Category: Poetry

I
I was escaping a traumatic day
on the road with my dearest friends
when he fell in step beside us on the way
and the world began to glow again

II
I was a bastard, a tool of the State
until face down in the dirt
I heard voices uttered promises and groans
was made and unmade among stones

III
Of course, I was tempted to walk on
the complications the expense
he was a naked, bleeding Other
ashamed to ignore him I made him my brother

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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.

Here I sit in nothingness, asleep
while I close my eyes to darkness
as it falls around me.

There is a line darkness does not cross.
And still there are shadows:

flesh doesn’t wander over spirit or death.
(The flesh is quickest to disagree with eternity;
the bones are slowest to turn over in graves
of dust and water.) Spirit can never die.

Spirit never dies while we are awake but
sleeps at night like a universe of endless stars
expanding into nothingness, to never reach
over the edge of an infinite void, a dark hole
of remembering everything and giving it more
weight, more gravity to nothing escaping,
as every thought is compressed into words

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P. M. Flynn holds a BS in English from East Carolina University. A devoted roaster of organic coffee and enthusiastic baker of cookies, he pairs his creative pursuits with a long record of publication in respected online and print magazines. His debut poetry collection, Shadows on Moss, was released by Resource Publications. For more than fifty years, he has explored the deep interplay between art and theology, a commitment that continues to shape his writing and imagination. 

I thought I saw you at the market
after you died, and again rounding
a corner on Monte Sano, past Holy 
Trinity. Convinced, despite your ashes
in an alabaster urn, I follow my mother 
until she turns to look at me with the wrong
eyes, wrong smile, three inches too tall –
this body was not yours resurrected. Yet,
the absentache does not dissipate, 
but burrows deeper in the bone. Doctors
say it’s quite common after amputation
to feel pain where there is no longer a limb,
experience it as fully as when it was
part of your frame you could see
and touch – the missing part remains
present somehow despite its removal.

I wonder if Christ misses his body,
now ascended, misses the smell
of his own skin and sweat, timbre
of his own voice, touch of his mother’s hand
sweeping hair from his face, even well into manhood –
does he miss his father’s hand on his shoulder,
the grip of his fingers around a hammer,
unravelling a scroll? Does he reach to touch
his chest where the pain of humanity
still throbs, but there is no ribcage, no pumping 
heart? Or does he try to conjure the scent
of spices, taste of roasted lamb filling his stomach, 
the sensation of sleep? Does his side still
flinch with the memory pain of a blade
sunk deep, do his fingers long to trace
the borders of his wound?

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Nadine Ellsworth-Moran is a minister serving in Georgia, USA. She has a passion for writing and the arts. She is fascinated by the obscure and the way grace shows up unannounced. She has been published in over 60 journals and hopes to continue to find ways to put the indescribable into words. She lives with her husband and five unrepentant cats.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.