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Odds and Ends
We are making a religion out of Small Things,
weaving significance from yarn and whiskers and wire.
These inkstains are our sacred books, telling stories
of the first kiss, of cat’s eye marbles and baby teeth.
Our pockets hold cowrie shells and birthday candles,
feathers to burn like incense for the mackerel sky.
We are finding the religion in Small Things
the luck in a penny from the year you were born,
the mystery in a drop of mercury sitting sly on the table,
the sanctity in a dandelion untouched and unblown.
Our amulets are rhinestones and peach pits.
Our reliquaries are hollows in the trees that gather water.
We are trading old religion for Small Things,
for they are everywhere and just as important, too.
They hold us together like a chain of paperclips,
and our prayers have dwindled into punctuation.
Thank us for the beauty in tea leaves and eyelids;
bury us in graves that have been measured out in inches.
Joseph Harker has pretty much given up on organized religion in favor of the more personal, private kind. When not wandering between cities in the Northeast US, he works in the translation industry and writes poems whenever possible. His work has appeared in qarrtsiluni, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Ganymede, and other publications, but you can most easily find him at his blog, naming constallations.
On a Thursday, Like Any Other Day, I Try to Take Good Care of Things
Before I switch on the evening star,
I azure the top of the sky.
Like the yellow street light outside my house,
the star floats in dark blue.
Before I azure the top of the sky,
I tint the horizon deep orange.
High clouds smooth to a darker blue
and the lawns in the town drink cool.
Before I stain the horizon orange,
I darken the snowy mountain.
The glow in the west heads for the ocean
where foam glints crimson.
Before I gray the white mountain,
I roll the hills into their beds.
The glaciers slow in their icy hollows
and dream how to flow like rivers.
Before I put the hills to bed,
I tuck in the ripening wheat.
Each kernel sleeps in its head
while the stalks wave in the fields.
Before I kiss the wheat goodnight,
my hands grow paddles for winnowing.
All afternoon I have tasted sunlight.
Tonight in my sleep I will taste bread.
Penelope Scambly Schott has published several books, most recently Crow Mercies from Calyx Books (2010). This poem is from a series she’s working on called “Lovesong for Dufur,” about a small town in central Oregon.
A Red Sky
A red sky although the day has passed in gray.
So many times I’ve seen it linger
in the woods across the street. I have a book that tells me
I should seek my inner answer,
it says: could be a beast not a pretty man not a white horse—
doesn’t say a red sky, yet out I fly
to greet it, it has showed for me I’m sure.
I’ve got a shovel with me, I will lift
a bridal whiteness to it, oh my snow age
does not dissuade. The sky behind the trees
is shy, I notice it arrives each night no closer.
Hey, I say, my purple beret is jaunty,
I dressed all rococo for you, my hair-do flares
out in the wind, a sky would like that, no?
You are so red is this a blush what of it—stumble
forth, I say, I think I’m yours come get me.
Why hang back, time passes quick
the day’s fast gone, and you of all skies
should know this—my book insists that I must
speak with you, so come oh come, I am standing
in front of my house at the top of the hill.
I will be here every night.
Rosemary Starace writes and makes visual art in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, US. She is author of the poetry collection Requitements and co-editor, with Moira Richards and Lesley Wheeler, of the anthology Letters to the World. Her poems can be seen online at Orion, Umbrella, and, along with an essay on adoption and poetics, in Poets on Adoption. More of her writing and art appear on her website.
Q’ran study
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Michaela A. Gabriel (website) lives in Vienna, Austria, where she teaches English, translates, writes poetry and edits the many photos she takes at home and away.
Love Rondeau
Vow: “With my body I thee worship.” —Say
These ancient words again: Then come and play
At Eve and Adam. Thirty five years now
Have passed since first we groped and wondered how
Those lovely pieces fit—and found a way.
Familiarity will not dismay.
Let your gentle muscled fingers stray
Through dark and sacred caves you’ve come to know.
“With my body I thee worship.”
Our bellies round, what hair we have is gray,
One heart repaired, two breasts that had their day
When babies suckled. Now the sap is slow
To rise sometimes. But patiently we’ll grow
Our love to ecstasy; then let us pray
“With my body I thee worship.”
