Category Archives: Uncategorized

One Hundred Things

It’s a ubiquitous kindergarten tradition:  Collect one hundred things for the hundredth day of school.  But Gwyn’s disinterest creates yet another mother-daughter struggle.  Counting elbow noodles is boring.  Stringing beads is stupid.  I look at our dining room table, messy with paper, pencils, and scissors, and suggest, somewhat deviously, “Gather up your paper dolls.  I bet you have a hundred.”

Her eyes brighten.  The table clears while paper dolls, ten in each row, get into marching order on the living room floor.

Gwyn began coloring paper dolls at age four.  At first Emily or I outlined the body for her; then she learned to sketch her own, coloring in skin, face, hair.  We were perpetually cutting out arms and legs and whole wardrobes, each tiny shirt and skirt bristling with flaps.  When Gwyn started therapy for adoption-related struggles, the first thing she did was draw our liberal Christian family with matching skirts, shirts, and hijabs.  When Gwyn read that Betsy and Tacy cut their paper dolls from magazines, advertisement models toting oversized cell phones and wine glasses began littering the living room.  Family started giving her store-bought sets, paper mice holding dandelion bouquets and Frida Kahlo with her amazing wardrobe and, later, Hamilton, cocky with his hand on his hip.  These delighted Gwyn for a bit, she dressed and sorted them, but her ardor for her own designs always won out.  There’s the Christmas set with Mr. and Mrs. Santa and elves, a set for Disney’s Frozen movie with accurate replicas of Anna and Elsa’s dresses, the “Mama, Imma, and Gwyn go to Hawaii” set with hula skirts and volcano-proof suits, and even the God set.  The divine family has strangely enormous heads and stick bodies.  Sister God has cornrow braids, Baby God is still crawling, Grandpa God sports a gray beard.  “The whole world’s a family,” Gwyn tells me, and she draws and draws, trying to find her place in it.

Once after I’d been away on a three-day silent retreat, Gwyn greeted me at the door with a large manilla envelope on which she’d scrawled, “Open Immediately.”  Gwyn and I sat on the back hall steps, our sides pressing, my arm around her.  Inside were Gwyn, Imma, Mama, each with a few outfits in our favorite colors, matching pajamas, and crowns.  I couldn’t stop squeezing her into me.  I imagined her all weekend bent over the dining room table, pouring ache into little flat people she could give hair-dos and tenderly clothe, all the while I’d been pouring my ache into the silence, and it seemed to me that prayer is never what we think it is.

We collect paper dolls from dresser tops, book shelves, and under beds, laying them in a battalion on the living room carpet:  Ninety-seven, not counting clothes or vehicles.  Gwyn tackles the final three with gusto.  Once their classroom appearance is complete, we will store them in a large gift box in the basement.  Sometimes while I’m working I will imagine those paper people resting in the dark like a secret population of Gwyn’s longings, while her love marches mightily, invisibly, into creation.

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew is the author of Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality & Spirit, now in its second edition; the chapbook Map to Mercy, and three books on writing: Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir; Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice; and The Release: Creativity and Freedom After the Writing is Done. She is a founding member of The Eye of the Heart Center, where she teaches writing as a transformational practice and hosts an online writing community. You can connect with Elizabeth at www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com and www.spiritualmemoir.com.

autumn breeze through the heart chakra

a gust of desire
for something eternal
flung open all these windows
inside me

exposing that place
that holds up the lungs
you know, the place where
fire is compressed into a point

and suddenly, the point
bounces forward
turns cool and hollow

a dancing tunnel of morning light
with autumn leaves floating upwards!
no two leaves ever identical

Shelina Gorain is a former software professional, a balcony gardener and a knitter. She writes from Toronto.

Love in Plain Sight


Are we entering a dark cave? If so, let's step in together. 
You be my candle; I’ll be yours. We will generate warmth, 
follow light we make for each other. 
Let any darkness bring us closer.

Snow, a cold blanket, can sparkle once fallen. 
It just needs to be open, in conversation with sun 
or a full moon and stars.  
Let love be revealed. Let's welcome the magical, 
have faith in mystery. Not be diminished by misery—
it is just a segment of this journey.

Start with incantation; like a bird, sing it sweetly:
I want to find the love in front of me.
 

