Solitude by Nahalah, Issue 10.
Check out the poetry in Issue 10…
Jessica Lynne Henkle
The Trouble with Jesus
is, once you get to know Him,
your old lies don’t work so well
anymore. It’s the same thing as
saying your old life doesn’t work
so well anymore—the ways you once
dragged yourself along stutter and
stop, until you’re left by the roadside
with only dust in your hands … READ MORE.
Sofia Tantono
Ode to My Phone Wallpaper
On Twitter, I saw this painting of Mary Magdalene going up to heaven, carried on a sheet
by three cherubs, their little faces captivated upwards as if there were nothing else in the
world but them, the Apostle to the Apostles and that realm above. I couldn’t help but think
about how Mary Magdalene, save for her wind-toyed blonde hair, looked a lot like me … READ MORE.
Morgan Carlock Clark
Naomi
I visited Granny G after school and asked her to tell me stories:
She was smaller than other children by at least three inches.
While swinging, she dropped her cotton hankie,
and several girls stole it and beat her up when she asked for it back.
She had her tonsils taken out on her kitchen table by a neighbor, a veterinarian … READ MORE.
Sophia Velasquez Martinez
A Plastic Statue of Christ
It is Good Friday. We are sad and quiet
and dark. In the midst of knees swollen
from kneeling, standing, kneeling again
approach altar boys bearing a colored
crucifix as silence sweeps the pews.
It is Good Friday, so we do not move
too suddenly. As the crucifix is stationed
at the front of the altar, people line up like
pilgrims to kiss the plastic feet of Christ … READ MORE.
Pama Lee Bennett
Cruciate
Two powerful crossbars, joined, resilient—
this is required to hold things together,
bands of tough tissue for bending,
rotating, lifting of weight—
or of wood and spikes,
for the putting to death,
for the setting free,
broken only by a violent blow,
but what has happened cannot be forgotten … READ MORE.
Josiah Nelson
Garden
For now you are sturdy
bones, but in time
the chasm will grow
in your chest and water
will run through it. Soil
will slip between the fingers
of your ribs. A worm
will make its home
of you; a green stem
will sprout … READ MORE.
Vanessa Ogle
Worship
I still taste it, the mothers who acted as our own, their snaps electric,
the meat of it, thumbs a-slap,
and we’d sit, we’d sit, pretend to listen, mouth the words to the hymns
that take my breath away when I hear them now, nerves
my gut—(this is how you get ulcers)—
the pastor’s daughter crying all the way through “The Old Rugged Cross.” … READ MORE.
Alan Altany
Lord Jesus Poems No. 8
Minnesota addiction
treatment center
a long ago winter
mystical & mythic
in surviving memory,
on a chapel’s brick wall
a crucifix hanging still … READ MORE.
Sarah Law
A boy on the bus drinking red wine by himself.
The intercession on a scrap of paper
is read aloud at weekday Mass.
I think of a teenager with acne,
pink at the ears and the back of his neck,
an open bottle of Tesco plonk, acrid
fumes mingling with Lynx and sweat.
Did he get lucky—nick it and swig?—
or was it snatched in anger, slugged-down-
poultice for a roughed-up heart— … READ MORE.
Becky Parker
Asters painted on a mason jar
to resemble those growing in
a field near the old barn.
An abstract attempt to capture the magic
of petals moving in the wind
on the backdrop of a late summer’s eve … READ MORE.
Charles Haddox
The Carpenter
He knew all kinds of wood:
the olive branches pruners leave,
ribboned like fine serpentine,
costly rods of incense trees
for shaping canes and spoons.
He chiseled heavy trusses
of sturdy, dark acacia,
knotted, narrow cypress trunks,
and pine, as plain as bread … READ MORE.
Hannah Roberts
The DMV, Ogontz Ave
Big lashes,
Scalloped edges,
Chick in front,
She storming out.
Soft Chink
At the desk,
Don’t like
Her paperwork … READ MORE.
Sarah Tate
Creatio ex nihilo
I believe in the liturgy of rain
where the blue of the mountains is so deep,
cresting waves, you think such a shade
is a bar of soap that you palm
even when your hands are clean
covered in Lamb’s blood.
I mean, to know wisdom is to taste
the beginning of the world—dirt and grass,
sun and sky, the crunch of rocks and meteor—
when stars strummed to the music of God … READ MORE.
