with apologies to James Agee

Now we have come to the long descent that takes possession of the green slope nestled in the amethyst icebergs of peaks through the repeated Zs of the path where dust rises, plays, settles, repeating in rhythm to the successive passing feet. A lingering yellow winks sparsely from the scattered gentians wandering and searching in the angled meadow, neither flocking to us nor fleeing. Our feet walk through shadows, clouds surveying, until they follow one, a red kite, wings in circumflex, two eyebrows raised in a question for what the prairie will produce. Voices are silent; the click of the nailed tip of a hiking staff on a rock, the soft, muffled tide of a canteen; the tin ticking of the loose buckles of a backpack. Dusty patches of path; muddy patches of path, chocolate and greedy for our boots.

We imitate the dance of skiers, drifting down in their balletic diagonals with our one pole to balance, to turn us. The kite finds its mouse; the shadow shrinks and corners of eyes see the eyebrows frown. The mouse searches a hole, a log, in the instants before the talons fold. Then the mouse meets the feel of flight for the very first time. The gentians nod complacently and gaze. The mouse’s tail flicks, twice, thrice, as the kite’s tail fans, flinches it delicately back into its gyre. The silence salves anew. The sun bathes us as if we were babies and the blue that it climbs, sliding its round back along the vault, between or along the missing ribs of implied arches, fondles the eyes when the eyes rise to it. They scan the narrow tan track as well to navigate the root, the stone, the lacing elbow. The navigation sometimes slips: a boot thuds, a cleat grates. But yet no words are spoken as we wind back downward into the world: the leader, still hoisting the shoulders of an army career, braking at each step; the sisters, one mostly silent, one mostly talkative, both quiet now; my good friend’s nephew, too mischievous for a slope so far from base; my love, dark hair reaching to red from a week of the sun’s reiterated rays. And I am winding too, down to laundry and schooldays and books, and try to take my eyes to all the amethyst icebergs as they roll backward behind the green slope, the beeches joining branches and marking the vertical, the Zs that hum as they cradle our feet, the winking gentian. But they search elsewhere also: for the kite gone to its banquet, for the sharp crest separating Spain from France by a worm’s slime track, the mist gathering in like a hungry flock, gleaming white right then; for the designation with the thump of a staff of the arrival at altitude, the huge cirque opening just beneath it and the northern wheatear scolding us for interrupting; for the herd of Pyrenean chamois, grazing to our left as we rose, anxious for their sanctuary, to our right, muffled urgent thunder arrowing down one meadow slope to leap the frigid coursing brook and paw intently up the other, the babies’ double-time hooves keeping up with the mothers’; the utter, present, cottony quiet of the globe once the tents were closed; the stiff swinging of the tent flaps on mornings when frost still defied day.

I break from trailing the new memories as we break from the trail and settle in the last corner of the green blanket before we tuck ourselves into the gathering woods. Our mats are spread, our last provisions are spread, we perform the vanishing of final traces of sustenance and offer the cheese, the semolina, the doses of powdered milk, the carefully treasured chocolate bar. I boil the water and drink the tea carefully; the metal cup jabs at my lips as malignly as it can. I drink slowly, in little sips, knowing that the last sip leads to washing, the washing to packing, the packing to taking up the load, lighter though it is. Not knowing yet about the last gems I will also pack: a grey donkey nuzzled to an old black horse with white whiskers; a glimpse of a curious but reticent fox; a nightingale deciding to rehearse after hours; beeches ceding to pines and footfalls like perfumed sounds of harvesting.

Oh, of course, we do crave it, the base, the laying of the loads, the coffee beans ground and drowned, cooking smells caressing our nostrils from an oven. But the sinking from the ridge is also a shrinking from the true trajectory of cleansing and an acquiescence in personal pollution. I sigh against the return to the too-complex, too unmigratory me waiting on the other side of a door with a lock on it that I will be soon to unlock and step through, that I will still know to unlock and step through despite the stiffness of the tent flap marquetried with frost and its swing welcoming out.

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Maude Larke lives in France. She has come back to creative writing after years in the university system, analyzing others’ texts, and to classical music as an ardent amateur, after fifteen years of piano and voice in her youth. Publications include Naugatuck River Review, Oberon, Cyclamens and Swords, riverbabble, 52|250, and Sketchbook.