Marjorie Moorhead is author of poetry books Into the Thrum (2025), What I Ask (2024) and Every Small Breeze (2023), chapbooks In My Locket (2024), Survival:Trees, Tides, Song (2019) and Survival Part 2 Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (2020). Her poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Tiny Seed Literary, Moist Poetry Journal, Bloodroot Literary, Sheila-Na-Gig, Porter House Review, Poeming Pigeon, Verse-Virtual, What Rough Beast, Touchstone, others, and 20 anthologies to date, including The Wonder of Small Things (James Crews, ed.). Marjorie lives with her family and writes from a river valley at the NH/ VT border.

out of bread broken

out of bread
broken
blossomed the wood of Word
whose pulse was universe in nails
out of bread
broken
blossomed a flower
whose cup was so rare as blood
	    o Man
	Who is Root of men’s naming
				(someone called jesse)
   to the earth condemned
    was planted
	      the sower went out to sow
	      into the very field of words
		He spoke
        for all this field 
	    this life and death
	   did voice
   relentless as the grave is love

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS is a former teacher and librarian whose writings have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Press 53 published her first book of poetry in 2015 entitled she: robed and wordless and her second, Writing the Stars, 2024. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. James Lee III composed “Chavah’s Daughters Speak” for a concert held on May 11, 2021, at 92Y in New York City for five poems from her book. Another concert was held in Cleveland, Ohio on March 28, 2023, sponsored by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society.

The Boy Inside the Whale


We leave certain things behind when we visit each other, like my dear friend who tells me his youngest son died, and leaves the dear boy roaming inside my body.  I feel like the whale felt when Jonah was about to be freed from its belly, leaving behind, perhaps, a clavicle, a prayer he might have needed later, or the last remains of his hope that men and flowers will find their way to resurrection.  


                                   A boy rides the crest
                                    of his parting, the taste
                                     of salt still on his lips.

Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, and adopted by New York. His poems appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Worcester Review, Louisville Review, and Hanging Loose Press, among others, and also publications in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. He received multiple Pushcart nominations, and his chapbook, Contraband, was published in 2022. In January of 2025, he became Poet Laureate of Rockland County, New York.

When I Consider Your Heavens

                                                     (Psalm 8:3-5)

How does it feel to see the sky for the first time?
        I never considered the question; an animal
                posed it to me.

Of course, I take a sky for granted. I can’t recall
        a world without it, without sun or breezes
                or tops of trees. 

North of here in the woods, a new sanctuary brings
        together former lab chimps who were never
                allowed outdoors.

The newspaper’s photo caption reads so simply: 
        Lance, the first chimp to go outside, gazes
                up at the sky.

And I stare at the photo, at him.

I wonder what Lance is thinking. Like someone 
        with new sight, he seems absorbed in awe 
                of the heavens.

Ape experiments provided easy-to-clean floors 
        forming the earth and ceiling tiles framing
                plain, finite skies.

When I leave work, it’s dark with a partial moon.
        I sit in my car, wishing I could talk to Lance
                of horizons.

The habitat eventually will let the chimps out 
        at night. How can anyone be prepared
                to witness stars?

Ronnie Sirmans is an Atlanta modern media company’s digital platforms editor whose poetry has appeared in Sojourners, Fathom, Ekstasis, The Windhover, The Clayjar Review, Heart of Flesh, and America: The Jesuit Review, in addition to non-faith-based magazines.

The Dry Stane Dyke Project

i.
The dry stane dyke stands. Barely.
Stretches far off.  Crumbling Ashkirk whinstone
dappled with velvet olive lichen,
held with feather-moss, flanked
by scrubby birch and rowan.
The dyker stands. Barely.  Kneads his back,
then kneels to study before stripping out the stones.
He re-builds, weighs each stone in the hand, stilled.

Huge throughstones help him bridge.
Coping stones protect, lend an aesthetic touch
with hidden hearting, vital for equilibrium.
He patiently lays them side by side
grades by size and shape, 
in character with the Borders landscape.

ii.

The dyker looks tenderly to place where each belongs,
examines each virtue, each fault
to maintain integrity, avoid collapse.
He’s practised the skills in every circumstance;
second nature, with steady cadence
to re-connect with people and place.

He takes his time - a wall built right allows others to thrive:
mosses, lichens, purple thrift and saffron saxifrage,
beetles in the damp warm spaces between courses,
even wrens can nest, just as St Cuthbert
tamed ducks to rest near his cell and chapel.
After winter, sleepy snakes slither from wall to grass.
The stones flourish for future generations,
all as kin, all as neighbours.