Mary Peterson Johnson is an Episcopal priest, wife, and mother who has recently found time to join a poets’ circle. After a quarter century of writing and preaching sermons, she appreciates the discipline of communicating in some of the older poetic forms.
winter escapes
by Daniela Elza
the snow was unwelcome.
still it blooms lilies on the dust
pad of busy feet
on signs with missing letters.
before the day is over
we plough it aside.
~
I flip my life over
like a carpet on the snow
stomp to paisley crescendos
of Brownian emotions
in this city abscessed
with growth and cranes.
~
what do we call the lily-of-the-valley
after the valley is gone?
back home we know it as Virgin’s Tear
now acidly sheds on the surplice
of cities where clergy will gather
in peach coloured rooms
to ruminate over convenient beliefs.
~
another obstacle to overcome
today melted with the snow
before I could touch it—
this fractal fire that lingers
on the fringe of a snowflake
before it fails to be white.
Daniela Elza (blog) has released more than a 150 poems into the wor(l)d in over 50 publications. This year she completed her doctorate in Philosophy of Education at Simon Fraser University and launched The Book of It. Daniela’s book The Weight of Dew is forthcoming with Mother Tongue Publishing (April, 2012). She lives with her family in Vancouver, Canada.
Driving to Juniata
for David Hutto
Up there’s the interstate, peeping through trees.
Down here among hollows, satellite dishes,
a man on his deck guzzles beer, wishes
he were driving that highway. His fancy speeds
past the graveyard of riding mowers, the three-
foot ceramic gnome squatting on the lawn
beside a cabin whose mailbox reads “Yablonski” —
speed’s his algorithm for life, for freedom.
I’m not sure where America lives, but I know
in my bones she’s down here, among red-lacquered
barns, weed-choked byways, plank bridges.
She bleeds through the landfills, the tiered ridges
of doublewides, the hand-lettered placards
with directions to Jesus. Be patient. Go slow.
Katherine E. Young’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah, Poetry Daily, and many others. She is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Van Gogh in Moscow (Pudding House Press, 2008) and Gentling the Bones (Finishing Line Press, 2007). She teaches English at the University of Maryland.
silence
by Paul Bilger
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Paul Bilger is an experimental photographer and lecturer in philosophy at Penn State.
Fresh Start
by Erik Svehaug
He dumped you; hard. You decorated his smell out of the apartment.
Later, as you chased a rag up and down the new heron-leg stools and along the front of the Uba Tooba counter; as you polished the rubber plant; gave the prayer rug a shake; combed the sand on the end table with a tiny rake; artfully managed not to disturb the bonsai or knock the crystals from advantageous points in the high corners while you dusted;
the edge of the golden gong silently sliced your index finger. A smile of blood slowly formed. Impulsively, you wiped it on the flat brass face. Your missing peace settled on the apartment like warm rain. You struck the gong and your ears echoed the thin roar, shedding voices, dislodging hurtful jibes. You struck again.
Again.
Again.
You clean weekly, since then, but gong daily. A drop of blood keeps it real. The gong is the color of rich oxblood shoe leather. You see the good place you are in reflected in its face.
Erik Svehaug’s fiction has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, The Linnet’s Wings, and the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, among others. The Outlaws chapbook from Bannock Street Press and the Villainy anthology from Hall Brothers showcase his interest in pre-Gold Rush history. Three of Erik’s micros have been honored by UMM Binnacle UltraShorts. More of his published work is available on his blog.
Doxology
Perched in the ash, topmost twig,
the oriole, orange as a sweat-drop fallen
from the sun, entices his giant twin, blazing
on the horizon, with hymns of praise.
His cooler cousin, the meadowlark,
bides low in the fence-row brush, saves
his yellow praise for the fully risen star.
Oriole, sun, and meadowlark
from whom all blessings flow:
what is this human urge
to slaughter deity?
Who will summon the day
when these small gods are gone?
Sherry Chandler’s first full-length poetry collection, Weaving a New Eden, was released by Wind Publications in March 2011. She’s had professional development support from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the editors of qarrtsiluni nominated her poem “Relics” for a Pushcart Prize. Her work is most recently published in Calyx, The William and Mary Review, and The Cortland Review. She blogs at SherryChandler.com and posts micropoetry as the Bluegrass Poet.
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