Poetry

Alfonso Sasieta 3-01-2022
Illustration of a hand holding a needle above Psalm 46; in an inset, a line of sheet music is threaded through the eye of the needle

Illustration by Aldo Jarillo

My stanzas do not resemble marimbas
after all. These lines are the warmed
rank of organ pipes, droning & melting
their millennia into my shoulders.

Yes, yes, my God is heavyset & broad
& not a week of childhood passes
without Bach or Luther or a collect
that echoes the grungy psalmist

Kathleen Hellen 1-31-2022
Illustration of a single, large rose caught in a storm in a wheat field

Illustration by Ric Carrasquillo

the vast

              and all its definitions had dumbfounded. I bit the hand
that fed imagination, took

for pestilence, the flies. For end-of-world, the gully washers.
I shook in handfuls
petals fetched from

                                                     doubt

Rashaad Thomas 12-29-2021
Illustration of two Black boys wearing stars and stripes in front of a slave sale newspaper ad

Indefatigable, by Dave McClinton

The permanent shiny smudge replaced his bronze face,
his features fade in rusted pictures

I play with pigeon feathers picked from pages
on pulpit splinters that bear his cross of puzzled words.

Warriors unite rage, usher 10% offerings
to dear Black children morning, school wombs empty

Sheets untie laid to rest over waving hands
and church pews ready to fly away with sermons

Julie L. Moore 11-17-2021
An aerial view of two rivers flowing around a green area of land

The Tigris and Euphrates, which flow to the west of the estimated location of the biblical Gihon River, wind through the desert.

I am the angel who heard their euphony:
the Hebrew prophet’s words turning to
                                                                                                                             lamb
topaz on Ethiopian tongue, their voices
wedded together, gleaming
                                                                                                                             knife
beneath the desert sun. Imagine it:
you are Qinaqis, born beside
                                                                                                                              ewe
the Gihon River that once flowed from
Eden, marked for exile
                                                                                                                             mute
from family, from choice,
from even the faith
                                                                                                                             sheared
you one day will embrace,
despite your pilgrimage through
                                                                                                                             torment
the wilderness.

D.S. Martin 10-19-2021
Illustration of the silhouette of a bird in the night sky with its wing surrounding the moon

Illustration by Colleen Tighe

Each word I choose
carries a different rucksack load        for each of you
like I’m the fox        slinking along rail lines
        thinking by instinct & appetite        & you’re
        the commuter passing through
like I’m the moon whose same beams call
        to a weeping child        to a prowling owl
        to shivering rodents in the grass

Luke Sawczak 9-23-2021
Image of multicolored ears of corn

Illustration by Tiarra Lucas

I will teach you by the river,
I will name the place to meet,
how quick is the water;
I am the harvest: come gather and eat!

Bill Ayres 7-20-2021
An illustration of sheep in a paradise, overlooking an ocean.

Illustration by Ric Carrasquillo

I’ve told you there are wolves out here.
Don’t you believe me?
You could fall in a hole
too deep to climb out of.
You could slip on wet rocks
and fall into the river and drown.
Good thing I noticed
your pink nose was missing.
Good thing I turn around
to check on what’s behind me.
Remember that leading the flock
I look forward to find tender grass.

A photo collage that includes a portrait of Ruby Sales and Jonathan Daniels.

Illustration by Aaron Marin

Who is scorched worse,
the one who dives to take the bullet,
the one who shoots,
or the woman spared?

Take Ruby Sales, for example—
how she and Jonathan Daniels,
thirsty from heat and the Hayneville jail
stop for a cold soda on their way out of town.

Deputy Tom Coleman is angry, is ready;
he aims his gun pointblank at Ruby.
Daniels sees it coming, pushes Ruby over
throws his body in bullet’s path.

Editor's note: Sales, founder of the SpiritHouse Project, is a nationally recognized human rights activist and public theologian. Coleman was acquitted of the death of Jonathan Daniels by an all-white jury and died in 1997.

Elisabeth Ivey 5-25-2021
A graphic of a women with her eye wide open and shoots of purple light coming from behind her.

Illustration by Islenia Mil

We wander round searching for demons
and making them of each other
when we find none. Out of feigned necessity,
the slightest difference becomes a reason
to tame—to vanquish—to stamp out until
we look up and catch sight of ourselves:

Jeffrey Thomson 4-29-2021
Illustration of a man looking to his side, surrounded by abstract swirls and plants all in an orange hue.

