Thank you for visiting Issue 10 of Soul Forte: A Journal for Spiritual Writing, featuring writing by Tanja Kummerfeld, Mallika Iyer, Mara Inglezakis Owens, Daniel Skach-Mills, Elizabeth Shanaz, Yahia Lababidi, J. M. R. Harrison, Arthur Lee, and Lisa Borkovich. Join in! We are currently accepting submissions here.
The Heart is Always Adjusting
The heart is expansive.
It is never too full to
fit in someone new,
someone old. Maybe a
boyfriend who returned
or someone new you
haven’t even met.
The heart can do that.
You don’t have to cry
on your way back
from the party.
Because the heart is
there to fill itself up.
With people, things
you love, old friends,
new lovers, partners,
exes. The heart always
is. The heart can do that.
On Immersing Myself in a William Kentridge Exhibit after a Long Cultural Draught (July 2021)
I hear Stefano saying
that we choose what we
tire from. Something
along those lines… I want
to exhaust myself on art.
As I have in the past.
Maybe exhaustion isn’t
so bad. Bathing in
William Kentridge isn‘t
so bad either. Buckle up,
friend. Nothing like a
delicious
Gesamtkunstwerk. I am
feeling the signs in my
entire body. Buckle up,
friend.
Caesura
It is a beautiful pause—
Visible in tiny increments.
You sell your soul for a price
The devil knows how to pick ‘em.
Who told you that you had to do the devil’s
bidding? You pick your pause, you pick yourself
up and live your life while no one and everyone
is watching. Does it matter? Does the sun care that
you are watching him? Does the moon shine lighter just because
you want her to?
Recharging your batteries effortlessly like a smartphone from the next
century. The pause rules, the pause is sacred. Caesura.
Heart, by Tanja Kummerfeld
30 cm x 30 cm, tempera on canvas
Tanja Kummerfeld studied American and Italian Literature at the Universities of Hamburg and Delaware. She is currently on a strange journey and doesn’t know yet where it will take her. Writing and painting are ways of exploration for her.
A Different Way of Being
Look at all the busy and tired people, engrossed in another day of proving their worthiness by doing more to receive more, primed for eternal competition, sentenced to internal dissatisfaction. All the people walking wordlessly by each other, stuck in their own lonely and unrelenting fight. All the people planning, praying, aspiring, laboring, grueling, but still anguishing in a state of never having arrived. What if there was another way? What if instead we accepted everyone’s inherent worthiness as an unconditional fact of the universe and we reminded each other of this all the time? What if each time we met someone, anyone, in passing, we stopped, locked eyes and slowly, deeply, offered a mantra:
We all believe in you.
Anyone would be delighted to spend time with you.
You have made so much progress and it shows.
Your ideas are very important.
If it works out or not, you are still valuable.
You were created uniquely and without error.
We care about you deeply.
You don’t have to go through it alone.
Your presence is felt and appreciated.
It was simply a lesson learned.
Your life is inspiring.
Thank God we have you!
What if this is how we showed up in the world? What if we all committed ourselves to the roles of healer and guru -- drawing on the qualities of kindness and wisdom we already possess -- and we lived these qualities out by slowing down and recognizing and elucidating for others their unnegotiable worth? We are all a vessel for God’s miracles -- maybe we just haven’t realized it yet. Maybe if we all committed, these miracles would flow more freely among us. This is the way of being I envision for us. This is the world we could bring to existence.
Mallika Iyer is a special educator, researcher, writer, and advocate in Boston. Her work focuses on making learning and healing accessible for youth of all abilities. Her writing has appeared in Tiny Buddha, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Spirituality & Health, Please See Me, Braided Way, and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.
Salmon maiden swims away
For a moment only. But we do not
touch. Your hands heat the water
up and down my laterals for
a moment only and I
press my way upriver just as if
you’d never existed.
