A Poem of Peace from Insanely-Priced-Leggings Reviews – poetry by Heather Truett

A Poem of Peace from Insanely-Priced-Leggings Reviews
             (found poetry)

5 Stars

I love the way peace fits, and - to top it off - you cannot find
this color in the stores. Vibrant green!

I’m 130 pounds, 5’5”, and my hips are pretty
curvy. This Peace fit perfectly. Quality is there.
It does not feel constricting like cheaper
Peace has felt.

This Peace is the comfiest Peace I have ever
worn. It’s thick but not too tight and will fit
your body like a blanket. It even has a fuzzy
inner lining that keeps me warm and cozy.

4 Stars

This Peace is so soft and so breathable.

Great fit!
Washes well!

My only complaint is Peace’s outrageous pricing.

3 Stars

I got the wrong size - will exchange it. I’m sure
the right size will make a difference.

I love the feel of this Peace when I first
put it on. The problem comes when I start
to move. The Peace gradually slips down. I feel
as if I have to stop and pull it up.

Extremely comfortable Peace, but after
a few hours of wear, it seemed to stretch
out. I had to constantly tug the elastic, 
which is very distracting.

Not to mention, Peace snags a lot.

2 Stars

Peace is too small, and there’s the hassle
of duty and taxes. I think I deserve
better than this.

I received this Peace as a gift and was so excited, having worn
my old Peace into the ground. So disappointed… This Peace feels
thinner. There is no compression, so the Peace feels loose, like it might
slip right off if I wear it to Yoga.

Bummer, because now I can only
wear Peace around my house.

1 Star

I bought my Peace in a store, because
it felt great - nice and tight. Now, after only
a few days, Peace has lost its hold. It’s stretched out. I see
no mention of this in the return policy.

I returned it. The Peace delivered had glue spots, and it totally
flattened my backside.

This Peace is itchy, scratchy, stiff, and see-thru.

I feel deceived.

Heather Truett is an MFA candidate and an #actuallyautistic author. Her debut novel is releasing in 2021. She has published poetry and short fiction with Tipton Poetry Journal, Panoply Zine, Drunk Monkeys, and others. Heather is represented by Hilary Harwell and serves on staff for The Pinch.

rhapsody: (n.) an effusively extravagant discourse – a poem by Cheyenne McGuire

rhapsody:  (n.) an effusively extravagant discourse
 
kneeling
before this wood altar stained
in years of splashed wine.  
 
this church, its slatted-oak floors—
no response to my presence.  
 
monstrance adorns ordinary bread—
before me, a priest 
wrapped You in gold.
years later, You found me 
 
shrouded in this silence,
waiting for the right words 
to speak themselves from my mouth 
so i can find You 
 
wondrous, marvelous.  
i never wanted a monstrance.
  
if You speak now, speak 
 
in spilled wine, nails 
and scrap wood.

Cheyenne McGuire is a rural poet from Colorado who focuses on the interactions of the ordinary and divine.  She is currently studying English and Creative Writing at the University of Iowa.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in earthwords, Quarantine Magazine, and Ink Lit Mag.  

Wind Horse – a poem by Barbara Parchim

Wind Horse
 
In the rarified air
of Llasa at 12,000 feet,
I’m wondering about my heart
as we climb the hundreds of stairs
to the Potala palace.
 
But what better place for a heart to give out
than where centuries of Dalai lamas
have dwelt amongst the prayer flags,
and monks with mala beads,
where the scent of yak butter candles
fills the dark and winding corridors
and centuries of prayer permeate
the stone of ceiling and walls
and benevolence is the air we breathe.
 
A monk in a small niche handles his beads,
lips moving, oblivious to pilgrims, tourists,
and the sudden appearance of Chinese soldiers
with their impassive faces and gray uniforms
as they march through the narrow passages.
 
Outside, more soldiers,
stationed at every intersection
and on almost every rooftop
above the Barkhor market, 
are incongruous amid the prayer flags
flapping and straining at their tethers.
Most are printed with the image of wind horse –
symbol of good fortune
and carrier of prayer to the heavens.
Advised to not look at them,
or take photos,
we sit in a second story room eating yak stew 
behind a murky window.
 