Illustration by Mikita Rasolka

Lorenzo was mortar for the church
he built, gathering wild birds
for the rafters and fruited trees
for their food. He carted stone
and hoisted, he pestled, he block-
and-tackled. Persecuted
by Valerian and about to be
arrested, Lorenzo goat-herded
the church’s wealth, distributed it
to the poor. He paid the unmade
orphans, clothed the lepers
in money. He sold the sacred
vessels, the varied trestles.

An illustration of a gondolier going through a Venetian canal with dolphins jumping out.

Illustration by Alex Green / Folio Art

If we believe nature will mend,
it will replenish what has been taken and,
answering the wild call of urban space,

dolphins will return to Venetian canals,
elephants will drowsy dream in Chinese tea gardens,
humans will shed their fear and guilt to hope and taste

the terror of responsibility
the terroir of ourselves
the terra ignota of a paradise where

Devon Balwit 3-01-2021
Illustration of a woman with a cherry blossom covering her face as she floats down a stream in a canoe.

Illustration by Nicole Xu

Keep your eyes on your work. Looking
at a dogwood does not make you blossom.

Nor can a bridge of sighs span an ocean
of despair. For that, you need oars

and strong arms. Labor as long
as it is still called today. Yes, Faith

could have worn other metaphors,
but instead it rose from the dead

and asked questions: Why are you
crying? Who are you looking for?

Do not fear. Answer. The Risen One
speaks your language.

Benjamin Schmitt 1-27-2021
Broken glass that looks like a spider web.

Alamy

Crossing a river in Africa the spider
shooting her blacksmith’s thread
of melted-down swords and armor
the world’s molten madness bridging
dangling over the water

The creature moves frantically
and to an observer miraculously
like some stressed-out downtown commuter
levitating to work
surely this is a phantasmagorical
outpouring of mighty engineering
Golden Gate sprung from a thimble
that you would never believe
if it hadn’t bored you in second grade
like the kindness of Jesus Christ

Divya Mehrish 1-05-2021
Graphic of an abstract figure of a woman with a staircase leading up to her mind.

Illustration by Ric Carrasquillo

I mispronounce my body as if
the architecture of the spine
were soft, as if this poem could
start here,
in the space between open lips,
even though it resists a title.
To be means to exist
with a name. To be means
to have a body worth defining.

Kemmer Anderson 12-01-2020
An illustration of a man with dark hair and a beard, covering his eyes as a tear falls. In front of him there is a chalice and flowing water.

Illustration by Terran Washington

I rub my hand across the stone font
Where Jon Meacham took on the water
Of baptism and signed on to the cross
In an olive oil signature made for words.

The empty sanctuary now quiet for prayer echoes
With last night’s lecture on the future of democracy.
Light pours through the stained glass window
With a narrative of Saul, struck down blind

Kenneth Steven 10-26-2020
Illustration by Jia Sung

Illustration by Jia Sung

I reckon it was the girl,
not more than fourteen. Those eyes.

Something made him stop his talk,
hoist down the lantern and mutter out with them.

And that was one sour night—
dust and wind, things banging;

Michael Stalcup 9-28-2020

Illustration by Ric Carrasquillo

We shudder at the inhumanity,
the crafted cruelness of that sickening show:
the stripped humiliation, blasphemy
of beaten flesh, death’s agonies stretched slow
by fellow men created in God’s image,
turned terrorists, enslaved to sin’s strange fruit.
How could they mock the marred and lifeless visage
of God’s own child? His axe is at the root!

Elisabeth Ivey 7-21-2020

Illustration by Jia Sung

Call this hair crazy.
but watch as it grows
outside of your gates
and beyond the walls
you’ve made to contain
me. See as it reaches
higher than anything you
ever thought of me,
shedding every lie of
inferiority.

Matthew J. Andrews 6-25-2020

“Tabletop Mountain” 2015 / Laura Wetter / laurawetter.com

The field, still and breathless,
colored in thirsty hues of yellow,
sits beneath hills just as bleak,
the whole land scoured in disinfectant

Jes Simmons 6-01-2020

Illustration by Tim Goffe

The later it gets, the more nothing.
—Woman at the register

Yeah, we’re open ’til midnight,
but few customers come after 9:00.
I like when it’s slow and quiet—
just me and the store lights.
I don’t like the sirens
racing along Main Street.
I always worry it’s my kid hurt
or my best girlfriend with another
black eye or busted rib.
When I’m here by myself, I draw
dress patterns for my daughter.