After Carlos Drummond de Andrade

In the middle of the bench there was a black patch and cane
there was a black patch and cane in the middle of the bench
there was a black patch and cane
in the middle of the bench there was a black patch and cane.

I’ll never forget that young veteran
clenched in my unblinking eyes.
I’ll never forget that in the middle of the bench
there was a black patch and cane
in the middle of the bench there was a black patch and cane.

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Joe Zealberg, MD attends an ongoing poetry workshop in Charleston, South Carolina with a group known as “The Long Table Poets,” under the direction of Richard Garcia. This is his second appearance in qarrtsiluni.

We don’t remember when we first talked about guest editing an issue of qarrtsiluni — we guess it must have been back in the spring of last year. We threw around a whole bunch of ideas before settling on Worship as the theme, and it feels like we have lived closely with it since then.

We do have a sense that everyone is involved in some act of worship, although we don’t always use that word to describe those acts. We were curious to see what people made of the theme.

We expected more people to come from a secular position than did in the end, or perhaps we are reading something spiritual into the many poems we got in praise of small things and in praise of the natural world. We did glory in nature in this issue. Many of the poems had a sense of reaching beyond nature to something more ineffable, whatever that might be.

We particularly enjoyed the many pieces of work that took something worldly and showed us something sacred about them.

The standard of submissions was overwhelming high, and the number of submissions were high as well. Right from the start we recognised how subjective a process editing is, and we also recognised that not everything that was good was going to make it into the issue (unless we wanted to take a whole year’s worth of posts).

Looking back on how we did choose the pieces in the issue, we can see that we were looking for something which brought form and spirit together. Some of the writing we received was beautifully crafted but felt in some way hollow. Some of the poems were full of heart, but clumsily executed. (There weren’t many of these, as it happens.) We were looking for writing that was both full of something and beautifully written. We think the writing and the images included in the issue do just this.

As well as the written word and the striking images, we also included one of each of another form, and we want to give them a special mention here. The first is James Brush’s video poem “While Sitting in Church.” The combination of words images and sound lifted the poem to something greater than just words on the page. The second is “The Key of Joy,” a piece of music by Caitlin M. Daphtary (music), Zackary Sholem Berger (lyrics), and Rachel Dudley (vocals) that we were very pleased to feature.

We’re really happy with the final issue. It’s also been wonderful to live with the poems these last few months, to have them breathed into life by the readings that each poet (and in one case, Dave) gave. Thank you so much.

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For bios of Kaspa and Fiona, see the call for submissions.

Ghost Money by Jenni B. Baker

Remedies For A Long Winter by Laura E. Davis

A Morning of Orange Hands by Lawrence Wray

Hamburger Jesus by John Sherman Lathram III

Praise by Sheila Black

Beatitude by Sheila Squillante

About the Laying-On of Bricks Not Hands by Nancy Flynn

While Sitting in Church by James Brush

Doxology by Sherry Chandler

Fresh Start by Erik Svehaug

silence by Paul Bilger

Driving to Juniata by Katherine E. Young

winter escapes by Daniela Elza

Love Rondeau by Mary Peterson Johnson

Q’ran study by Michaela A. Gabriel

A Red Sky by Rosemary Starace

On a Thursday, Like Any Other Day, I Try to Take Good Care of Things by Penelope Scambly Schott

Odds and Ends by Joseph Harker

behold the minotaur by Theresa Williams

In praise of zero by Joe Hyam

The Open Bible Baptist Church Hymnal, Sword of the Lord Publishers, Murfeesboro Tennesee by Lynnel Jones

the artist’s hand by Marja-Leena Rathje

The Widow Discovers the Secret of Leona Canyon by Lenore Weiss

AKA Annie by Holly Anderson

Rest by Cynthia Cox

The Key of Joy by Caitlin M. Daphtary (music), Zackary Sholem Berger (lyrics), and Rachel Dudley (vocals)

Between Us and the Slow Fall by Susan Elbe

Dance of the Doves by Donna Coffey

“I Heard Their Wings Like the Sound of Many Waters” by Marly Youmans

“One Nation Under Me” by Brent Goodman

affirmation by Carol Beth Icard

Without Ceasing by Rachel Barenblat

The bells done rung by Shann Palmer

Notre Dame interior by Adrian Thompson

You Are Here to Receive This Prophecy by Hannah Stephenson

Calculate by Andrew Bailey

[Every green growing] by Robin Chapman

Cathedral forest by Steve Wing

grandfather on God and Richmond by Joanna Suzanne Lee

Lauds, Summer: An Antiphon by Jeanie Tomasko

Curriculum by Ellen Roberts Young

Inside Pre Rup by Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Bandit by Andrea O’Brien

