Roots coil beneath the soil, veins of the earth pulsing with quiet grace. Rain seeps, soft as mercy, through clay and stone, and the green shoots respond like hymns that never end. I walk among cedars, hands brushing bark, fingering the faith written in rings of patience. God is here, in fibre and leaf, in the slow breathing of the world, in every shadow and shaft of light.
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Khayelihle Benghu lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and has been writing since 2008. Alongside her writing, she nurtures a deep love for photography, with a particular focus on the natural world.
In my head was an ocean of thoughts, And monologues of indistinct voices Floating, trying not to drown
In my depths of silence. Faceless entities broke through my mouth And spoke to the wall with my eyes closed.
But no sleep— just teleportation Through nostalgia’s portal. No amount of noise was enough
To pull my eyes back to life. I hoped to doze off and dive Into the waves of my mind
In the light’s absence. Here, The darkness was the screen Framing the invisible
Like a monochrome photograph. So, I swiftly clapped and clasped My hands to trap the elusive entities.
In poetry’s mystical conjuring. I hoped to wake in a dream Where my mind becomes a small room
Peopled with voices urging me To keep going, without showing me The way. Sometimes, I listen
To dying whispers Singing life into my ears. Like Milton, dark is the sight I wield
In the socket of my skull, but not My foresight of the road ahead. Sometimes, I feel like a seer
Who has seen it all, but To what end? Through this tunnel I go, making the narrow path
My only map in and out Of my hallucination, because I must chase this shadow.
I keep running after this tail of mine That leads my head In a soothing cycle of trance.
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Tukur Ridwan is a Nigerian writer and the author of three poetry chapbooks. He serves as a poetry mentor with the SprinNG Writing Fellowship, and, in March 2018, he won the Brigitte Poirson Monthly Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in publications such as Aké Review, Poetry Potion, Coalition Works, Stripes, Engendered, Afrocritik, and ArtisansQuill, among others.
Fasterfaster even faster Fly the wheels of industry – turningturning Hurry hurry keep moving never stopping All is synchronization regimentation
We the workers cannot stop The machines ever smarter ever smarter swallow us Faster faster ever faster humming like insects The machines talk to each other, a frenzied tune
We workers cannot sing sweet songs anymore Our music is crushed like grapes by the sharp blades Of the machines that command that control us
Only the whispers of a few old men resound in these Haunted halls -- muttering bbbbbbbbb ggggggggg Endlessly screeching tzzjxzprtz! myzzxltwz! unintelligible Lamentations – for the dead.
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Norma Felsenthal Gerber is an educator, journalist, and photographer whose work spans literature, public affairs, and the visual arts.
Gods are like clouds, rain, rainbows; you can see &feel but can’t touch God chatting in the forest, among the trees, God is justice, not books Light shines, out in the darkness The subconscious energy guides your body The void within you drives you to express. You have given life to me, you have given joy to me You gave what was behind me You will give what’s ahead of me Her ways are many, her ways are mysterious Her interpretations are many, her meaning is one She’s an editor, changes my manuscript Holding your voice deep within Filling with feelings of pleasure to treasure There’s a certain slant of light, there’s a certain slant of sight Thanks to the morn, thanks to the noon Thanks to the flower, thanks to the valley This blessed life, this blessed grace To act, to find, to feel, to live Poems are written by bores like me But only God’s grace showers freely
Paul Mitchell, High Spirits. Puncher & Wattmann, 2024.
In an era when poetry often retreats into obscurity or dissolves into mere confession, Paul Mitchell‘s High Spirits offers something refreshingly different. Reviewed by Jason Goroncy in TEXT Journal, this collection demonstrates how poetry can be both deeply personal and universally resonant, spiritually grounded yet artistically sophisticated.
Mitchell’s work achieves a delicate balance where the spiritual illuminates the mundane without overwhelming it, where the sacred emerges from careful attention to the world as it is. His poems capture the texture of daily life – family dynamics, the rituals of domestic existence, even conversations about Bunnings that blend seamlessly with apocalyptic imagery – while extending beyond the personal to encompass broader cultural and environmental concerns.
