Welcome

Nothing of Me for Myself

Annihilate me in the fires of Your love.

Raze everything to the ground.

Dissect me- an open-heart surgery.

Wash out any loveless blood.

Leave nothing of me for myself.

You are the allure and passion

my hungering soul cries out for.

You are the morning dew

that calls to the soles of my feet.

I know no greater torture 

than to be away from Your presence. 

Entrap me in the snare of Your love -- 

caress me into the euphoria of Your embrace.  

The Pool of Flowers

A soul in deep yearning

is a heart that is inflamed.

Quickly, pure love’s seeker --

leap into the pool of flowers.

Immerse yourself under the petals,

and soak yourself in love

until you’re drenched to the bone.

Do not keep to the shallow end.

Cover your life with flowers.

Dissolve into a fragranced soap

to bathe your Beloved’s feet 

in perfumes of devotion. 

The Fertilizer and the Flowering

Star-canvassed night in holy air. 

The rivers swallow the sky --

The stars drink in the stream. 

A provision of truths, 

A dance of roses and fire. 

Deluged love makes fertile seed.

In its absence, a barren paradise.

Our Beloved makes the ocean sing,

and gives excited joy to the rain.

This dance happens with or without-

it is a matter of taking the invitation.

Grow naked with the flowers

or hold close garments of want. 

The lotus loves the mud --

beauty fosters with truth.

Receive the fertilizer and the flowering. 

The Beloved calls you to the deeper,

a tranquil cove of love-song.

Stop being the Beloved’s stranger.

Be a whirlwind of resurrections, 

A well with no bottom.

Love love to death. 

The Garden of Sweetness and Wounding 

In the garden of sweetness and wounding,

lovers first traipse groves overgrown in thorns.

These thorns are what tear away the world’s veil.

The way out of the grove is through the wounding. 

The thorns prickle and tear away selfish desires. 

After the grove are the honey hives. 

Bees swarm and lick at lovers’ viscous fingers 

as they taste the sweetness of divine love.

Honey seeps from their mouths of ecstatic love song. 

From there, the garden becomes a wine press. 

Under naked feet, lovers crush grapes 

into wines that by knowledge cannot be drunk. 

Reason and worldliness are locked out.

Love is beyond any study or analyses. 

Love is a madness best tasted. 

Zachary Nelson is a grill cook who lives and work in Rockford, Illinois. Zachary has had poems published in Sufi Journal and Still Point Arts Quarterly. Divine love permeates much of Zachary’s poetry. The above poems are rather raw and intense love poems that express a yearning for divine love.

Humility

Sitting one day in contemplation, I had a sudden insight: "I am not God."

I burst out laughing. 

“Of course, I’m not God!”

But then I realized that some part of me does think I am God. God as an all-powerful being who can make everything OK. 

Prevent, heal, save. That God. 

It’s hard to surrender to the truth that I don’t have control. It’s hard to  admit that life can be impossible, unfixable, painful. That too often, I can’t do a thing about it. 

I am not that God.

What a relief. 

Right-sizing myself lightens the suffering of those around me. I am better able to love when I’m not trying to fix or improve. 

Heart-felt humility also lightens my own suffering. This beautiful, bold human capacity is all that I have, and it is enough.

This is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that  pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that this is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love.

                                                                                                               —Brian Doyle, One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder

Might you be enough as you are, right now? 

Anne Gorsuch writes short invitations to internal and relational practice informed by her meditation practice and work as an intuitional coach. She shares occasional brief reflections like this one with subscribers via https://www.annegorsuch.com/.

Questions

Does the ant know it’s on the highway?
Does the human know they’re on earth?
Do the birds know each other’s song?
Will you think of me when I’m gone?
Will the adults relearn to play?
Will Mother Earth have her way?
Will the skyscrapers lead us to God?
Will you sing of me when I’m gone?
Do my tears cut like knives?
Have my words earned their right?
Will our hearts pound the same?
Will I live up to my name?
Do my heels arch to Heaven?
Will my Mother change her way?
Do our Fathers pretend to pray?
Will my love for you fade?
Are my dreams coming in frame?
Will I know when to turn the page?
Can we breathe fire into class?
And clink together what we can’t grasp.

Lucas Santo is a writer from Toronto. His work explores themes of ceremony, transformation,
and masculine vulnerability. He writes about spiritual experience, modern frustration, and
finding the sacred in everyday life. He lives with his wife, daughter, two dogs, and cat. 