I am too afraid to stay here. Afraid
that you will seize me by the gills
and peel me from my argent from my
slick blue mercury skin. Lay me
on a bed of Calrose and
do it slowly, bite by
bite.
I am too afraid to stay here so
I fly.
Mara Inglezakis Owens dropped out of school ten years ago; she works in IT and lives in the
suburbs. She enjoys gardening, aviation, writing much, and publishing little.
Like Prayer
not being able to see
clearly to the bottom
of the monastery pond
is what some call God,
holiness, reason to fold
hands humbly, kneel,
the unseeable
we’re seeking
hidden beneath
brackish water,
like longing
unlooked for,
this abbey koi,
swimming up through
what seems stagnant,
is prayer
to the monks,
a moonlit
crescent
darkness
sometimes
draws
shimmering
to the surface
Backyard Buddha
how to attract Buddhas to your yard
Go out on a limb
bow to a bough
Hang up
a clean karma
Buddha bath,
a sound-of-one-
hand-clapping
Buddha bell
Set out
empty
Buddha feeders
filled with
no-self
seed
Be silence
not saying anything
trees don’t
already
know
Still Being the Sky
the months
are malas
days pass
like prayer beads
through
fingers
I want
to be better
at reciting what
has no words
I want
to be slower
at God
*
getting old—
don’t recommend it,
unless you live
in a culture that values
community more than
commerce, well-being
before wealth,
wisdom over
Wi-Fi
*
how ill-prepared we are
for days designed
to break open our hearts
and keep them open—
not once, but
repeatedly
*
the nest you can
no longer reach
I recreate for you
with cupped hands,
broken junco,
your gossamer grief
so heavy to scoop up,
neck broken
out of the yard,
a tattered knapsack
going nowhere,
wind-ruffled
feathers
still being
the sky
Breakfast Bird
I’m no longer a monk, but close—
rising before dawn,
praying in darkness
for an answer to which bird goes
with which full-throated twirrreeee
or clicking chit-chit outside
my window, still counts
as listening to God,
doesn’t it?
Never easy choosing
the bird to invite for breakfast—
a spoonful of sparrow’s song
or sweet warbler’s trill
sprinkled on Saturday’s Shredded Wheat
always gets me looking up to see
which will keep my day airborne,
my view and wingspan wide.
Which would perch
best beside poetry,
cereal, seed.
Daniel Skach-Mills’s poems have appeared in Sufi (Featured Poet), Sojourners, Kosmos Journal, Braided Way, and The Christian Science Monitor. He is the author of The Hut Beneath the Pine: Tea Poems, a 2012 Oregon Book Awards finalist in poetry. A former Trappist monk, Daniel lives with his husband in Portland, Oregon.
If I Believed
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my past life
I painted The Birth of Venus. It cements my
feet to the Uffizi floor like I have just
found a photo of myself that I forgot I ever took.
When I shower I daydream about seashells as I
breathe an angel’s woodwind breath.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my past life
I was a kitten who died sunning herself,
sleeping on a sunspot in the middle of the road.
I tend to go wherever offers me warmth,
even if I am in danger there.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my past life
I was my own great great grandmother.
Cursed the day my son boarded that ship and
that’s why I cannot look at the sea
without crying.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my past life
I was a Nokia ring tone of
a bouncy masala song. What is it about
its melody that feels like someone is calling
to see what time I’ll get home?
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my past life
I was the sparkle in a maang tikka passed down
to twenty daughters. I love kissing my children
between their eyes.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my past life
I wrote Gitanjali. I constantly find myself
dreaming of stringing and unstringing
my instrument on a breezy verandah.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my past life
I was a magazine in Malcolm X’s rifle. I’ve never
cared to build a bridge with an enemy. I’m
nursing many grudges as I write this.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my past life
I was the big hand on Princess Diana’s
Cartier Tank. I spend a lot of energy convincing
myself that I still have a lot of time to
change things.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my past life
I was a sheisty. Bought on the same street corner
as the Penn Station incense man.