One thing that distinguishes this collection is Mitchell’s conversational tone that feels like overheard conversations with a particularly thoughtful friend – accessible without being casual, profound without being pretentious. Whether satirising Australian suburban masculinity in ‘Weekend Warriors of the Apocalypse’ or writing an epistolary meditation to Franz Kafka, Mitchell demonstrates remarkable range and wit.
The collection’s fundamental conviction is that the world is enough – not through complacency, but through hard-won wisdom. Mitchell’s terrific humour never cheapens the gravity of human experience but illuminates it from unexpected angles, finding epiphanies of grace amid chaos.
In a cultural moment characterized by cynicism and fragmentation, High Spirits suggests that careful attention to the ordinary might reveal it to be, if not perfect, then sufficient – and perhaps, in its sufficiency, sacred.
Danny Barbare’s award-winning poetry has been published widely, most recently in the Birmingham Arts Journal, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, and many other online and print publications. He lives with his wife and his sweet dog Oliver, a Boston Terrier, in Simpsonville, South Carolina.
Chiharu Shiota, Absence Embodied, 2018. Bronze, plaster, and red wool. Art Gallery of South Australia, Tarntanya– Adelaide, Kaurna Country.
in wind & flame they felt acknowledgement
fill that room stronger
than any wind felt before these gales of rushing promise
Spirit sent flames astounding
light dazzling all who were there not speechless but into
all speech forever one tongue
of many flaming voices moving all, filling all, powering all
with surge of bright burning
receiving His love of dove descended blaze.
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Ed Higgins is an American poet and short fiction writer whose work has appeared in various print and online journals. Ed is Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction. He has a small organic farm in the United States of America, where he raises a menagerie of animals, including a rooster named StarTrek.
I. The west-to-east wind breathes the leavings from a few naked groves across to up against where there’s no more field; it creates a waiting on the verge of woods like an invasion.
But the fodder stays, relents puts up no fight shows itself in piles to the lorn few or the theologians or the simple or the true in all this angled light the small houses the spare lots, the pines the hardwood all are convinced the dry months will come and cold. And cold.
II. Roberta smiles through broken glass of west facing windows sees highways cracked and broken, road-tar having oozed from a thousand Augusts, now as still as Rome. She smiles without knowing that her own empire stumbles and falls down to only a trace.
As the day turns red out towards Columbus she watches as some lights come-on beyond a hedge out under where the linings of clouds make bloodshot edges. The sky behind has already lost blue for gray for black and Roberta chuckles at all the overlap the lifespans make, shortening our idea of forever.
III. The grace of those numbers too big to consider the size of that sky is there whether noticed or not and the God of such distance as to be here and here soaks Roberta’s fabric, utterly. And what she wears can’t lose its weather being a host for those things never to be tagged.
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L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Galway Review, Main Street Rag, and elsewhere. He is the author of four collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection – Green Shoulders: New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023). He is a retired lawyer and teacher of literature, and he writes and plays music. Abel resides in rural Georgia, USA.
Fred Williams, Sapling Forest, 1962. Etching, 13.7 x 20.2 cm. Private collection.
‘Believing in the Light you shall not abide in darkness’. – George Fox (1654)
Light’s labour is to tell darkness back, push it toward eternity’s edge –
although much darkness slips back through, grieving the hearts of all who must live here.
Like lead, darkness weighs nearly as much as gold.
But Light’s feel is the alchemy of love falling in bright colour,
as stars sometimes do, back to earth’s gravity.
There turned to chemical (even among fireflies) it burns gold-like
attracting more love still, across open hearts,
against night’s threshold.
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Ed Higgins is an American poet and short fiction writer whose work has appeared in various print and online journals. Ed is Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction. He has a small organic farm in the United States of America, where he raises a menagerie of animals, including a rooster named StarTrek.
Art/s and Theology Australia 