Soul Forte: A Journal for Spiritual Writing is delighted to present Issue 8, featuring writing by Ken Goodman, Pramod Lad, Daniel Skach-Mills, Mara Inglezakis Owens, Lynn Tanny, Tommy Sheffield, Lisa López Smith, Toni Juliette Leonetti, john compton, and Murray Eiland. May you read and resurrect.
rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
Original GodFace to face bestows core/openly;
where it doesn’t die it’s undyed by [this]
scenery. No mere monument to it can
actually be : what it looks like looking at
mind mirror(s) stainlessly;
no go-between [your] core
& blissful
bosom God
body.
perfect penetration
Perfect penetration of skull center(s)
edgelessly : is already one deLight
elixir unity, unexpelled from Eden &
in-hearing silently...holy hollow(s)
‘tween the temples
mating God
body.
color one
If GodFace has a color
it’s where atoms are empty,
self-realized where I AM is
one color : clarity, unstained
linguistically . . . empty atom
field Garden E stability,
secret mantra access
inner-hearing silently...
color one embracing
GodSky/mindcloud harmony,
each one intimately : deLight
absolutely dry
as sunshine
undersea.
say so in a syllable
Naked meaning skullvase wisdom
root/blooms secretly, open secret smiling
at word/thought dependency.
So say so in a syllable!
AH
(pronounced silently).
Skull hollow island...of no coast!
And on it—
the LifeTree.
Ken Goodman is a practitioner of inmost alchemy (manifest as poetry). He does this in Cleveland.
Dust
A vision of motes of light
floating above us
as we hold hands
breathing the innocent
air of apples
and from afar
drifting toward us
a sound
the wind perhaps
or a gentle hiss,
whispered foreknowledge
we would turn to dust.
But who would know
what we knew
before the tree
before dust became being
what we had known
a world perfect in peace and love
without sin
Pramod Lad was born in India, educated at King’s College in the UK, and completed his PhD in Biochemistry at Cornell University. He was a scientist at the National Institutes of Health. His poems have been accepted in The Examined Life Journal, Right Finger Pointing, Omentum, Eclectica Magazine, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Umbrella Factory, The Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Pennine Platform, Litbreak Magazine, Amethyst Review, and Creations Magazine.
What Moss Knows
My poems are hermits
dwelling in deep woods
They reside wherever
your trail of words ends
When you tire of trying
to follow them,
they appear
Beneath all
that’s written or said,
let us cross together
this silent page of trackless snow
that leads to where
they live
Only moss knows
how many stepping-stones
it’s taken their stillness
to get here
Writing Poetry Is
love
for finding
words
that are
world
word
world
where else
can one letter
change everything—
turn what you
started out with
into something
larger?
poet—
a person who longs
to spell world
using all
the letters
none left out
not one
a poet’s job—
penning
what a fifth season
looks like
finding words
older than
God
God
is every poem
I’ve ever written
but mostly
the moments after
when God and I
step back
arms over
each other’s
shoulders
and read
the poem
together
then God laughs
and I laugh
and, as if surprised,
God asks about
the poem
Now where
did that come from?
in my
voice
Let Us Give Thanks
for forests who remember us.
Woods we wandered trusting trees for trails.
Paths we prayed to no less than a god for guidance.
Trunks who rooted us in the years
of standing still it takes
to be more deeply grounded
spouses, parents, friends.
And for Buddha, who was right:
To understand everything
is to forgive everything.
Life and landscape,
language and lament,
is there anything
we don’t inherit?
Listen—
what is Sibelius’ Andante Festivo
if not this sunrise
set to music?
Gratitude,
if not praise for this and every bird
who doesn’t land long enough
for us to name it?
Daniel Skach-Mills has been published in Sufi, Sojourners, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has received finalist awards from the 21st Annual Writer’s Digest Book Awards, Next Generation Indie Book Awards (2013/2015), Oregon Book Awards (2012), and, in 2018, Body, Mind, Spirit Book Awards and The National Indie Excellence Awards.
Hieroglyph
1942
Fifteen minutes between hot crossed ankles and curlers. White
enameled single bed. You unclose the window, reach out
into the thickening sun.
A laborer is passing in the street. Tall blond man stripped
to his undershirt and trousers.
Schoolwork on the secrètaire beside you.
Prehellenic cultures. New binding smell musk-tart like rose
gerania in the windowbox between you and the
sweat descending through those rough alluvial planes;
the armpits, veins in elbows, down
the tendons in the forearms
to the stars.
Espalier
1942
A different film. The kind that plays only
in your head.
He wears riding boots
like an Englishman, grey-green
jodhpurs, and a neolithic
rendering of a hurricane
around his upper arm.
You never write it down. You can’t forget:
Blue eyes hook yours through the half-rolled-down
window glass and the scarf beneath your chin
—the scarf constricts. The thick
of his neck.
