to
scoop them back, not like but totally as the rock
they are. It is the same in that way earth is never
linked to a heaven no matter how people dream
and however their babel tries to confuse and
persuade. Take a stone and put it in your hand and
feel the cold but rounded reality. After millions of
years and the crashing of waves these will be the
dust of the earth, stuff that comes and goes but is
not walking out of water to ascend these stairs.

Mike Ferguson is widely published in poetry magazines and his most recent collection is the sonnets chapbook Precarious Real [Maquette Press, 2016]. A retired English teacher, he co-authored the education text Writing Workshops [Cambridge University Press, 2015]. https://mikeandenglish.wordpress.com/

possum christ

we
assemble
in the garden
sunday
at sunrise
waiting for the
cardinal to
sing

squirrel servers
scuttle through
the gate
rabbit deacon
dove subdeacon
orange-vested
robins
chanting
in trees

possum christ
plays dead
under a
bevined
bench

the cardinal
flits for the
blueberry bush
the deacon for
the dandelions
the servers
scuttle
up the
black
walnut

Maria Mazzenga is a poet from Arlington, Virginia who’s been writing poetry for 30 years; she was first published as a teenager in The Catskill Review, and later in Poet Magazine and Takoma Voice.  She has done readings in Maryland and Washington, D.C.  She is currently an editor on a new online poetry publication Jump, where she has also published a few of her pieces.

Baptism

I will lean a ladder against the house
and take a chainsaw and goggles
up onto our roof,
prime the pump and pull the cord,
and with a tape measure
and an undying belief,
will cut a hole in the spot
that is directly above our bed.
Because, you see, a storm is coming –
you can smell it in the air –
and I want it to wash us clean of
past bruises and current sins,
and, through the hole,
allow God to witness a baptism
that will fix what His original one
could not.