Bored and restless, soldiers scan the busy market -
waiting for some disturbance –
a petty thievery or another self-immolation? –
as monks in robes the color of dried blood
and pilgrims spinning prayer wheels
circumnavigate the market.
 
A day’s drive outside Llasa
we gaze out the van windows –
on one side, the trappings of assimilation –
cell phones, motorcycles and western clothes,
on the other, mountains,
stark and beautiful,
aproned with wide open vistas of barrenness,
dotted with colorful yurts and herds of yak.
Two worlds neatly divided by asphalt,
interrupted every few miles by military checkpoints
where our packs and van are searched 
for some unexplained contraband.
 
Later, at market, 
past the wagons laden with exotic spices
and tented displays of Tibetan horns,
two young girls, vendors, smile and giggle –
finding us amusing and strange –
as we select a small prayer wheel,
a yak bell on a strap of threadbare wool,
and a bracelet of rough-cut carnelian, amber
and yak bone strung on a cord.
 
Turning to leave, a shy touch on my sleeve
as they hand me another bracelet,
a gift this time,
intricately beaded coral and turquoise –
bits of Tibetan sky –
come from the blue mesas
far above the breath of mountains
where wind horse is running, 
unbroken.
 
 

Barbara Parchim lives on a small farm in southwest Oregon.  Retired from social work, she volunteered for several years at a wildlife rehabilitation facility.   She enjoys gardening and wilderness hiking.   Her poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Ariel Chart, Isacoustic, the Jefferson Journal, Turtle Island Quarterly, Windfall and Trouvaille Review.   Her first chapbook has been selected by Flowstone Press to appear in 2021.

Clipping – a poem by Peggy Hammond

Clipping 
 
a small twig
from your sweet
Betsy bush
the final time
I stood in 
our yard,
familiar as
the lines
traveling my
own palm,
I imagine
I am taking 
you with me
hours away
from this home
officially
now owned 
by others.
All winter
I baptize you
with water,
brown stick,
looking
quite dead.
In spring
I plant you,
whisper
I’ve done all 
I can.
By summer
you take
off, lifting
leaf hands
to the heavens,
passing the
roofline
with a laugh.

Peggy Hammond’s poetry is featured or forthcoming in The Lyricist, Oberon Poetry, High Shelf Press, San Antonio Review, Inklette, West Trade Review, Rogue Agent, Ginosko Literary Journal, and Trouvaille Review.  Her full-length play A Little Bit of Destiny was produced by OdysseyStage Theatre in Durham, North Carolina.

Sparkling in the Sun – a poem by Carol Casey

Sparkling in the Sun 

Snowflakes, drifting, sparkling in the sun 
on a May morning,
as improbable as a pandemic.

As unlikely as this rock ambling
around the outskirts of 
some universe sprouting life.

As irrational as telling frightened
people “all will be 
well” during the bubonic plague.

As impractical as giraffes, platypuses, 
three toed sloths that  
hang fathoms above a forest floor.

As incredible as tornadoes, earthquakes,
rainbows, the still 
small voice, the presence of eternity.

As illogical as you and I victorious
out of millions of 
sperms and hundreds of eggs

As impossible as me and you, 
30 years together
watching sunlit snowflakes in May.

Carol Casey lives in Blyth, Ontario, Canada. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Prairie Journal, Sublunary Review, Plum Tree Tavern and others, including a number of anthologies, most recently, Tending the Fire and i am what becomes of broken branch. Facebook: @ccaseypoetry; Twitter: @ccasey_carol; Webpage: https://learnforlifepotential.com/home-2/poetry/

Catherine of Siena to Her Confessor – a poem by Jane Greer

Catherine of Siena to Her Confessor 
 
It is the bridge of the Word, the bridge of his body,
that I climb, panting. I cling to the bridge of his body.
 
The tempestuous sea of this life lunges for me, 
and I laugh as it rages beneath the bridge of his body.
 
The bridge has three steps. At the first, I kiss his feet,
then his side, then his mouth, as I scale the bridge of his body.
 
