Category Archives: Uncategorized

Rabbi Nehorai to Acher
 
In Heaven, I have heard, there is no sitting
down, or telling jokes, or shedding tears—
one life’s allotment lasts one all his years,
then ducts run dry, mirth fades, prayer unremitting
serves for an eternity or so.
In Abram’s bosom, “Ha!” has been erased,
desire and hate—such joys!—from the soul effaced.
We must partake of these before we go.
I’ve always hoped there will be time for study,
that one might pass the long celestial season
among the learned dead, debate the twists
of the Law that, like blind pathways, seemed so muddy
to mortal eyes, to finally clear the mists,
and the final joy will rise from faith and reason.

Note: One of Rabbi Meir’s closest friends was the ostracized heretic Acher (“The Other”), with whom he would frequently debate scripture even as it risked his reputation to do so. Acher’s heresy may have sprung from a vision of a seated angel, contradicting the teaching that in Heaven there is no sitting down, as there is no weariness.

Daniel Galef‘s first book, Imaginary Sonnets (2023), is a collection of seventy persona poems, each a verse monologue exploring the point of view of a different historical figure, literary character, or inanimate object. Subjects include Saint Augustine, the moral philosopher John Taurek, and the woman who painted the fresco of Christ in Borja, Spain. The book is available now from Word Galaxy/Able Muse Press.

A Monk's Burial

We see on the ice plains,
the snow on brittle stubble.
From the white lake
fishermen leave the shacks
to watch the slow line
of mourners -- singling
up to the holy ground
broken open, like the holes
for ice fishing
in the deep, flat water.
The pile of sandy dirt
seems to cover
the broken backbone
of an ancient whale.
Each of us, with a hand full
of soil or line
is drawn down now
into the silence.

Royal Rhodes taught the history of Christianity for almost forty years. His poems have appeared in a number of literary journals, including: Ekstasis Poetry, Amethyst Magazine, Foreshadow Magazine, The Cafe Review, New Verse News, and  STAR 82 Review, among others. Art and poetry collaborations have been published by The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina.

The Mystic’s Autumn

We remind ourselves how we have more time
now that the backyard pool is covered and the leaves
are splotched with color; out the back window 
the neighbor’s maple is doused with red wine.

You cover yourself with my mother’s old blanket,
open the book of puzzles and get to work – the tip
of your dark yellow pencil is sharpened to a point.

The leaden sky revealed at sunrise is ominous,
reminding us that winter has risen from its long
sleep and pulls on its heavy, worn boots.

The furnace restarts with its long exhale
while the words of a favorite poet settle
into consciousness as if spoken directly from Rumi.

Rumi, ancient jester, how would you feel
if the dervish wind spoke through the maple’s branches
that slowly, slowly, shed their fancy suit of clothes?

Bruce Gunther is a former journalist and writer who lives in Bay City, Michigan. He’s a graduate of Central Michigan University. His poems have appeared in Arc Magazine, the Comstock Review, the Dunes Review, Modern Haiku, and others.

Lasciate ogne speranza

I would abandon all hope, but recall
that Dante Alighieri took his tour
in stride and, though he saw things that appall,
showed what a dauntless spirit can endure.
So even in a throng of souls impure,
or deemed so by a scribe who with his pen
enlisted them among the damned, a sure
foot in a stout shoe might emerge again
from Hell’s own rankest river, ring, and den.
So here we are, my friend, in deepest wood,
strange eyes fixed on us since we don’t know when,
and choosing to be elsewhere if we could.
We will not tremble. Nor will we turn back,
nor credit the injunction on the plaque.
 

Dan Campion‘s poems have appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). A selection of his poems was issued by the Ice Cube Press in July 2022: https://icecubepress.com/2021/10/01/a-playbill-for-sunset/

This is whence yellow is named,
this the hue by which all gold measured:
fair maiden, standing tip-toe tall in the green —
earthed flicker of heaven’s flame.

And then, of a sudden burst soft and cloud-
pale in wisdom’s white: thus impaled
by the last happy beams of the red west,
lit pure like a candle in its flashing death.

Love-seeds scatter on the wind; find
their given hold; take at a prayer’s pace.
And as the prairie ever tells, all
shall bloom which love has sown.

It was in ignorance I called them weeds;
though were my life but half as bright as these,
just think how sweet would be the legacy.

Tyler Rogness is learning to live on purpose. He loves deep words, old books, good stories, and his wonderful family who put up with his nonsense. His poems have appeared in the Agape Review, The Habit Portfolio, and the Amethyst Review; and more of his work can be found at awakingdragons.com.