He sits
cross legged on a bench
in the roots
of an oleander wired
to a razor-topped
wrought-iron fence.
He puts two nicotine-stained fingers to his lips.
He whistles for you as you pass.
What Exactly Did You See?
1942
Big black car astride the gangplank. Aunt Lena shocks the driver;
her foustani and her long, dark, island legs. She sits down
next to him. I haven’t been in Athens
in a decade.
He knows who her husband is.
Back seat. Frictionless and hot as baths between
the alligator-hide train-cases. You whisper
in your schoolgirl French:
can you fall pregnant just by looking?
Flora flicks mantilla lashes at the bench seat.
Aunt Lena lets her sweat-slick neck lift when she
laughs. You know she wants to ask but
Flora says: It depends. What
exactly did you see?
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.
Floating Free
Letting go of that which binds,
floating free . . . floating free . . .
Relaxing heart and mind,
Aah . . . the soul can just be.
Spaciousness arises
with a choice contained therein:
When a new mind state surprises
I can witness or dive in.
Ram Dass said crossing over
is like taking off tight shoes,
May I learn before I’m clover
letting go is not to lose.
Less is more and we are so
much bigger than we think,
Could it be surrender
is the final missing link?
Maybe we can get a taste
of touching the blue sky
by feeling into what it takes
to "die before you die."
And so brave soldiers hear the call:
unlace those worn out boots,
Risk it all and let them fall,
May we reap new fruits.
Grand Opening
People say there's no glory
unless you can always save face.
Spirit tells another story
of opening to Love and Grace.
I’d fly on an angel’s wing
to launch your Grand Opening.
To free your spirit to sing
I’d do anything.
Breakfast in bed I'd bring,
pancakes and everything,
read you the Tao Te Ching
and then some Zen, then
after some tea a page
of Rumi or psalms of praise.
We'd sing "Amazing Grace" for days,
your heart ablaze.
There are so many ways
to turn toward the One and gaze.
To put that Light on your face,
I'd go anyplace.
Love is the Way
The sages say that love's the way,
including the forgiving of what makes us stray.
So much to feel to keep it real,
Being with “what is” seems to be the deal.
So much to see to be more free
in this wondrous journey from me to we.
I pray to feel the grace to kneel
and touch with love what needs to heal.
So day by day and come what may,
forgive and love, this seems the way.
If you agree please join with me,
with Love and Grace our company.
Lynn Tanny, age seventy, lives in a Florida nursing home and is 100% bed bound. Formerly a systems analyst for thirty-five years, she is determined to not only survive the nursing home experience, but to thrive, as she studies homeopathy and spirituality and creates poetry, essays, and digital art.
How to End the World
Hephaestus
Can you face this
Heat, one more day?
Can you keep hammering
Sparks across the night?
Your palace lit like a lantern
Above the clouds, floating
On the promise of creation,
Of expansion through fire,
Humbly I ask you to breathe
What you create in full, and try
To imagine what influence
You wield over our world now.
We worship you. We build
As if we had your power.
We create as if everything
Were permanent. And yet
Nothing quite is. Nothing
Quite lives beyond age;
Could you build us
A world in which
Waste is not
The deciding
Principle?
And so of course what we think we want
Is not what we want.
Could you build us a palace of light
Quite like yours? We could live
In limitlessness and suffer only
The boredom that divinity affords.
If your kindness were to grant us this,
We would burn our entire world to get it.
We will burn our entire world to get it.
We promise.
The Removal
From roses wilting
Comes a shortage of red.
A wet binding, the clouds
To the droplets. Everything
Falls. Becomes dry land.
The sun removes and instills.
The land cooperates. And when
It doesn’t, there are, now, many roads.
Submittable
Stephen King stuck his letter rejections on a nail
A million writers left unread, the fire of a thousand suns
Walt Whitman self-published so that his poetic style could flow through the rest of American
literature. Free verse
Attempt to produce work that fits the sharpened blades, slice yourself into pieces of art that don't look like you, & by the end, you can barely look yourself in the mirror; you can barely stomach the thought of what it means to be original, what it means to be new, you can't even handle the simple task of writing like you
Note: The poems "How to End the World" and "The Removal" originally appear in Sheffield's chapbook Where God Has Gone (Voice Lux Press) and are reprinted here by permission of the author.
Tommy Sheffield is a disabled, neurodivergent writer who lives in Washington, DC, where he teaches high school English in Southeast DC. His poems, stories, and essays have been published in ucity review, Adelaide, Sanitarium, and a number of other magazines. His chapbooks From Whom We Trace the Bones, Ashore, Where God Has Gone, and These Things Are Often Sealed Within were published by Voice Lux Press in March 2022. He has served as the Poetry Editor for Stillhouse Press for a number of years, editing and publishing five critically acclaimed poetry books, and helping to oversee new projects. He is a co-founder of Shiversong LLC alongside Megan Merchant.
