Stan Getting Arrested by Chris Fung, Issue 12.

Here’s our poetry digest from Issue 12:

Ron Riekki
die Trauer

I know grieving. I teach grieving. I help those who’ve helped those
down into their graves. I am horrified about death. And life. And
how life becomes death. And I think that’s why I turn to God in my
thin understandings. Misunderstandings. And I know I fear everything
sometimes. And nothing sometimes. As bipolar as the sea… READ MORE >

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Tommy Welty
Entertaining Angels

At Love’s Travel Stop outside of Shelby, Iowa
I thought God cared and chitter-chattered in my ear
and I ate a basket of Chester’s chicken tenders
alone at the counter, in a near empty diner … READ MORE >

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Chris Wood
The Long Remembering

I have lived a short time on earth
but have soaked in the stories
and pictures of my ancestors.
Their lineage and heritage
rub into my skin
when I touch heirlooms … READ MORE >

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Emma McCoy
Eve’s Collection

Rock with a line of purple running through it. Dried leaves, red and orange. A small crystal. Peach pits and avocado pits and plum pits that she flicks at Adam when his back is turned … READ MORE >

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Katie Boord
Charcoal Fire

Tell me, Peter, how it felt
Those words, hasty and bitter, still burning your tongue
Buried in shame’s dark ash
The stuff of life-soaked death
More familiar to you than your dearest friend … READ MORE >

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Matt Escott
Missions

I think we clapped at the end
The hard noise of our soft hands carrying
Over a dirt floor swept clean by the woman
Speaking to us of unspeakable things … READ MORE >

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Michael T. Young
Endlessly Only

I tried once not to believe in God.
I was a teenager performing a thought experiment:
what if there were no God? … READ MORE >

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Lee Kiblinger
Matins

I’m not always there, but this morning when I closed the door and knelt cross-legged on the carpet beneath our bedroom window, awaiting the small patch of light that breaks on the pine, hoping to find in the darkness some flicker inside, I shut my eyes and pled for Him to near, to suspend the silence parading my ear … READ MORE >

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Martha Ellen Johnson
It Could Happen

In the spring, I could die of natural causes under the lilac bush with hummingbirds darting about.

My heart could stop when I linger a moment by Karl’s roses or near the Japanese Snowbells to inhale their fragrance.

If I get dementia, I could wander into the woods, slip on a mossy rock and die from exposure [to the delight of thousands of beetles and worms.] … READ MORE >

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Cynthia Robinson Young
I Still Remember the Shadows

I almost died once —
My unborn baby wanted to take me with her, our blood together
flowing like the creek water than runs through
my neighborhood, a gentle stream, but moving nonetheless,
red like the Nile River in the book of Exodus when Moses cursed it … READ MORE >

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Ernest Edward Pickel
Wisteria Will Hang Like a Curtain

In some new day, wisteria will hang like a curtain
In the place He’s prepared for me

On some new earth, plow and hoe
Will break cool sandy soil for okra, corn, and melons
Potatoes from the field across the road
Those who lived hungry will eat from the bounty … READ MORE >

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Isaac James Richards
Pilgrimage

I did not expect to be rummaging around in rubble.
Nobody said so, but I soon realized that every holy
place near Jerusalem was a pile of rocks. King David’s
capital? Rock pile. Capernaum? Rocks. Bethlehem?
Even fewer… READ MORE >

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Dana Delibovi
Arc of Day

Anyone who digs a grave
breathes hard, and with a spade
slippery in morning’s mist,
hopes for something, Devil or God,
to rise from azimuth to zenith … READ MORE >

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Sarah Das Gupta
Country Church

Clasped like a jewel
By green fields around
This small church has stood
For nearly a thousand years … READ MORE >

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Mother Mary and Jesus with Easter Flowers at St. Mikes by Chris Fung, Issue 12.

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Rosa Gilbert
A Prayer for Autumn

Give yourself permission to sit
in the coming darkness,
to let the night take over for a time.
Surely, light is never far
behind. But now, just for a while
the sun will let the last bits
of its burning brightness drip
from its rays, days shortened
by the moon’s silver reign … READ MORE >

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Patrick T. Reardon
Bible moon

One-Cent mourns his coming death.
Jungle fills the clearing.

Bible moon in dawn sky over Lake Michigan,
moan of the shearwater, moan of the flame owl
and hiss and peep and snort and twit … READ MORE >

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F. Elliot
Unlucky Omen

There’s something wicked
in the rhythm of your bones. They rattle
like the ocean while you sleep. They form
a chorus with their sundered glory … READ MORE >

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Tina Quinn Durham
Apocrypha

He knew that he was meant to die.
As a child he watched the sparrows fly
into evening and the dark.
He watched the candle’s glowing spark
and knew his flame would catch the night
like wings reflecting fading light,
kindling death to life … READ MORE >

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Kendall Miller
A Psalm for the Summer After

My prayers have thinned out
like the faces of my friends,
familiar and foreign in their sharpness.
I say hello to God at the grocery store,
on weekend trips back home,
In passing and through the telephone … READ MORE >

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John Martino
Enemy Lines

Hang your chic clichés on a peg
before proceeding to the quiche.
The strip mall searches are quick
and painless. The fingers fit like

a rubber glove … READ MORE >

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Clay Matthews
Sparrow, on the Straight and Narrow

The thing you fear the most trails on the ground
behind you: the smell of blood coyotes

sense a mile away. Yes, you will be found
in the field, hidden and holding the key

to freedom like a distant memory … READ MORE >

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Charles Eggerth
Thistledown

We are thistledown before the wind,
scattered to hills and prairies
where the sun and rain and snow make of us what they will,
where the winter wind steals our breath
and runs away laughing … READ MORE >

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Ericka Clay
All Spins Inward

I guess all I can tell you is the way
I’ve seen a grown man cry
Then his face go dry when he up
And leaves his family … READ MORE >

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Enobong O’wunmi
The Thorn of Humility

To keep her humble and not as puffy as yeast, Sovereign One presented her with a prickly pink rose with a million pins, spikes, and needles in every leaf, branch and stalk … READ MORE >

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Jo Taylor
Angel or Demon

We exited the elevator at the medical center and suddenly, he was
upon us like a zone-tailed hawk. Don’t I know you? Where are you
from? I know you. Do you remember me? He never let up, his gold-
tooth smile as inviting as the shiny foil of a wedding invitation … READ MORE >

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Jeff Burt
Love Desires a Knee, an Elbow

Why does the hard world writhe
unable to twist its torso
rigid in anger and hostility? … READ MORE >

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LyLena D. Estabine
thomas

it is not out of malice or jealousy

disbelief is a deep ravine
eroded by tears on my cheeks … READ MORE >

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