Category: Poetry

the Lord is my shepherd and I / do not want to / lie down in your pastures / of fake grass and chlorinated pools / where the sun beats down on / our languid bodies and we are told / this is good even / though the heat feels like noise and / our thoughts have slowed / like tar

and you have closed / the entrances to the valley of / the shadow of death and / you have told us the shadows / have been banished / nothing to see here but I / want to see what that looks like and / you say I’m dwelling on the wrong things / why not dwell here where / there is a banquet that we will take / pictures of and post them so / those who admire us and those / whose admiration feels like / spite and those whose spite makes us feel / admired or at least victorious / so that they can see and try / to forget about us or talk about us / and surely / goodness and mercy will follow us all / the days of our life just in case / we hold still / long enough to / feel how much / we miss it

℘℘℘℘

Martine van Bijlert is a poet, writer, and artist who grew up in Iran, now lives in the Netherlands, and in between worked as an aid worker, researcher, and diplomat, mostly in Afghanistan. She is the author of the poetry collection Peace, Peace They Say.  This was first published in Hot Pink Magazine.

I have often asked myself
a seemingly unanswerable question.
Over and again, I have wondered,
What will happen to G?d
in the not-so-distant future
when all of us earthlings
will have perished,
when, as a result of our plundering
of this precious Earth
we will have gone the way of the dodo bird
and the passenger pigeon?
What will happen to G!d?

I have wondered out loud,
and I have pondered in the quiet of my heart.

With the Torah or Talmud open before me,
their ancient black letters
speaking to me from the past,
I have wondered.

In the woods alone,
among the trees and beside the water,
watching the sunset,
listening to the geese,
I have wondered,
What will happen to G?d
when we earthlings are gone?

In the evening,
when the sun has set
but the darkness we earthlings have banished
hasn’t come,
I have wondered.
In the quiet of the night,
when many sleep
and few are listening
as a distant owl hoots,
I have wondered,
What will happen to G!d?

In the cacophony of the city,
with cars honking and trolleys squeaking,
with voices of many languages blending together
and people of every hue weaving past each other,
I have wondered,
What will happen to G?d
when we earthlings are gone,
our demise
the result of our disregard
for this precious Earth and each other?

As candles flicker before me,
welcoming a day of rest and celebration,
when my heart quiets and peace settles over my home,
I have wondered,
What will happen to G!d?

And every time, in every place,
the same answer has welled up within me.
Every time,
in every place,
I have heard,
I have felt,
I have experienced
the same answer.

G!d will endure.
G?d will survive.
G!d will always be.

Brokenhearted,
consumed by grief,
but ever-resilient,
the Mystery,
the Spirit,
the Wonder
will abide,
never forgetting,
always remembering,

when we earthlings
are gone.

℘℘℘℘

Katy Z. Allen is a poet and a devoted lover of the more‑than‑human world. A retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, she has also served as a healthcare chaplain, co‑founded a Jewish climate organisation, and works as an eco‑chaplain. She is a member of the LGBTQ community and has been writing in one form or another throughout her life. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, The Bluebird Word, and Art on the Trails: Number 9, among other venues. Her book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text, was published by Strong Voices.

‘Reach out your hand
and put it in my side’
moved at hearing of Thomas’s act –
that extraordinary moment
its intimacy, the invitation
to trust and touch,
imagination travels to the theatre
with gowned and masked figures
bent in concentration
over human souls prone,
delivered to the knife
the testing, probing fingers
both intimate and distant
in their sides.

℘℘℘℘

Chris Ringrose is a poet and fiction writer living in Melbourne, Australia. His latest poetry collection is Palmistry (ICoE Press, 2019). Creative Lives, a collection of interviews with South Asian Writers, was published by Columbia UP in 2021.

Do you ever gaze upon the ocean
and fall quiet,
struck by its vastness,
by the way it stretches beyond sight,
yet answers to a shoreline?

A body so immense,
it feels eternal,
yet born of a Presence
that called it into being.

It remembers beginnings.
It foreshadows endings.

It has claimed ships
and carried them home.
It has held both storm 
and stillness in the same breath.

And I wonder,
what kind of God
writes himself into water and wind,
into tide and undertow,
into depths no eye can measure?

Somehow, 
I find myself in its rhythm,
my thoughts rising and retreating 
like waves surrendering 
to an unseen hand.

In its ceaseless motion,
I learn submission.
In its return to shore,
I glimpse grace.

℘℘℘℘

Buki is an emerging poet exploring love, grief, identity, and the quiet thresholds of becoming, shaped by her life across Nigeria, the UK, and the USA. Having only recently begun writing, she uses restrained language and intimate imagery to trace the spaces between fear and tenderness. Her work has been published in Wingless Dreamer and is shared on Instagram and Substack.

I cursed God
and there was nothing.
He must be dead.

I never thought
he might have been waiting –
to see how far I’d go.

℘℘℘℘

Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years, with his work appearing in a wide array of literary magazines and websites – many now vanished, and a few, such as Ink Sweat & Tears and Poetry Scotland, still holding their ground. For a decade, he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies before settling into a quieter life in Scotland with his wife and, when it suits her, the neighbour’s cat. He – i.e., Jim, not the cat – is the author of two poetry collections, a short story collection, and four novels.

Photo by Chris Fuller on Unsplash.

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.

℘℘℘℘

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.

Photo by Fabian Kleiser on Unsplash.

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.

℘℘℘℘

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.

Photo by Rasmus Ødegaard on Unsplash.

Gold light shatters the
mornings of mourning, divine
prayer slips from mouth

shame skewers pride’s lung.
God commands me to talk. I
do not know how long

has passed. Words sizzle,
cumin seeds in burnished oil.
Delayed meal tasting

like only joy can.
Hearts-to-hearts require response
says my forlorn heart.

Knees dig into earth
the metaphor eludes me
answer me, I plead.

Give me a sign. One.
Dusk shatters through my waiting
God answers in silence.

℘℘℘℘

Aatiqa Mankani is a student poet currently based in Vietnam. When not writing, she enjoys reading about history and exploring nearby museums.

Photo by Tin Ly on Unsplash.