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Meditation 3 No. 38, Shane Anderson
Meditation 3 No. 38, Shane Anderson
On Earth As It Is
Eel, harpoon curries, antlered in darkness to in on foreskin ornately flaking, foreskin tenderly peppered, against cap-a-pie mirrored swords also, ornately left oh dear out, inkhorn fish left in, coat hangers could coagulate fat could deflower inside warmth more flower; eels antlered in darkness galore when ornately could coagulate fiddlesticks in oily and deer lick could flower forever; this beyond caked ornately flaking in tenderly stacking, antlered in sparkling so ornately or harpoons if itching around also bladders more unless stewed eels sharpen, eels ornately even between cap-a-pie sharpened, harpoons not in below could mirror fat flake, blankets could but …
Ok The Damned, Gabriel Blackwell
Two Poems, James Bishop
Two Poems, James Bishop
On Earth As It Is
God,
Who created the dimpled planets,
who created my own cracked ass,
who numbers the hairs on my head,
who watched the liquid earth pass
below Port-au-Prince,
who sat drumming to the hum of the cherubim
while a city collapsed.
Insurance Report: Investigating Acts Of God, Lisa Grunberger
Insurance Report: Investigating Acts Of God, Lisa Grunberger
On Earth As It Is
In the brick building on South and 9th
the woman sat and smoked a cigarette by the window
windows her landlord lied about
because the hot air seeped in in the summer
stalks her that’s the word she used
and in the winter the goddamned cold comes in
the way her second husband used to with his muddy shoes.
A Prayer For Babe, Aaron Burch
A Prayer For Babe, Aaron Burch
On Earth As It Is
My memory had always been fuzzy. Dull. Furry? For a long time – years; miles, maybe – I knew not what to do with it, how to manage. I tried cleaning it, petting it, running my fingers through the fur. Attempts at acceptance, at making peace with. Tried squinting my eyes, tried glasses, used mirrors.
Yes, Father, David Brennan
Yes, Father, David Brennan
On Earth As It Is
A Catholic Priest, my father, walks the beach in Tampa, 1968. The sun halfway through setting. Facing the water, hands in the pockets of his plaid shorts, he thinks he hears, impossibly blowing in off the empty rippling expanse, a woman singing:
“A woman’s voice. It is not the voice of God, at least not the voice that I have been taught to listen for. Her song is the very essence of what we have been schooled in defining as temptation: sensual, sugary, mournful. A woman walking the waves of the sea; I wonder where she is—she who believes …
As No One Lay Trying To Die, James Greer
As No One Lay Trying To Die, James Greer
On Earth As It Is
These will prep the churchy masses and the desperate tryst. I sold the rest stop and I told the best stop and I stop and stop. These our American rhythms. These our God bless you platitudes and God bless you. Please.
Hosanna, Rick Hale
Hosanna, Rick Hale
On Earth As It Is
Los Angeles, Michelangelo, Jude, peopling the lost souls, tell me now:
Do you remember this eye, this hand, these ears, this
mouth? May I break my solemn invocation with a sneeze?
Forgive me. No bless yous –
my sinuses are cork-tight. No soul will leak tonight. I have Benadryl, Claritin,
Zyrtec. The clerics. They'll not deliver me unto
any Egyptian waters; I haven't yet written my holy litany,
my radiant magnum dopus.
Guru, Amy Minton
Guru, Amy Minton
On Earth As It Is
It has come to my attention through the wisdom of Guru Jaua Opi that directly behind my navel exists a terrifying labyrinth of decaying gas pipes, one of which is leaking a weak blue flame.
The Guru says, This is your life force. Or I think he said that. His accent is very heavy and the screeching war planes overhead mute all sound for a minute and a half, but he keeps talking. It holds the fire, I think he says. He pounds his own navel. What does your flame look like?
You're Asleep, Stephen Mead
You're Asleep, Stephen Mead
On Earth As It Is
I think
On automatic pilot
In a commuter plane.
