Category: Poetry

For Heraclitus

I. Everything Flows
You step into the shallow river,
your feet enjoying the cool water.
You feel the sun-warmed wind,
your body drenched with delight.
You walk forward and back,
your mind developing memories.

You return here another time,
your favorite spot washed away.
You sense changes in your body,
your brain telling you otherwise.
You try to remember the past feeling,
your hopes not the same as before.

II. Everything Moves
You are dead when you are born,
your grip on life tenuous and fleeting.
You withstand your own screaming,
your impulses not overwhelming.
You try to open your eyes to see anything,
your surroundings giving you purpose.

You learn how to crawl and walk,
your body impervious to resistance.
You discover up and down are the same,
your fluctuations merely delusions.
You find strength in your routines,
your motions estranged from failure.

III. Everything Is Empty or Everything Is Vanity
You stand just beyond the Garden of Eden,
your hand trying to reach for some fruit.
You hear a voice say to not pursue earthly delights,
your mouth craving food more than God.
You are told to not attempt to cross the border,
your body unable to breach the passage.

You are pulled toward the darkening cosmos,
your soul quickly flying among infinity.
You glide through galaxies and black holes,
your destination a burgeoning protostar.
You decide to live in this heavenly world,
your previous life nothing but a dream.

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Christopher Stolle wears many hats – partner, uncle, son, music devotee, baseball enthusiast, and, on occasion, writer. His work has appeared with Indiana University Press, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Coaches Choice, Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, and the Plath Poetry Project, among numerous other outlets. He lives in Richmond, Indiana, USA.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

As a young person,
I read a short story
About a detective
Who solved a crime,
Discovering it was he,
The detective himself,
Sleepwalking at night –
Committing transgressions;
I wonder if God sleepwalks

When crime is glorified,
And criminals rule,
Books are banned,
And religion –
A hate propagating tool,
When the poor are preyed upon
And the disabled mocked;
I wonder if God sleepwalks

Is life a cruel joke,
And everybody burdened
By their own yoke?
We’ve come so far –
Out of the forest,
Into the fire, it seems,
But we can all get along
And talk when it’s deemed,
Still, I wonder if God sleepwalks

Is the secret to peace,
Happiness, and love
Squirreled away,
Buried deep in a chasmic safe
Free of oxygenating green trees,
Where universal keys
Have turned cosmic locks?
When so they be illusive,
When joy slips away,
I wonder if God sleepwalks.

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David Cleofas Avila is a former Peer Support Specialist with a BA in Psychology from Sonoma State University. Having experienced psychosis as a teen, and later diagnosed with schizophrenia, he writes and makes art and music to better square away the sequelae of life. His art is held in the Susan Fleming family collection, curated by L. Marx, and has been recognized by the National Arts and Disability Center at UCLA. His visual and written work appears in Peatsmoke Journal, Gabby & Min, NUNUM, Harpur Palate, Oddball Magazine, eMerge Magazine, The Poetry Cove, Flora Fiction, Breath & Shadow, Poetry for Mental Health, and Braver Collective, with his music featured in Wordgathering.

Photo by Spruce on Unsplash.

Candles yearn and flutter
in the sacred gloom
stained glass glows
like coals and cobalt
yesterday’s incense
ghosts into your nostrils.
Two pews down an elegant woman
is summoned by the phone
below her steepled fingers
its pale oblong awakes
to interrupt her prayers
or answer them.
The dead the lost
and those close by are calling
wanting and wanted
summoned and summoning
close as the touch screen
or the pale wax of the tapers –
some newly lit and long,
others slim stubs
held in the sand of the bowl.
The one I lit for you
has half its life to go.

℘℘℘℘

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.

standing in Divine assembly
each tree with its own connections
its own message
its own role
its own journey
through life

so too, we humans
stand in Divine assembly
each of us with our own connections
our own story
our own journey
through life

no matter where we stand
grief will find us

Agamemnon charges us to
tell the story of grief
and Jewish tradition calls out to us to live the story of our grief
it begins with aninut – from death to burial
when we bear no responsibility to G?d outside of grieving
to shiva – seven days of the community coming to us
to shloshim – thirty days of living differently out in the world
and then eleven months of saying Kaddish every day
and always, always, four times a year
together with everyone else
remembering out loud our grief
until we no longer walk this earth

and every single one of these times
standing together
standing in Divine assembly

no matter how joyous an occasion
a pause to remember the dead
allowing grief
acknowledging grief
with words that say nothing of loss but which praise G?d in ancient Aramaic
a reminder
with Agamemnon
of the everpresence of grief
and that our experience is nothing new
yet acknowledging
that on the level of G!d [Elie Weisel]
some experiences of life and grief
perhaps not our own everyperson kind of experiences
but some
forever remain
the most disturbing of mysteries [Elie Weisel]

and for the trees
what does it mean that we are upending life on planet Earth
what does it mean to the Divine assembly where G?d judges
what does it mean to us
what does it mean to the oak and the willow
the bumblebee and the ant
the buffalo and the rose
the rhinoceros
what does it mean to Agamemnon
what does it mean to G?d

does this level of grief
about the injustice of who is suffering most
about families forced to migrate to stay alive
about innocent people disappeared
or thrown into concentration camps
about the loss of so much
so very much that is beloved
about the fear that is stoked
sending otherwise reasonable people
into rabidly defending their little corner of this precious planet

can we possibly honor, hold, and experience
this level of grief
or will it on
the level of human, redwood, bear and daisy
mountain laurel, spider, wasp and fly
clover, mountain brook and pebble
be simply too much to bear
too vast to comprehend
too complicated to express
even as it grows more intense
and remain forever a most disturbing of mysteries

℘℘℘℘

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.

Across the swaying yellow fields,
Vincent is startled by the stunted olive trees
That stretch outwards, upwards
Buffeted by the West wind,
Yearning to seize
The scudding restless clouds.

How they envy their lone companion:
A cypress standing apart, alert,
Such strength in its dark purpose,
While they are chained to their parched quest.

How short the spooned-out time Vincent has left
To trap this pointless struggle, while the wheat-heads
Shift and hiss their ripe displeasure
At his presence.

They are vipers.

Last night, he dreamt
That his thighs, suddenly muscular,
Propelled him upwards, effortless,
To perch upon the cumulus and cirrus,
And then he awoke in sadness,
Unkempt, imprisoned, his head tolling
Like a cracked church bell.

That seductive memory will not leave.

Vipers are curled beneath his feet.

So now, with
Mustard stained fingers,
He stabs at the canvas again, again, again,
His sword a coarse hog hair paintbrush.
He shivers with desire, for another absinthe,
For someone to ease his lone journey
Of escape, to join him behind the lowering sky.

The olive trees, the cypress, all murmur
That Vincent, whimpering,
Will never see them flower,
That his trembling torment
Will never be grasped and set aside by
The fleeting, fleeing clouds.

The vipers strike.

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David Allard is a London‑based writer enjoying retirement while continuing a lifelong engagement with the written word. His work includes numerous poems and short stories published over several decades, as well as a crime novel, The Last Resort, released under the pseudonym David Strauss.

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.