Paint Him Beautiful by Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt

Suburban Vespers by Lucia Galloway

Here For You to See by David King

The Book of Infrequent Prayer by Lois Marie Harrod

Worship by Heidi Garnett

Seeds and Stars by William Kelley Woolfitt

Homecoming Sunday by Regina Walton

The Sacred by Monica Raymond

wrestling with god by John Medeiros

About The Box On The Front Step by Rina Terry

You As White Wall by Rose Hunter

Sitting With by Dorothee Lang

Sleep by Catherine Ednie

Confession of Faith by Julie E. Bloemeke

Hypatia by Colleen Abel

The View by Nancy Scott

Where Father And Daughter Are Seekers by Uma Gowrishankar

Confession as Show and Tell by Jill Crammond

Desert Dead by Lois P. Jones

Easter on the Charles by Richard Wile

Shimmer by Kathleen Hellen

Teresian Wells: Grief and Insurrection by Kate Falvey

Worshipping at Woton’s Throne by Gordon Smith

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Gordon L. Smith is a landscape photographer and poetry lover in southwest Utah. He writes, “Religious terms are often used throughout nature to describe nature’s effect on man. Any visit to Woton’s Throne in the Grand Canyon will be a sublime experience.”

Right now, O raging Carmelite, I have
an interior shack some middle where
outposted in primeval pine and poplar.

And though I am properly joyful when
the sun slants its sunny resurrection,
I am irked, confessedly, with dust and

duty. A broom in a corner, benign,
no, positively simpering: task, task,
and splendid beatitudes, balled and caked,

creep mossily through the planks, waiting for
their thanks. A chunky mug and spoon need holy
rinsing, my single sheet arrests me with

its bid to air the bedding and the tracks
of sylvan creatures, snuffling abrasively
into my lonely stash of winter grain,

eek a cranky knee-jerk pity, half-feigned
and insufficient, charity annoyed
into remembrance of resilience, though

my predilection would be not to share.
I am aware that meanness will not do.
A chastening fling of my breakfast to

the starving starlings and the porcupines
whets my appetite for mercy and I
feast again on humble pie and crow. So

braced, robustly stuffed with an airy fibrous
faith, I chant a favorite paternostic
plea for a modicum of sense and grace.

And I fully expect — though faith is just
a filler and my contrition grumbling
and suspect — consolation, radical

redress, emolument, direction,
sympathy, a link, the wise old consort
of my will to consecrate my listless

blood and rouse me to ascendancy or
leastways to a fair goodwill, unornery
composure and exuberant completion.

Work waits neutrally and patiently but
I cannot endure it. Today, I swear,
that gruff responsibility and service —

peeling the pudgy cobwebs from the jambs,
rejoicing in the loosening of grimy
nimbus from sainted sill, sorrowing,

but scrubbing all the while with fearful gusto —
is not the thing, is not enough to tide
me into suppliance again. I’ve had it

with belief in lowly ritual, loaves
bloating with my need to savor more than
commonplace distentions, spills and simple

clutter confiding in the pressure of
my rags and busy hands, that, indeed, god’s
face is in the stupid trusty suds, that

dimensional, satisfying light wells
regally in the quiet spaces made
by all this mortifying movement, that

the business of life pulses in thrifty
obligation to retain itself, unwasting,
in exchange for nothing, not even a

blasted, circumambient, or willy nilly
faith. Not even for a failure to receive
a sacred mop and bucket when they’re lent.

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Kate Falvey’s work has appeared in a variety of print and online journals. She’s on the editorial board of the Bellevue Literary Review and is editor-in-chief of 2 Bridges Review, a new magazine published through City Tech/CUNY where she teaches.

