Poetry

Jacob Bathanti 1-01-2009

Who am I to cast light upon the human soul?
Sitting down to write peace-verses for mercenary gain,
Hunting for poems and hoping against hope that I need not

Imperfection is the place where the spirit enters,
the small hole in your shirt, the loosening threads
of carpet, the ache in your soul for forgiveness.

Murray Bodo 11-01-2008

She consoles me as I meditate
before Mass—Julian of Norwich,
that is, who says, “We are clothed,
wrapped in the goodness of God.”

And she consoles me after Mass
when I drive home to the friary and
pass two prostitutes who are sitting
on folding chairs next to the curb
helping each other with makeup.

Chandy C. John 9-01-2008

Praise God for all things green

Lime jello, blades of grass, emeralds

Chameleons, the neon river frog

Heavy papayas begging to be picked

Carol Hamilton 8-01-2008

I expect the whitest dove,

purity as the Spirit breaks apart

firm blue of our ceilinged sky,

a tapered shape, an elegance.

But Picasso was right.

Louis Templeman 7-01-2008


She spoke softly, calmly recounting
her pain through a furnace of litanies
that helped her hold on to the unbelief

Kevin Hadduck 6-01-2008
I have seen that I must
Confess to ignorance

I do not know you, although
I have loved you twenty years

The lifting of your lashes
Ed Madden 4-01-2008
beginning with four lines from Taha Muhammad Ali
Carol Tyx 3-01-2008

Like the iris
in the side yard,
I have stopped blooming.
Dig me up, O Spirit,
and split me; where I have grown
calloused, break me open;
Kathleen Hirsch 2-01-2008


I cannot tell you why
I taste death;
the cupboards

are reasonably
arranged,
the windows clean as rain.

The bough we clasped
while climbing towards
phantasmal blue
has broken—

we lie on concrete,
begging with a
shattered golden bowl.
Daniel Skach-Mills 12-01-2007

My breath pluming white into December
could, to God, be incense rising out
of the puffing thurible of my body.
Up here, it’s impossible to tell for the fog

The eightieth soldier was blown up in Salahuddin Province.

From far-out depths they come,
swell swelling swell,
'til cresting they salute the sky
and tumble towards sand that waits immemorially
to receive them.

Summer u

Rose Marie Berger 7-01-2007

The narcotraficante commanded me
in gestures, take off your blouse.
Then he jerked it, scattering buttons—
smooth and pink—along the ground.

<
Murray Bodo 6-01-2007
As if it matters
    noticing the migrant workers—
    two to a wheelbarrow of concrete—
    mending the walls of the rich
    that exclude them
As if religion
Clifford Rivera 4-01-2007

"The wind blows wherever it pleases." Word?
The scene is played out. We need some Eden!
Were Abba the DJ, He'd spin hymns
To slay.

This afternoon, sir
we nailed God down
He's at the back of the property

He's going nowhere, sir
His feet are stuck
to a block of wood

It's comical, sir

Deb Baker 2-01-2007

I went there once,
to the place you’re imagining.
It was purple, with wild geraniums
under green-bright stars.

All the constellations spelled
words, like &

Michael Borich 1-01-2007

After the olive groves at Samothrace and fog
which billowed up from a green sea,
the rocky sheep path and bleating ewes,
wind and sun—there w