I feel safest when no one can see me.
If I Believed, Pt. II
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my next life I’d want
to be reborn as the blush in a child’s cheeks
during the Happy Birthday song. My only
job to sit and bloom.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my next life I’d want
to be reborn as a note in Destra’s throat. Freeing
myself to float over a savannah of prismatic
masqueraders.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my next life I’d want
to be reborn as the dust in Damascus. So I can
keep at least one baby warm in my embrace
as they wait under the rubble for a savior with a
tractor for arms.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my next life I’d want
to be reborn as the beads of condensation
rimming a cold glass of water. So that even
in a summer of abundance, I can be
consumed by someone who needed me so
bad it hurts.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation
but if I did, I think in my next life I’d want
to be reborn as a sunflower. So I never
forget to turn my head to the east
at maghrib.
Elizabeth Shanaz is a New York based poet. Her work has been featured in Playboy, Human/Kind, Defunkt, PREE Lit, and the Blue Minaret, among other journals and magazines. She studied writing and literature at CUNY City College before earning her law degree from NYU School of Law. She is the proud child of Guyanese immigrants. You can follow her on Instagram @lizzieshanaz.
Curtains of the Soul: Frost’s Metaphysical Yearnings
I first encountered Robert Frost’s prayer of a poem, The Fear of God, through a recitation by the erudite Muslim scholar, Hamza Yusuf. Since then, I’ve returned to it often for spiritual attunement.
The poem opens with transformation:
“If you should rise from Nowhere up to Somewhere,
From being No one up to being Someone . . .”
Frost names the invisible alchemy of being called forth, always unexpectedly, into recognition. But even as he acknowledges this ascension, he cautions against letting it go to our heads or, worse, our hearts:
“Be sure to keep repeating to yourself
You owe it to an arbitrary god . . .”
It’s a humbling phrase—not the logic of a transactional deity, but the mystery of a sovereign Mercy—what Muslims call al-Rahman, the Compassionate One, whose choices are beyond human audit. Frost, in his own New England tongue, reminds us that such elevation is not merit but mystery.
The poem’s wise counsel lies in this line:
“Stay unassuming.”
That, to me, is the heart of spiritual etiquette. The mystics have always warned against becoming too visible, too self-congratulatory in our holiness. In Sufi thought, there is a virtue known as khumūl—a blessed obscurity. The friend of God is often cloaked in ordinariness, known only to the Hidden One.
Khūmul, literally translated as “concealment” or “inconspicuousness,” is deeply cherished in the Sufi tradition. It is the spiritual art of remaining unseen—not out of fear, but out of reverence. Many saints were veiled by God from public recognition so that their sincerity would remain untainted by vanity. As one Sufi saying goes, “Be like the roots of a tree: hidden, yet essential.” Frost, whether knowingly or not, echoes this spiritual poise—a preference for inner truth over outer acclaim.
Frost goes further:
“Beware of coming too much to the surface
And using for apparel that was meant
To be the curtain of the inmost soul.”
What if our insights, our graces, are not garments to parade but veils to protect the sacred within us? There’s a mystical modesty in these lines. Just as some traditions veil the body to honor it, Frost suggests we must veil the soul, not out of shame, but reverence.
He echoes this reverence in another small poem I hold dear, simply titled Devotion:
“The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean—
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.”
Here is constancy, not spectacle. Steadfastness over sensation. The shore does not ask to be praised; it simply receives the waves. The mystic heart, too, finds its dignity in being present, in being a vessel, again and again.
I often think of the spiritual life as circling something we cannot fully name. We suspect, we glimpse, we intuit—but the core remains ineffable. Frost renders this beautifully:
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
That Secret—the Knower, the Witness—is not mocked by our circling. Perhaps the dance itself is a kind of whirling devotion, not unlike the sema of the dervishes. What matters is that we keep circling with sincerity, and that we remember: the Secret is not ours to possess, only to revere.