Morbid Optimist

The world is a big beautiful place and there is much terror all around but I can touch clay I can play kick ball with teens I can listen to music and watch the sky alter by the second at sunset I can drink tiny beers I can fold clean clothes I can walk so many steps I can wear green in so many ways and still we spin and I can feel myself being edged to the fringes inertia tugging my torso now and my fingertips grip more firmly to the railing legs akimbo hair wild whipping my sun-kissed shoulders face stretched wide in wonder and soon I will slip or be pried free and away I’ll fly other people shoved by capitalism’s incessant demands replacing me at the margin of civilization’s demanding spiral and nothing will be okay no one will be okay I won’t be okay but what else is there for me to do but vote for the most hope we have notice the teen in my class who needs a day off leave love notes of exotic beers in the fridge and squish those growing kids who are filling with fears faster than wonder these days but this I can do this I can do I can hold on to this until I can’t and fear is a distant monster cutoff ages ago when I stopped doom scrolling and started chasing humanity’s most creative subversives and as I am yanked loose my final thoughts are just pride and bliss and sacred oblivion my love note to the world a pair of googly eyes on an old wooden owl sitting outside a tidy home in Washington state.  

Revelations

my brain’s a whole adult

older before I begin to process

my favorite verses as a teen

(sweaty and sad, soapy and sweet)

were post-apocalyptic and sensual

like my favorite movies

Jurassic Park and Much Ado About Nothing

Jeff Goldblum and Emma Thompson

turning me on 

                 to fear and arousal, chill and rage

full surrender

believing the outcome is worth it

“because your love is 

better     than       my     life

my  LIPS  will lick—oops, that was a slip—

                             praise  you”

naturally thinking I’m sloppy

yucky unworthy, the baby 

who owes each breath to a deity

of course I cried

eating scattered saltines with melted cheese

               southern Oregon nachos

every day at lunch that summer leaning

deeper into high school, life felt long

eternity no longer a miracle

                 but a torture, I thought

it would be nice not to wake

sometimes

wondering what it would be like

if I wasn’t around anymore

what if I slipped away, worries lost

                in a haze of mystery afterlife

that crystal-ball book said

every tear would be wiped

from my eyes, “there will be no more

death or mourning or crying or pain”

these dreams I told

no one, but the verses were common

knowledge and none of us suspected

the desperation for real intimacy

                  (and not with boyfriend-Jesus)

the depression hiding on stage in youth group

the damage of pretending it’s good

to hate Earth, to call heaven home

we all laugh now

so obvious looking back

I was not okay

but hey nonny nonny

life finds a way

and art continues 

                                 rescuing me from religion 

Joann Renee Boswell (she/her) is a skeptical mystic who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and three kids. Jo’s most recent book, Meta-Verse (Fernwood Press, 2023), is a coloring, pick-your-own poem space-time romp. Jo loves cloudy days filled with coffee, contradictions, dystopian fiction, justice, handholding, forest bathing, and hope. Her superpower might be whimsy. Learn more and reach out at joannrenee.com.

Feathers and Wings

But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. -- Isaiah 40:31

riding on wisps of

cotton-fluffed clouds

enveloping the weary

whose strength has waned

and cries for help are 

quelled and tamed

gently guided by

holy breath

lifting wings and

feathering nests

all will feel the

rise from death

running the marathon

the weak man does

and claims the prize

despite slow starts

forever he  flies

higher and higher 

he’ll forever reach Heaven

with slow-spinning stars

clutched in his talons

the weak once weary 

no longer struggling

Laura Boatner is a registered nurse by day and a writer by night. Her writing appears in Brilliant Flash Fiction, New Verse News, Discretionary Love, and a forthcoming issue of Open Kimono. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and two rescue pups.

Fizzy Fictions

Nightmares rise like bubbles, 

Dreams in a glass of fizzy fictions

With signs

For a few who read.

He-go, She-go, They-go 

We-go, 

It’s all go,

Relax, 

Cease,

Exchange sight for vision

Out of sunlight

Out of the specificity of words

Out of saying

Into being.

And come back!

Surface into seeing

Rising like a bubble

Through the fluidity,

and lucidity of wisdom.

Poetry's Inky Past

The geometry of eternity

Draws a line of dashes,

The speeding spans of a life.

It arches above knowledge 

in immeasurable degrees

not in language but across a domain.

Memory cheats line

Bringing back moments,

Without dimension.

Being’s shapeless theorem

Remains unstated

Without angles.

Mind grasps knowingly.

It can wander about 

Letting go, fearful and fanciful. 

Time and duration,

Ryme and saturation,

Vocalization declines into silence.

Eternal in its fulfilling moment

Sound of the poem.

Fades while the page 

Rages on.

Smashing out of inky past

Into future’s dashing.

Tony Bates grew up in different parts of the world following his father’s postings in the Foreign Service. Now living in Alexandria, Virginia, he is a retired government bureaucrat, house husband, part-time writer, gardener, and community volunteer. Tony is both a self-styled "Citizen of Nowhere” and a concerned citizen of this remarkable country.  

Today I Saw a Friend

Today I saw a friend walking by

Hand stretched out in a far away wave

His eyes gazing straight through me

As though he hadn’t actually seen me

What is it about the world today?

Why is it that a passing car

Holds more value than a

Meaningful personal exchange?

Why has a sensitively written letter

Been replaced by a short, cold

Piece of writing on a machine

Or one typed in a bazaar language

On a hand held, cancer causing device!