Inspired while teaching Religious Studies, Barbara Usher now cares for retired ewes who bring their lambs at foot, and ex-commercial hens on her 8 acre animal sanctuary, Noah’s Arcs. Her poetry has been published in Borderlands: an Anthology, Amethyst Review, the Catholic Poetry Room, Dreich, Green Ink Poetry, Last Leaves, Last Stanza, Liennekjournal, and in the Amethyst Press anthology Thin Places & Sacred Spaces. Her work is included in the Sonic Museum, Heids and Herts Scotland. She writes on Celtic saints, ex-farmed animals, and her local area, and is the representative for the Fife Poetry Stanza. Her website is: barbaraushernoahsarcs.com.

Salmon River

An eagle perches on a low branch
waiting for herring in still, clear
water at the riverbend.

The speckled loon rushes through verdant green
lily pads to purple bloomed pickerelweed,
her dark downy chicks close behind.

Veiled by beech trees,
red-eyed vireos
serenade without ceasing.

Blue dragonflies dance 
above the water catching
prey mid-flight.

Sundown on the Salmon River
casts its spell—
where the river goes, I will follow.

Angie Kinman is a writer, reading interventionist, and retired teacher living in Nashville, Tennessee. She has always been passionate about teaching poetry, but it was not until her daughter, who had special needs, passed away on March 2, 2023 that she began to write poetry. She has found healing and a divine connection through writing.

A Bat in the Pantry

	A life hidden in seclusion is like what?
		– Bai Juyi

No warning 
just a soft flutter that skims /
the top of your head
like a plump putto / not quite 
touching down and even softer /
swooshes then darting
this direction and / that 
into the too-bright light 
rushing to / find its way
out the door into fading / dark 
of first morning blush

But at least it / didn’t land 
like a horrible webbed hand /
in imitation of a human hat / some
misshapen mammalian beret
or / kite-like yarmulke clinging 
like a pat / on the head
from a pedophile priest as /
creepy and reassuring
as corrupt / religion can be
as soothing as a / nightshade cap
or an angelic evasion / of the truth

We are no longer scared of / such
surprises that no longer surprise / but
you never know what’s next / ? ? ? / bull
frogs with long tongues in the toilet / men 
with long guns in the aftermath / stealthy
copperheads in the rocks / healthy wolf 
spiders scaling bedroom walls / and now 
these indigent bats lost and down / on 
their luck demanding their squatter’s rights /
indignant in furry flight after hanging
out / all night in the pantry 

It took some doing / to get it out
safe and ultrasound as / it kept banging
its fangs against windows / and screening
swooping here and there as if / it knew
what it wanted but not how to get it
/ searching for something the pantry did
not / have nor the kitchen nor the house
nor the / woods nor the world as it
flitted upon / rosy dawn air on down 
Sherwood Road toward / Buggytop Trail
and home to Lost Cove Cave. 

Richard Collins is abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple and lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he leads Stone Nest Zen Dojo. His recent poetry has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature and appears in Amethyst Review, Clockhouse, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, MockingHeart Review, Pensive, Sho Poetry Journal, Think, and Willows Wept Review. His books include No Fear Zen (Hohm Press), In Search of the Hermaphrodite: A Memoir (Tough Poets Press, 2024), and Stone Nest: Poems (Shanti Arts, 2025).

Nur

           I’m in love. But not 
the kind of love you’re thinking of. 

        I’m a snowflake melting 
devoted to the first spring’s sunlight. 

A houseplant aching for a window—
thirsting,
wanting. 

The sun beams within my vessel 
with everything I consume. 
Cucumbers, basils, spearmint, 
and amaranth leaves. 
Borage, marigold, nasturtium, 
and anise hyssop flowers. 

The moonlight coils me within a silky cocoon 
while crickets and frogs tickle me 
with the chorus of their jubilation. 

God’s light 
cycling and recycling— 
inhaling and exhaling 
facets of nature. 

Shahrzad Taavoni is a poet, artist, and licensed acupuncturist pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Baltimore. Her work explores healing, mythic consciousness, and spirituality, and has appeared in Soul Forte Journal, The Closed Eye Open, Persian Heritage Magazine, and is forthcoming in California Quarterly. She creates immersive poetry light shows, blending her poems, voice, and sculptures, shown at Maryland Art Place, School 33, Subtle Rebellion, and the Baltimore Public Works Museum. Follow Shahrzad: Instagram: @shahrzadtaavoni; Facebook: facebook.com/shahrzadtaavoni