If I rise from nowhere to somewhere, may I remember who called me. If I receive attention, may I carry it lightly, like borrowed clothing. And if I am tempted to parade the soul’s subtle treasures, may I recall they were meant to remain hidden—like curtains drawn around a sacred space.
Postscript: On Frost’s Religious Leanings
Though Robert Frost is not widely remembered as a religious poet, his work is imbued with metaphysical yearning and a quiet awe before the mysteries of existence. He was skeptical of dogma, but not of divinity. In his letters and lesser-known writings, he speaks of the soul, the unseen, and a God who “will not be cornered by the intellect.” He once described poetry as “a momentary stay against confusion”—a phrase that could just as easily apply to prayer. In The Fear of God, he offers not doctrine but devotion and reverent restraint. And perhaps, that quiet trembling toward the divine is faith enough.
Yahia Lababidi is a poet and cultural critic whose work explores the intersection of art and the sacred. Lababidi is the author of over a dozen books, including Palestine Wail (Daraja Press, 2024) and What Remains To Be Said (Wild Goose Publications, 2025). His forthcoming collection of essays is tentatively titled I, Testify (Ayin Press, 2026)
Sacred Is an Anagram of Scared
for Rose Solari
I have seen the Muse
depicted as a demure angel
bending over the artist’s shoulder,
but if, as Rilke warns, every angel
is terrifying, then …
To assault the blank page
with pen or paint is to defy all fears,
the relentless and hollow ones,
from sloppy lines to ridicule,
and the eternal terror of failing
the vision, that glimpse I pursue
even if—like a will-o’-the-wisp—
it leads to swampy ground.
Consider this morning’s Visitation:
the towering feral grandeur, tantrum of wings,
and penetrating gaze.
I fear this light
that shatters me whole could shatter me wholly.
How can I and words not fail?
Yet how can I withhold?
Beggar Angel
What can I offer
an angel sitting by the road
with an empty bowl
and folded wings?
Bread? Poems? Devotion?
Or should I kneel in the troubled dust,
crying:
Tell me a story.
Tell me your story.
Yet I cannot promise
to remember more
than sunlight dappling
through the leaves
and an illuminated word or two
from on high.
Make Me an Angel
Just give me one thing
that I can hold on to
to believe in this living
is just a hard way to go.
—John Prine, ‘Angel from Montgomery’
Don’t start with mud or stardust.
Try a twist more startling. Begin
with music: a Bach chorale
or an ancient Icelandic hymn
for the wanton clamor of wings.
Mold the heart with flames stolen
from a candle lit for a meal shared
by lovers or from the trembling taper
a ghostly maiden carries up
the creaky staircase of a castle
sheltered in the evening shadows
by a hunched mountain. Reach
deep into that mountain, seek
bedrock for strong, steady limbs.
Let this be no insipid greeting card
messenger, weak and commonplace.
Surprise me with splendor
and the ease of green pastures.
Deliver me from the compounding
evils of this conundrum of a world.
Make me an angel—unbound
from bargains, heaven’s foundling,
tempered power alert and new—
to guide and love beside me.
Canonical Hours
Prime: Morning.
In the damp remnants of the campfire
a pattern formed by tiny footprints
and looping abstract curves—
tracks left by a salamander
sleepwalking through fiery dreams.
Terce: Late morning.
His hot chocolate warms the old woman sheltering
in the doorway. In return, she fills his hands with snow,
new fallen, painfully scooped from the sidewalk.
So cold her gift his fingers ache, but he holds the snow
until only icy, undeciphered hieroglyphs remain.
Sext: Early afternoon.
Although sunlight floods past lace curtains and falls
in sculpted eddies to the polished hardwood floor,
the looking glass reflects only spangled darkness
and a startled child with moonpearls braided in her hair.
Nones: Midafternoon.
She feeds the carousel horses peanuts
shelled with a deft twist of her fingers.
Enameled heads bob equine thanks until
recalled by distant music to accustomed rounds.
