Photo: St. Peter’s Church, Melaka, Malaysia by Jeremiah Gilbert, Issue 14.
Here’s our poetry digest from Issue 14:
Danielle Page
September in Manchester
Pennsylvania waves at me from my window.
Over the ploughed field rests a state
I knew a decade ago.
I see how good the land is here,
Believe in the toil it takes
To create a harvest from mud… READ MORE >
Kirsten Lasinski
The Bitter Peel
She turns from him
as they crouch beneath
the trees, wiping the juice
from her chin, her heart
raw as an ember of misplaced
desire throbbing in her eyes.
He wonders what she expects
now that she is all skin
now that she is an empty
canvas begging to be filled. … READ MORE >
Martha Ellen Johnson
Knitting Buddies
Knitting in Cannon Beach last evening.
[Square peg, as usual.] “Eda’s husband,
Ross, perished on Wednesday,” Sue said.
Super fast-moving cancer. Eda loved
Ross so much. The light of her life.
I’ll go see her today. I’ll tell her of my dream … READ MORE >
Joanne Maybury
Blood and love
I stand at the kitchen door wondering how I will say what is happening to me. I think that they should be able to see on my face that everything has changed. My aunt sees me and stops talking. I’ve brought with me a flock of unspoken questions. The air is full of their beating wings. I focus and draw breath. “I think I’ve started my period.” The wings pause. Aunty Jean squeals and claps her hands. Mom holds me and whispers, “How do you feel?” … READ MORE >
Patrick T. Reardon
Give Ear
Give ear, Lucy.
Consider the streets of Chicago —
the numbers, 35th, 79th, 103rd,
Streets and Places, below Madison;
K-town to the west
(Kilpatrick, Keating, Kilbourn),
and L-town, M-town, and on;
the Indian angles along ridges
(Vincennes, Clark, Archer, Ogden).
Each immigrant footstep. … READ MORE >
Emma McCoy
Sundays
After everyone has left, I linger like a woman waiting
for a miracle. If there is holiness in these mornings,
the singing and the wine and the prayer, then wandering
the pews after-hours, footsteps echoing, must be doubly
holy. I look for visions in the floorboard cracks … READ MORE >
Allison McFadden
After Korah
A Levite shifted his shoulder
and a copper pole sprouted
from his neck. A Levite
shifted his shoulder
and a woolen hanging ate
the sweat of his scalp.
A Levite razed his palm
on a candelabra
and the blood beaded with sand
like an encrusted thing. … READ MORE >
Todd Matson
Terminal Lucidity
Seeing her son as father,
her daughter as mother,
she launched into a long
convoluted lecture, censors
short-circuiting at age 97,
the repressed returning,
feelings swallowed, words
choked back since age 7
making a grand entrance
from a hospice bed … READ MORE >
Nicos Kaloyirou
Thanksgiving for Christ’s Body
Love begets the world — sharp-toothed, blood-
warm— and moves the Father’s hands to
knead Adam’s flesh from red clay, wet as birth,
Breathing into that same mortal architecture
the fearful symmetry of the Son’s immortal
body, life upon life, incarnate and burning. … READ MORE >
Sarah Giles
To Remember
My gaze falls on all the spaces
you once occupied
and reality presses me to see
the gaping holes torn open
by your absence.
But death could not steal you from
the borders of my memory … READ MORE >
Ernest Edward Pickel
Frost Lies Heavy Like a Young Snow
Frost lies heavy on the field this morning — like a young snow, my grandmother would say. Rolling ground, long silent of mule and chain, becomes a winter-grey profile against a tree line displaying the last green vestiges of summer. Foggy man-shapes working the hay field for rabbit and quail melt into the horizon as a warm autumn sun slowly wins the morning. … READ MORE >
Rachael Carson
At the Light, Make a U-Turn
I hear the call, coming from out there,
feel the pull from somewhere else.
Here, I lost myself —
soul searching
between the places I know,
streets I drove
to the church where I found Jesus,
and the coffee shop
where I heard his voice.
When did it fade? … READ MORE >
Ericka Clay
Heart Once Dark
Inner sanctum,
I’m invited,
and what bright
light from
a heart once
dark.
Could it be
that all your
Teachings
aren’t mine to
pile and play
With like poker
Chips … READ MORE >
Linette Rabsatt
Silent Prayer
I saw the older folks
come in the church
bow their heads silently
and pray
but today
I think audibility
is key
to call on the Father
to help us to be
a better version of ourselves … READ MORE >
Matthew Pullar
Dermatillomania
There are trenches under the ocean, the depths
of which no one knows, the weight
and density on bones crushing before we
begin to fathom.
There is a canyon that cuts across a quarter of Mars
like a gash, a scar, almost
as deep as Earth’s deepest trench, twice as
long, thrice as wide. … READ MORE >
Natasha Bredle
Pharaoh’s Heart
The grief in his eyes — I often wonder
what it looked like. If there had been left
on his image-bearing conscience
a fragment yet undefiled to mourn with.
What heart could withstand such a sting?
Laying your heir in a grave,
knowing no bloodless river’s mercy.
Faulting the lamb, the lamb, the lamb. … READ MORE >
Peter Venable
Behold
Behold spring twilight. Backyard porch.
Frankincense wafts to rafters, as it did
eons ago in Ephratah. Child, sit down!
We have honored Magi. A bright star
twinkles above dark pines —
the beacon then?
Ghost crabs burrow in my skin.
Sand fleas scamper in sea-oat hair. … READ MORE >
Cody Adams
Prophecy at Sagrada Familia
I’m perched on a cedar bench
beneath the behemoth
shadow of a church that’s
been under construction before
Europe begat World Wars.
A tangled heap of dread,
cut from Montjuïc sandstone,
slithered across the facade.
I locked eyes with the snake. … READ MORE >
Michelle McMillan-Holifield
Dry Bones
The mirror puckers; with rancor I
render parched what stares back. Would I ever have
it in me, leaping, to not pluck the paracord, let it
become a me-massacre? There is such slump in me
& my crying is the shape of a limp: so much
hip-dipping I have one flank dune-sunk; I am nearer
to smothering. If this is despair, take me home. … READ MORE >
Christianna Soumakis
nondum november
november drought: lying on my stomach
the ground is dry on my chest. leaves
crisp as paper fossils. I bear my burden
to the riverbed empty as a bassinette whose occupant
has fledged. (I have always been too heavy for flight.) … READ MORE >
Heather Dickinson
On Identity
With prayer books and tea
I sit, listening to His
Heartbeat between breaths.
Who am I, really?
Tongues and dreams, visions and paint
Held in Kingdom service … READ MORE >
Ryan Helvoigt
Beauty Descends
Wringing hands nor handled
rungs have reached the heights
where Beauty dwells. You shall not
go up.
Speak no more of ladders.
Beauty cannot be won
or earned as wages
any more than wings can form
by fallen feathers plucked
from the grass and tucked
between our shoulder blades. … READ MORE >
Arianna Mayo
Saved up Sabbath
Postponed rest —
the never quenched
need for quiet.
Isolation laps up
from the cistern of joy.
I was meant for hiding
in You,
not from You,
or from yours. … READ MORE >
J W Goossen
As the smoke wanders
As the smoke wanders
at the end
of our time
together I watch
it circle
and spin
move toward the door. … READ MORE >
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