By JAN BALL

Embarrassed when she sees
her eight-year-old bend under the pew in front of
them to snatch the flats
of the kneeling lady who
must have slipped them off
as the church became
over-heated from the bodies
of hundreds of parishioners
in winter coats, Carol grabs
his pink ear and twists it
while the choir sings Sanctus,
Sanctus, just before the solemn
moment when Father O’Malley
consecrates the host and raises
it above his head for all
the congregation to adore.

When the last bell tinkles
to announce the arrival
of the Lord, Brian shouts out,
“Mom, don’t twist my ear.”

The church is silent.

By ALEXANDER JONES

… that Mars is red from the blood spilled by that ancient god of war,
Venus is our sister planet, warm and soft and blue
and that the sun speeds around the earth.
They said God in heaven judges us, giving and taking away according to his mysterious plan.
Countless Galileos have been silenced for saying different.
But Mars is an empty wasteland,
Venus is the most hellish place in the solar system,
and the earth circles the sun.
But they also say that life is good.
Even people who dare disagree with them
should agree with that.

By Sandra Rokoff-Lizut

 
 
Sandra Rokoff-Lizut is a retired educator, and a children’s book author, printmaker and poet. Her work has appeared in various publications including Illya’s Honey, The Bicycle Review, Wilderness House Review and others.

By Adam Fleming

If you could take a whole rainbow
And stuff it back through
The prism from which it came, to the other side
I guess you’d manufacture light.

If you could take a free man
And shove him back
Through the prison from which he came, to the other side
I guess you’d manufacture innocence.

Good luck with that.

Adam Fleming is a novelist and life coach hailing from Goshen, Indiana. Married with four kids, he is a writer, speaker and professional executive coach. Adam is a world traveler and has spent significant amounts of time in Zaire/DRC, France, Ivory Coast, and a dozen or more other countries.

By Eliza Callard

The sand flows in a fine grit
wind across my feet and ankles,
like watching the dry ice that my father
brought home — packed
around the ice cream now
in the freezer — escaping
in a Santa’s beard, flat and white, over
the table edge.

Eliza Callard is a native Philadelphian, and lives there with her family. She says forty years of managing — and occasionally mismanaging — her cystic fibrosis has given her perspective on loss and endurance. A product of Skidmore College, she enjoys family time, hiking and camping, and playing the piano.