Vespers: Evening.
Dairymen whisper to the waiting ears of angels
secrets never mumbled into lover’s tangled hair
streaking the white pillows under the cover of darkness.
Compline: Night.
‘Gargoyles vandalized,’ reports the policeman,
citing as evidence jagged rubble and chipped concrete.
Unnoticed overhead, a sphinx-eyed, winged lions blaze
ecstatic flightpaths past the dreaming stars.
Matins: Early morning.
Sailors with callused hands jeer as he waits,
holding the polished shell firmly his ear,
‘seeking the sea in the shell of a conch,
would you believe, while sailing on ocean’s back..’
Lauds: Early morning still.
Those sailors hold silent though, when he dives to meet
the sea-dragon glimmering against the indistinct horizon.
Unheralded in the fading moonlight,
man, shell, and the serpent’s ironic eye
slip through phosphorescent waves.
J. M. R. Harrison has studied at the independent Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and is a graduate from the low residency MFA program of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing in Louisville, Kentucky. Her poems have been published in Antietam Review, Loch Raven Review, Pensive, and elsewhere.
When was the last time?
You are transfixed by this screen.
Thumb scrolling like a modern prayer
What are you worshipping?
When was the last time
you walked barefoot in a forest?
Let the dirt kiss your feet
let the wind speak plain to your skin
without filters or translations?
When did you last drink water
not bottled in plastic but alive
cold from the mouth of a spring?
Have you eaten anything lately
that knew the sun intimately?
Grown slow by the earth’s dreaming
not rushed through steel and smoke
nor passed through a factory?
When
and I mean, really, when
have you last sat still without needing
a podcast, a ping, a headline, a hit?
We run from silence
like it chases us with a knife
But silence isn’t our enemy
it’s an invitation
from God itself.
The algorithmic machine
harvesting your attention and life force
only holds the power you surrender to it.
It cannot breathe for you.
It will not feel the ache of relief in your chest
when you finally stop running
and instead let yourself
Be.
Maybe
it’s time to take a step back
and put the phone down.
Lay it gently, like a stone at the river’s edge.
Feel your own breath again.
Wild, ancient, still true.
And listen.
Belief
I don’t believe in “evil”
I believe that there are those
who simply did not receive
the Love they longed for
and should have received
as infants
children
teenagers
and adults.
And in the absence of Love
their hearts became hardened
adapting to a world
of terrifying indifference.
All beings, all creatures need Love
more than food and water.
Love is the beginning of all things
it is the cure for all things
So, no.
I don’t believe in “evil”
I believe in Love.
There are seasons
Day, night.
Awake, asleep.
Sound, silence.
Joy, sorrow.
Love, loss.
Summer, winter.
Unity, separation.
Order, chaos.
Expansion, contraction.
Life, death.
Everything moves
in cycles
in the long breath of opposites
leaning into one another.
Look to the trees
the tide
the slow turning of the moon.
Nature reveals it all
the truth of change
the grace of becoming
the necessity of return.
And we, too
are of this world.
Not separate
nor above
but shaped by the same immense forces
that turn the seasons
hold massive celestial bodies in orbit
and stir the wind.
So the next time
you find yourself
slipping into an old pattern
a worn habit you thought
you’d laid to rest
do not harden
Do not rush to shame.
Remember
you are in motion
Even stillness is a tide.
Everything you are
is rising and falling
becoming and unbecoming
like the seasons of the earth
that never arrive all at once.
Summer does not become winter
in a single night.
The leaves do not fall in anger.
They simply let go
when it is time.
And you
you are changing, too.
In your own rhythm.
In your own time.
Just as you must.
I became Love
I saw that there was
conflict in the world,
so I became peaceful.
I saw that there was anger,
so I became kind.
I saw that there was darkness,
so I became light.
I saw that there was
conflict, anger, and darkness
so I became Love.
Arthur Lee is a poet, singer, writer, and meditation guide living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He finds solace and guidance in Buddhism and the Earth.