Mortal 


How impossible to forget
in that late equatorial light 
on one lonely edge of the Pacific, 
those thousands of crabs
no bigger than thumbnails
who scurried away from our feet
as we walked across the sand, 
each step setting off a ripple,
a tide of tiny creatures
so afraid of us, even though we
had no intention to harm, 
and how you sought 
the sense of humility
the ocean provides, sought 
to surrender your worn, 
human self, and so let 
the dark waves take and toss you
among the fists of gneiss 
as I stood frozen on the beach, 
the Magnificent Frigatebirds
ushering you home.

Heather Swan‘s poems have appeared in such journals as Terrain, Minding Nature, Poet Lore, Phoebe, The Raleigh Review, Midwestern Gothic and Cold Mountain. She is the author of the poetry collection A Kinship with Ash (Terrapin Books), a finalist for the ASLE Book Award, and the chapbook The Edge of Damage ( Parallel Press), which won the Wisconsin Chapbook Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in Aeon, Belt, Catapult, Edge Effects, Emergence, ISLE, Minding Nature, and  The Learned Pig. Her book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field (Penn State Press) won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. She teaches environmental literature and writing in Madison at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Nirvana or Not
Every moment, the Zen priest said, can be nirvana or not.

Every moment after my sink drips
me awake at 4:37 a.m.
can be nirvana or not, I need

to know how much in me is a seed
of the suffering, how much to stomach
every moment, said the Tibetan priests
 
who set themselves afire
to feel free can be nirvana
the moment or not the fire
 
is lit on the Molotov wick nirvana
on the lips of Ukrainian priests
deep in bomb shelters offering
 
Eucharist as an old woman holds out a hand
of sunflower seeds, nirvana to the gun
of a young Russian soldier just like her son
 
or not the moment nirvana or not
my bright blue hyacinth sky extends
to an Afghan man who said nirvana
 
would be just a needle 
and thread for a moment
to mend his refugee clothes
 
as if sowing seeds from a global vault
where we saved them, nirvana, all of us
or not to stitch together what we’ve torn
 
and scorched to tack ourselves back
to each other every moment the Zen priest said
every moment can be nirvana.

Paige Gilchrist lives in Asheville, NC, where she writes poetry and teaches yoga. Her poems have appeared in Kakalak, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and The Great Smokies Review.

Descent into Orta San Giulio 
from the Sacro Monte di Orta

Winter trees bide
they gate
Orta’s Sacro Monte pathway,

branches, bared to pale bark,
lift death’s face.

Lean Francesco, in stone, overlooks.

His stick-crucifix 
held in cold air.

A first step it takes many
to sound out Francesco’s words 
chiseled at Chapel VI,

“go dear ones…announce peace and penance…
be patient…bless and thank everyone,”	 

just up Viale Frate Vento, 			 
the Avenue of Brother Wind.

Though I falter in penance,
peace mumbled beyond me,  	
  
I walk back down a stony path  
with loosened heart humming 
every
one.

Retired librarian Alan Bern is an award-winning author with three books of poetry and has a hybrid memoir forthcoming from UNCOLLECTED PRESS. He is an exhibited/published photographer and performs with dancer/choreograhper Lucinda Weaver and with musicians from Composing Together. Lines & Faces, his press with artist/printer Robert Woods, linesandfaces.com.

Annie Diamond is an Ashkenazi Jewish poet living and working in Chicago. She has been awarded fellowships by MacDowell, Luminarts Cultural Foundation, The Lighthouse Works, and Boston University, where she earned her MFA in 2017. Her poems appear and are forthcoming in No Tokens, Yemassee, Modern Language Studies, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere.

Address to Humility


Humility, you bobble-head doll
you laughingstock of Wall Street
grit in the slick gears of progress

Here you pop up on this quiet rise above the hyper city 
like a bowing monk 
passing out lifesaver donuts

Humility, I just climbed a very steep hill for you
I am breathless 
sitting on a crumbling stump

the clover all green in happy heart shapes
at my feet
and a tree I don’t know the genus of is beside me

vertical strips of bark peeling down
in tendrils
accepting the order of its kind

Humility, you appear as confounding as this rusty can
decaying on the trail
All forms and falls apart it says

Please help me reach your proffered hand
while I feel some degree of thirst
a slight peekaboo of readiness

Jean Biegun’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and art exhibits. In 2022, her chapbook Hitchhikers to Eden was published, she received a Pushcart Prize nomination and the Christine Award for Best Prose Poem of 2021 (Easter Iowa Review). Work has been in Amethyst Review, Soul-Lit, As Above So Below, Time of Singing and other spiritual poetry journals.