“Do not microwave your food;

It causes cancer!

Do not eat sprayed vegetables

You could die!

Do not drive your car too often

The planet is warming!”

Well, actually I agree on ‘not driving’

Your car too often and indeed

The planet is warming!

But bring back the “good old days”

When driving a car was a luxury

Vegetables were fresh out of the garden

And neighbours stopped to talk to each other

Because they really did want

To know how your day was going

We don’t need to microwave our food

And we are better off if

We don’t use our cell phones

What happened to mental telepathy

And travelling on foot?

I actually wanted to talk

With the man who

Waved across at me

Where is he now? I wonder

Stuck in a far off lane

On the freeway?

Settling down in peace and quiet, me

With a note pad and a pencil for

Company and a warm fire for light and heat

I will wait for my friend

To find me

And if he does not

I’ll wait for another

For I have plenty of time

In my slower, more peaceful

World.

Hope Mendelssohn is a composer, singer, and writer based in New Zealand. Hope has composed music for the National Youth Choir of New Zealand, various soloists, and many churches in Europe, the U.S.A., Australia, and New Zealand. She has broadcast, performed and published her poetry internationally and has won several composition awards.

anxious salmon

I became the river and the river 

wears me into a personage

imagine how grateful descendants 

will be                                 transcendent river spirit 

shared by our people                                damning a 

river is like severing arteries                                two 

adorned salmon framing pixels 

under pink dogwood tree the 

present is the present I am 

the present presently                               a basket 

of fruit believing in abundant 

stillness Vilcabamba, Muteshekau,

Atrato, Whanganui, Ganges and 

Yamuna welcome to personhood 

let’s sing a song about the river 

in albania that became a park

I am river

seek ears and eyes of caribou

seek thunder clouds coral bursts

notes strained on the river myst 

spruce resin pheromonic hue

aboriginal intricate formation 

shelter geography providence

                                as i look at myself 

                                on the page I am 

                                reassured by proof 

                                of living iteration

current recess dysautonomia

it runs fingers parallel pattering

chlorophyll libel caked sediment 

feigning conjoined stillness artfully

play shell game where there is glass 

pebble underwater sleight of hand

online dating in a fixed system

I have been anxious all my life

jealous eye laying claim on my will

watching brooms sweeping past

rocket staging doors slamming 

ajar       revealing identical universes

where we all share the same fault

lines  varicose circuitry bloodshot

fractals branching rosy daydream

magician neophyte       store window

my reflection’s distorted ideation

bubbling volcanic lightning bolt

direction drifting magnetic setting

this was the point of absurd motion

destination orienting ambitious 

strange winds performing reiki on

beach sands         I want to move bodies

in space            orphan rhythm ringing

subject’s allegorical randomness 

Karol Olesiak is a queer disabled poet, writer, and activist. Karol’s poetic work is featured or forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Neologism Poetry, Laurel Review, Zoetic, Sugar House, MAI feminism, Lone Mountain, 5th Wheel, and Pictura Journal. Karol has an MFA from University of San Francisco, is a Wheeler Prize semi-finalist, a Moonstone chapbook finalist, and a Pushcart nominee. 

(The chalice speaks)

Do not take your lips from me.

Keep me perched there

at their parting.

Drain me completely.

Leave nothing—dreg

nor drop

of sticky wine

to line

my swollen belly.

Fill me with the warmth

of your breath—

whatever your must—

so that even if the rust

eats the sheen

of my frame

the flame of your memory,

the mist on my skin,

will kiss me, kiss me clean.

(Coltrane speaks)

                If there

is someone lovelier than you,

someone who can bear the weight

of my sweet sapphire blues,

then, lover, so what:

you are why I was born.

I see your face before me,

always, in the night’s a thousand eyes.

You, my shining hour,

You kiss of no return.

I am dedicated to you.

You will be to me my all

Or nothing at all shall be.

Self-portrait as Sinai

If my body is the mountain

    even just a boulder

    left smoldered at the base

show me where to place my hands

that     Grace      I may find you

I will rifle through the pages

of all my old pains       clamor

cross fields of borrowed sorrows

                 cup water          swallow

                 bitter wine        if only you will

hold me 

                  to where I myself

can’t climb          I am not

my body               I am not

my mind               I am but

the secret place where

              Grace

your shoulder shines

Pain

And so it happens      the pain becomes a portal      breaking in upon what the wind has always

craved and what the fog has always wanted     the awful mansion shuttered haunted by our own

very flesh which cries cries day and night       Take eat      and     multiplied like fish        Feast on what

we bring you      transubstantiate us whole 

So thorn by thorn and nail by hand the door grows slowly open until there it is      open      A

flooded river flowing   awful light 

Connor Brown is a writer and clinical mental health counselor in training based in
Wheaton/West Chicago, Illinois. His work has previously appeared with Ekstasis, Solum Literary Journal, Amethyst Review, and St. Katherine Review.