By his pierced feet I ascend to his pierced side,
by his side to his gall-stung mouth, on the bridge of his body.
 
The height of divinity, hard-humbled to earth,
Most Holy Absurdity, is the bridge of his body.
 
Spirit will save me, spirit will lift me up,  
but spirit owns form, and form is the bridge of his body.
 
It is for you, he says, Daughter, Beloved, 
that I built and broke and rebuilt the bridge of his body.
 

Jane Greer founded Plains Poetry Journal, an advance guard of the New Formalism movement, in 1981, and edited it until 1993. She has two collections of poetry, Bathsheba on the Third Day (The Cummington Press, 1986), and Love like a Conflagration (Lambing Press, 2020) and lives in North Dakota.

Saint Catherine of Siena – a poem by Stephanie V Sears

Saint Catherine of Siena 
 
Aged six, I drink from evening’s clouds 
Gilded by a chalice sunset. 
 
My brother hurries me in his boy wake 
Griping about young sisters and such bothers. 
 
An idea of goodness forms on his nape 
Where the last rays stamp a seal of love. 
 
The detail of creation quickens in me 
Like a marten tasting prey’s blood. 
 
Crepuscular fireworks of vermeil and florins 
Take up with the God of magic. 
 
With all the jackals of sin at my heels 
I feed on sunlight, digest purity. 
 
Neither braided blondness nor clear eyes 
Matter to the black plague. 
 
To renounce the body’s claims,  
I exact starvation from Eucharist to Eucharist. 
 
Living on youth, imploring, carried on 
By the specter of spirit. 
 
Off with death’s uniform,  
I rely on the promise within grief. 

Stephanie V Sears is a French and American ethnologist (Doctorate EHESS, Paris 1993), free-lance journalist, essayist and poet whose poetry recently appeared in The Deronda Review, The Comstock Review, The Mystic Blue Review, The Big Windows Review, Indefinite Space, The Plum Tree Tavern, Literary Yard, Clementine Unbound, Anti Heroin Chic, DASH, The Dawn Treader. The Strange Travels of Svinhilde Wilson published by Adelaide Book 2020.

Of Pomegranate Seeds – a poem by Janet Krauss

Of  Pomegranate  Seeds

 
“Death is the mother of Beauty,”
a poet wrote.  Death is also the husband
of beauty, Persephone. He forces her
 to eat the seeds of a  pomegranate 
so she will always return to him 
sulking amidst smoldering vapors.
Each time  she  emerges  from the underground
alive she wears  the damp chill of death.
When she lifts her arms the scent of flowers
washes away the dank odor, and her mother
rouses the earth to flourish again.
 
Perhaps, in the Renaissance painting
baby Jesus is urging his mother
to eat a pomegranate seed from his bowl
to comfort her, assure her he will be reborn
years later. She turns away, face locked
in the grief of knowing her son’s fate.
She refuses his offer. She ignores
the persistent blue of the sky.
 
On Rosh Hashanah, if one eats of this  
fruit of the earth, the pomegranate,
any of its  613 seeds, the number of days
in a Jewish year, one will dance with Persephone
 among the wildflowers, and long after she has to  leave,
will continue in a meadow of one’s own making.

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.

Two poems from Pelican – Kieran Wyatt

Two poems from Pelican

1.
I recite my hours 
rather too soon than too late 
matins by night in winter 
prime in winter early 
 
spent hours in his company 
I was taught to curl my tongue 
paster noster 
time not wasted
 
I have control 
he gifts it to me 
seals words in my throat 
with bent wick and candlewax    



2. 
pater noster ave maria 
arms around each hour 
my faith taut strong 
tightening my sockets 
 
before matins after prime 
after compline
 
my hiding place and my shield 
I am yours save me 
I have sought your precepts 

after lights out silence 



Kieran Wyatt lives on the Fylde Coast. He is co-chair of GenSex (@GenSexResearch), an interdisciplinary research group, asking probing questions about gender and sexuality. His work has been published in Eunoia Review, The Art of Everyone, and Small Leaf Press. He graduated from Edge Hill University with a degree in Creative Writing in 2018.