Well Being
Space isn’t empty
in fact a well processed inner depth
creates an absence that contains
so that she can throw herself against the wall
splinter into all those imperfect pieces
and you don’t need to pick them up
nor glue them back together
you simply abide
as the opportunity for the shattering
Space is solid
formless but sturdy
so that he can lash out like a viper
sink fangs filled with vitriol
but you remain untouched
the antidote to this flesh wound
is your silent awareness
Space is relational
an inner coherence the disconnected psyche
can project itself upon
so that they can finally hit rock bottom
and you remain unmoved, the very ground
that breaks them open
Space isn’t loud
but an inner silence that listens
when we begin to follow each other over the cliff
resting in stillness rather than acting to stop the fall,
accepting that a thunderous herd cannot hear reason.
Space is clear
dust motes may float but with nowhere to cling
will eventually settle over a freshly cleaned home
our presence there makes room for the dross
our quietude becomes a structural support
when another’s internal walls begin to collapse.
Alchemical Process
Phase 1: shake salt, spin out, go mad, break down, cry out, ask — who am I?
Phase 2: lay on hands, levitate, walk the labyrinth, train with Sophia, descend with Persephone, explore stars, turn over cards, reckon with Chiron, tap points, trace lines, go dark, dissolve into vibrating light
Phase 3: befriend T-rex, apprentice with Baba Yaga, confront the shadow, befriend the dark man, shimmy with Lilith, blind myself, find myself, lose my face, study the hole in the image, turn blue, become dragon
Phase 4: re-collect memories, recant scripts, re-draw maps, rewrite narratives, retrace scenes, extract silver, switch out roles, marry again, rescue the wounded, open doors, break out inmates, light fires, grieve, lament, mourn, renovate the house top to bottom, put every part in its rightful place
Phase 5: pierce flesh, lance heart, strip down naked, enter the waters, sing, draw, dance, write words on paper, add white paint to canvas, learn how to crawl, connect the dots, rediscover home conversation by conversation
Phase 6: reclaim perception, re-vivify instinct, embrace conflict, draw boundaries, let them go, let me be, suffer jaundice, come down to earth, embody matter, radiate joy
Phase 7: choose accountability, return to marketplace, forge onward, redden and begin again:
what am I?
how shall I meet the impending diminishment?
with whom shall I share my remaining life energy?
how do I choose to die?
Now that I am finally alive
It’s what the symbols represent that matters
She carves high voltage symbols in the air
invisible kanji hanging like prayers in space
radio waves telegraphing truth.
The birds don’t seem to mind --
they fly through the ripples
the squirrels aren’t bothered either --
they forage in the afterglow
unaware, uninvolved, unaffected
just their mindless chittering and pecking.
The bald eagle, a kite miles above
buffeted on shock waves
dips and rides the crest upward
ever expanding horizons unseen
by the hand that draws with light.
Rite of Spring
Let us enter the inner sanctum
let us enter its hallowed space
let us whisper our devotion
let our heart beat set the pace
let us call forth what’s been written
as strands of DNA through time
let us enter in as keepers
as readers for this holy place
let us claim its common knowledge
claim its symbols and its shape
deeper than our knowing
let the wisdom there shine through
let us bow down at the centre
at the sacred altar let us kneel
let’s uncover what is fixed there
a pattern ancient by design
behold a holy wound, a wound
spun through family lines,
heredity pride and birth rights,
spanning ancestry and tides
let us now attend the ringing
the ringing in our ears
the ringing of our being
draw together let us hear
draw as one and hear it speaking
in the silence without fear.
Lisa Borkovich writes poetry and short fiction. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, most recently in Hamilton Arts and Letters Magazine, Asylum Magazine, Canadian Literature, The New Quarterly, online in IWA/45 Magazine Literary Journal and Amethyst Review and in the anthologies Alchemy and Miracles and NOW HEAR THIS!. She was lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.