Sherry Poff
Paradise
We have a black snake in our garden. I watch her
slowly glide among tomatoes and potatoes—nightshades
more poisonous than the snake. Her shiny length is a dark
light amid green humidity of garden rows where she remains
dry and cool. Out of hiding to warm herself on stones,
she seems to grin at my startled whistle … READ MORE.
Defense by Maura H. Harrison, Issue 10.
Andrew D. McCartney
The Feet of Judas
The clean feet of Judas stride into the night,
Treading memories
Down
In the dust of Adam
Dash the feet Christ’s hands freshly washed,
Slide the sandals loosed by one
Whose straps immortal John would not unbind … READ MORE.
Bud Sturguess
Forever
I’m not a broken heart
buried in 200 pounds of fat
I’m not a tomb adorned in Union wool
I’m not slime from the sea
atoms ejected by a cosmic sneeze from nowhere
I’m not a child of fear born of dog days … READ MORE.
Clay Matthews
Psalm [On the television we watched a movie]
On the television we watched a movie
that was good and sentimental,
while over the carport the blue moon
snuck through the window like a monster.
As a child I read a book about a little brown bear
and the moon and the wind,
but now having lived through and loved
so many renditions of “Blue Moon of Kentucky,”
I try to humble myself on the couch
and pray to God for the right kind of resolution … READ MORE.
E.R. Skulmoski
In Darkness, Light
Let’s cover things up with a smile,
do the dishes, bite a fingernail or two,
& maybe set my bed on fire
while I sit and think:
No, I am not so bad after all … READ MORE.
Robert L. Jones III
Ephemeral yet Eternal
Andrea, I know you cannot read this,
that to communicate with the dead—even to try—
is forbidden, so I write this as a way
of collecting my thoughts of you whom I know of,
you whom I do not know, much as our father did
soon after you died. I was one year then, you but a day,
a blue-toned baby of malformed heart.
Your hair was auburn like mine … READ MORE.
Royal Rhodes
To God in My Illness
Illness is our Great Work done
alone
despite comparisons by friends.
Age and injury, incessant time
or random accidents
are not the same.
Illness makes one listen to the body … READ MORE.
Lee S. Kohman
Say It’s More than Symbol
Holy Communion—
blessed boon
for the breaking
and broken,
for the hungering
for every tongue longing
to touch and
taste … READ MORE.
Matthew J. Andrews
Gethsemane
The olive trees still stand, kept up
by a miracle of sweat in the soil.
Centuries go by, and so much more blood,
each night swampy with its wailing … READ MORE.
Patrick T. Reardon
Chicago vespers
I hear, in the sparrow’s hollow bone, Chicago vespers.
In cool high-ceiling silence, the dark church,
a wordless psalm.
I shave my head to cipher myself,
join the lost tribes’ pilgrimage in the barrio.
Woe the bully boy. Woe the
white-collar sneak thief.
Pain displayed … READ MORE.
Deborah J. Bennett
Easter Sunday Around the Globe
Guilty Euro-centric
pleasure. Fleshy goat spinning
above a trough of coals, baskets of blood
red eggs, thorny crown
of bread and dates. My brother-in-law
roams the streets of Jerusalem, unaware
today is my high holy
day of patent leather shoes and pastel
almonds … READ MORE.
Tamara Nicholl-Smith
Hate Box
It is a slow seethe and simper, a spit-hiss-whine, a scowl
lodged in the blood like a clot. I, a worm – dreaming
dragon, muster a sputter of steam, doused fire, soggy
ember. I pray for hands of lightning and the power
to smite … READ MORE.
Alex Hawkins
The Hollowman Visits Savannah
Under the long green hair of Candler Oak
I wager is that psychic legit or not could
I be convinced with old Greek teeth or
allured by a young crooked nose and dark hair
I just want something real among the signs
and sigils searching for the Keys of Solomon in
Savannah storefronts near cloudy choppy seawater
would it be tarot or crystal ball tarot seems more
real like gives any old church here a run for its money real … READ MORE.
Cody Adams
Arc Eye
My dad is a 3rd generation
welder fabricator; he can build and
fix anything. I studied literature at
a university, and can’t change
a flat tire. He doesn’t know me and I
don’t know him, but I’ve seen his hands:
after 40 years of hard labor, they look like what I
imagine the Son of Man’s flogged back looks like … READ MORE.
READ ISSUE 10:
Online | Download | Buy Print Copy
Heart of Flesh Literary Journal 