A Spell for Everyday Magic
I had never seen a lightning bug before until moving to the Jalisco highlands nor seen, as we say
here, the rain-of-stars in the chill winter air—meteors crossing space and wild, so short in glory
but even in death more beautiful than expected, feeling lucky that we even crossed paths. Even as
I was still reeling from the one-two punch of a friend’s betrayal-lies, complicated by my neighbour
leaving the horse to die in my backyard, it was in the black of August’s new moon I was surprised
by hundreds of fireflies, where one is rare let alone endless green flecks twinkling like a Christmas
tree across the back field—a defib to my body electrifying through my veins this everyday magic
to these grace-starved days, and I wonder how long before I actually remember that serving of
goodness in all sorts of flavours, probably like when I asked the dance teacher how long before
my legs and arms could coordinate and she said, Yes. Years. There are flower petals scattered next
to my coffee cup; they look like long pink feathers, as if an angel wing moulted here on the table—
always this scattering and also, the drawing in, and really just paying attention, so I watch the orb
spider, apparently floating in the blue sky in its invisible web strung between the shed and the
tree—invisible webs embracing us all. What about if I just let it all go softly—my shelf is full of
magic potions and syringes that sometimes brings a goat back to life, sometimes no matter what I
try, I get a different answer. I’m not left behind, my journey, like everyone’s, was always narrow
and mostly uphill. See ourselves reflected in the spider lurching on her prey, all of us made of the
same sunshine, the same fingers weaving this intricate design, the same creative juices that put
words to paper and paint to canvas which also knit webs and clouds with the wind, the same need
to feed, breathe, breed. I wonder if the spider hears the birds like I do or if she just feels the trilling
vibrations through her tastebuds, the enchantment they weave in their song is how she finds the
design for her web, the song in long sticky lines between singer and listener, all enmeshed until
high above, the owl glides, above bird singing webs to where the notes are longer and wilder and
looser, the sheen of a new leaf is god’s mirror—seeing, breathing, and touching the branches.
Heretic
An altar of stone,
a crinkled leaf and flower petals.
Dusk. Heretic, break bread,
body, spill a cup of water,
listen to the chorus of birds,
the stillness. Heretic, watch
the swallows dipping
for a drink rushing over the pond
to cricket accompaniment—
they aren’t meant to be contained;
see the whole, the loamy soil,
the lotus rising from the mud
in the dark, holy
gratitude, a divine wine song
touching tongue, touching earth. Heretic,
when the shoe doesn’t fit anymore
fold it up gently, thankfully into its box,
stretch your arms to the sky;
these body-clothes can hardly
contain the stars that scatter
at every footstep: knower,
knower of nothing, seeking,
feet on the path. Heretic, welcome
to the cold and bright edge
of the inside. A place as ancient
as ritual, as song, as wisdom.
Life rising, an ever-expanding
universe, fearless. Prophet,
wonder will get you everywhere.
Terce
Trickling truths
finally Molotov-cocktailed
into what had been only
performance. Endings,
which after all,
are beginnings. Echo.
Beginnings are picking up
the pieces of train wreck
with just tweezers and tape,
spotting buttercups and morning glories
sprouting through the wreckage.
Rebuilding was that picnic
in the desert, with icy cold
watermelon in prickly heat;
or tilling the dust
bowl with toothpicks,
or a few spiny huizaches
frozen into popsicles,
endings and reorganizing
never quite what was hoped for—
rainfalls on dust, and yet,
perhaps better.
Behold, bird songs
like water in a brook,
and there I was
hoe in weathered hand,
step by step,
seed bag slung
over my shoulder.
Sext
The day, a perfect mix
of songbird and ruminant
stomachs digesting,
enthusiastic puttering
of dog tails against my legs,
and the sky free of cloud clutter.
I guess what
I had wished for
was all coming true—
which isn’t the gift
it first seems to be—
watching each event collecting:
the sunsets and desert stillness,
observing the sheep, the horses,
eat their grain, the chewing,
a flick of an ear,
the swish of a tail.
Dry and hot
and this unknown path,
the sheep’s contentment
becomes mine.
Lisa López Smith is a shepherd and mother making her home in central Mexico. Her poems and essays have been published in over fifty literary journals and nominated for the Pushcart prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. Her first chapbook was published by Grayson Books, and she has a collection forthcoming from Nightwood Editions.
Unveiled
On the sculpture Veiled Christ by Giuseppe Sanmartino, 1753
His veil shows
Mary’s face
Copied at rest
Though not sheer peace.
See His throbbing forehead vein?
His veil shows
A body flayed
Bones and wounds
Blatant through gauze.
But would you call Him wasted?
His veil shows
His maker’s grace
Flowering Him open
Stone fed by misted hands.