Between interstices of sunlight through the cross
beams, the silent-stricken trees: a gallows for a swing
I was so young—

my Sunday shoes
my pretty dress really shadows leaning in
to see the algae silky green in the bucket made of tin
Mud and scum of damselflies
and Thee:
Bottom feeder

Arc of your forbearance bent so far, the shape enjoined
the question mark. Enjoined
the hammer

to the nail driven through
to forgiveness
if it was

forgiveness. We gambled we were gods
The rise and fall of rivers at our feet. Parting
these as seas, piercing flesh
stripping garments
of the skin. Pearls

tumbled. A sac of roe for our betrayal
A rosary of shimmer
Did I dream the barbels quivered?
Did I pull from air the wine in clusters? Eat
of this, one grape. Another

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Kathleen Hellen is the author of The Girl Who Loved Mothra (Finishing Line Press, 2010). Her work has appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, the Cortland Review, The Evansville Review and the Hollins Critic, among others, and on WYPR’s “The Signal.” Awards include the Washington Square Review, James Still and Thomas Merton poetry prizes. She is senior editor for The Baltimore Review.

In faded flannel shirt and frayed cargo pants,
the man curls against the Weeks Footbridge
catching the sun like a bedraggled cat.
He stands occasionally, stretches, circles,
before sinking again onto a stained sleeping bag,
while I with $10 cigar look past him
at joggers seeking endorphin blessings,
couples reverently strolling hand in hand,
parents rejoicing in their children,
and twelve ducks meditating on the river.
Above us, Harvard’s golden cathedral domes
glow in wind-driven clouds.
This morning, our priest lit a bonfire, and declared Lent over.
I held my candle, sang “Hail Thee, Festival Day”
“Now the Green Blade Riseth,” “Jesus Christ is Risen Today,”
prayed to childhood’s Casper-the-Friendly Deity,
and walked to the Charles Hotel for bacon,
eggs, hash browns, croissants, and coffee.

#

A black cumulus settles like a boulder
over the sun. Wind pounds wet nails into skin.
Runners and families scud away
like the ghosts of those I’ve loved and lost.
The river churns and ducks bow their heads.
My cigar’s a cold turd. I turtle into my jacket.
The man by the Weeks Footbridge
entombs himself in the mummy bag.
Earlier, I proclaimed, “The Lord is risen indeed!”
but like the women in Mark’s Gospel
who fled the tomb in terror,
I’m afraid to believe it, really,
for fear of resurrection’s undermining
my understanding of the world, my security,
even the security of an emptiness
I carry like a cross.

#

Meanwhile, the cloud is rolled away,
the wind shifts to the south,
and the man by the bridge rises.
From his tattered trousers, he takes bread,
breaks it, and casts it on the water.
One by one, the ducks come forth
to share his Eucharist.

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Richard Wile has published essays in numerous magazines and journals, most recently in the online magazine Solstice. He received his MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Creative Writing Program.

Click image to view a larger version.

Lois P. Jones’s poetry and photographs have been published in American Poetry Journal, Raven Chronicles, qarrtsiluni, and other print and on-line journals in the U.S. and abroad. Since 2008 she has hosted KPFK’s long-running radio series in Los Angeles, Poet’s Cafe (90.7 FM Pacifica Radio). Lois co-produces Moonday West and is a co-host of Moonday’s east side poetry reading at Flintridge Books. She is the Poetry Editor of Kyoto Journal and a 2009/2010 Pushcart Nominee as well as a 2010/2011 nominee for Best New Poets. In 2010 her poem “Ouija” was selected as Poem of the Year by judge Dana Goodyear.

after Kelli Russell Agodon

I kneel to anything these days
stop short of calling it prayer.

In cotton robes I chase fallen grapes
beneath a supermarket altar
of Vidalia onions,

place papery skins on my tongue,
choke on dusty absolution.

At the foot of the bed
(raft of abstinence)
I tuck twenty-count cotton sheets

as far beneath the mattress as they will go,
clasp my hands beneath its weight
thank the god of coil and spring-air

that it is not a king or queen
but a full—

like a sinner’s prayer
lacking real weight.

In the back seat of a car
tree trunks and branches form a sort of confessional.

I bow
take in my hands
your last hope.
I am a penitent past curfew
siphoning the last drops
of something like forgiveness.

Drink. This is what you have shed for me (not many).
That it is not grape juice
makes it all the more sweeter.

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Jill Crammond is a poet, artist and teacher funding her poetry passion by teaching children’s art and writing classes throughout New York State’s Capital Region. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Fire on Her Tongue (Two Sylvias Press), Classifieds: An Anthology of Prose Poems, Weave and others.