Is that artist only Giuseppe?
His veil shows
What impatient shroud
Leaps onto all dead loves
Ours for life then cold estranged.
Do you await them in three days?
His veil shows
My blur of faith
Never carved in marble
Cobweb flown from barren nave.
How will it carry me past my grave?
Giuseppe Sanmartino, Veiled Christ, 1753.
Unbrided
On the painting “The Convent Boat” by Arthur Hughes, 1874
The boat eases into a mirror river,
dusk soft as peach velvet,
a last caress on pretty cloud faces
lit resolved, like the sun,
on absence.
A novice draped with white lace
is rowed away from her family
toward an ivy-cloaked convent
pressing close,
where she’ll be shorn, veiled in black,
wedded to an invisible groom
herding brides.
Critics call this painting serene,
a model of pre-Raphaelites.
I can’t miss its beauty at first sight,
but blink, linger,
find some gloom’s added,
cataracts aged
post Raphael and Hughes.
Ghosts invade the banks, the water,
the camouflaged cloister.
Nuns who schooled me
and failed.
Many I dreaded, some, loved.
The best, Sister Consolata
in old-fashioned habit
after all others abandoned it,
poured comfort beyond her name,
which I absorbed, greedy, grateful.
Though I couldn’t quite
bloom faith.
Not her lilied certainty that God provides
even in droughted earth.
Not with my rooted doubts,
hatred of obedience and poverty
harnessed on virtue that left her—
must have left her—
ill-paid and unfree,
despite her always
seeming happy.
Not when Audrey Hepburn
in The Nun’s Story
had me yearning for Peter Finch
to turn Sister Luke back to Gabrielle,
engulf her in his arms,
tear off that veil,
let her hair grow
along with a passion play
that didn’t lead to crucifixion,
but a wholly human husband,
profane, unshared.
My fault, my fault, my most grievous fault—
faults, plural to infinity—include such heresy:
craving less than God and more;
meeting angels I cherished,
but couldn’t match and never wished to;
rejecting the Church bred in my bones
weak enough to break easily,
yet still fearing its doom;
pitying centuries of deluded brides
as I ash, loner than they,
dimmer than shadows cast
from convent and canvas,
dead movies,
one
emptied
tomb
maybe.
Arthur Hughes, "The Convent Boat," oil on canvas, circa 1874.
Toni Juliette Leonetti lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has written poetry, short stories, plays, and a novel. Her work appears or is forthcoming in places including Okay Donkey, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Elegant Literature, and Literally Stories.
i know i’ve met you:
at least once in a family tree:
grandfathers have climbed too high
stolen a ride on clouds
become lost.
not one exists—
the heads of grandmothers
float, carrying their bodies
like balloons & string
but they've burst—
both become fragments,
both lose their names,
fallen in some ocean
pulled under the current.
●●●●●
i loved you until you died—
now i write about it.
thank you for leaving behind
a poem.
your last kiss a pomegranate:
dropping seeds into my mouth—
i will plant them. i dig into a body
to make a new body. the soil
between my nails. i plant them—
each into their own pot.
a piece of you spread throughout
the house.
john compton (b. 1987) is a gay poet who lives in kentucky with his husband josh and their dogs, cats and mice. his latest full length book is "my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store" published with Flowersong Press (dec 2024); his latest chapbook is "melancholy arcadia" published with Harbor Editions (april 2024). you can find his books, some poems and other things here: https://linktr.ee/poetjohncompton.
Zophar’s Wizdom
In the land of Uz, where Job lived large and free,
He thrived in wealth, with boundless integrity.
But Satan, with a wink, made a simple bet:
“Let’s test this faith,” and on Job, woes were set.
His riches vanished, his health turned dire,
Yet it wasn’t hate, just fate’s cruel fire.
His friends soon gathered, opinions galore,
To explain why Job’s life had turned so sore.
First came Zophar, speaking with a frown,
"Clearly, Job, you’ve let God down.
Your punishment’s light for sins so grim—
You must’ve angered Him on some whim!"
But Job, though covered in sores and dust,
Held firm, his faith refusing to combust.
“No secret sins here,” he quietly spoke,
His friends' sharp words were more like a joke.
Their wisdom was brittle, their comfort thin,
Like explaining a storm with a "You must’ve sinned!"
Job listened with patience, though tempted to scoff—
Their "helpful" advice was just wildly off.
Then from a whirlwind, God made His debut,
With thunderous words that cut right through.
He scolded the friends for their twisted chat,
And turned to Job: “Who are they to judge that?”
He raised Job high, from his lowest of lows,
Restored his fortunes, and silenced the foes.
For through every trial, Job’s faith held fast,
And in the end, he was blessed at last.
Murray Eiland is a poet and an archaeologist specializing in the Eastern Mediterranean. He is particularly interested in how different societies have interacted over time.
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