Flying at night is the most peaceful thing.
These lights are our own Tivoli,
A cathedral of sky. Going so deep
While floating as if through glass
As it forms, is to apprehend
How significant smallness can be,
Meaning us in this vast cavern,
Meaning those spires,
Those good window faces—Look—down there in the dark.
Two Poems, Anthony A. Lee
Two Poems, Anthony A. Lee
On Earth As It Is
The Sermon
(there were two of them, interrupted by a moment of contemplation)
was on the impossibility
of imagining death or anything
after that—only
hotel rooms and penthouse windows,
shoes empty on the floor,
the private pool below the balcony
blue in its shininess,
the lapping of the ocean tide
on the rocky shoreline, its pleasant whisper—
which obviously is not enough.
Two, Megan Mcshea
Two, Megan Mcshea
On Earth As It Is
Precisely this fogged window, which prevails in the cold, wet night, blinks out onto an uninhabited land of Other People?s houses and in sight of all that forgotten real estate, along with all the amiable conversations on phones across America and evenings shared in movie houses, around the corner from a recent homicide, down the block from wild lots and weeds, great unknowns, colossal, all evolving along with Darwin and his species. One?s life, assumed to be finite, ticking away. Night covers things up but you can still hear the rain.
Lighter Than Air, Nikki Magennis
Lighter Than Air, Nikki Magennis
On Earth As It Is
On April the 20th, 2008, Padre Adelir Antonio de Carli took off from the town of Paranagua in a chair attached to a thousand helium balloons. The lower half of his body was found in the Atlantic two months later.
Poems, Alicia Jo Rabins
Poems, Alicia Jo Rabins
On Earth As It Is
DEAR LORD
I’m embarrassed by my love for You
and by the ugly cries
that escape me at night Worry birds
circling overhead, looking for You.
Summer's almost over, but
the tree’s single bud
has not opened.
Serve And Volley, Micah Riecker
Serve And Volley, Micah Riecker
On Earth As It Is
It’s Sunday and You’re inundated but I’m not asking for anything except a few moments of your time. Your eyes, Lord, and an ear, if I may.
After Eden, Tracey S. Rosenberg
After Eden, Tracey S. Rosenberg
On Earth As It Is
Why are you laughing as you send me away? I'm not done.
There are fresh grasses I want to roll in,
buzzing fizzing fairies to chase like a spring kitten
(I promise to set them free, every last one).
When you let me come in, there was no one else you wanted.
The Prayers Of Saint John Of The Cross, Adrian Sobol
The Prayers Of Saint John Of The Cross, Adrian Sobol
On Earth As It Is
Saint John of the Cross went to God to weep. His hands, he noticed, had aged. God told John, Age is but a signpost, a ticket on the light rail to the Kingdom of Me. It was easy for God to say, the Ageless, the Endless, the Unbound. John went to Saint Teresa for her succor and her wine, which she fermented from the blackberries growing in her garden. Soon, they were drunk and haughty. He sang a blues tune and Teresa accompanied. They recounted stories of Christmases together, of their fathers, who would argue incessantly. Fistfights were a …
December 17, 1977, Mattox Roesch
December 17, 1977, Mattox Roesch
On Earth As It Is
Lord, the storm woke me tonight, at least, that’s what I remember.
Two Poems, Danniel Schoonebeek
Two Poems, Danniel Schoonebeek
On Earth As It Is
The word for what you want from me is novena,which means
nine days I will shave your beard and tell you: what falls
wants to rest with what falls, which is why your beard
wants to rest with the leaves in the trash bag, and why
when the leaves fall, what you want is to rest with me.
Dear God, Barbara Shoup
Dear God, Barbara Shoup
On Earth As It Is
Dear God,
Okay, first, full disclosure: I don’t believe You are a You.
Of course, if I’m wrong and You are a You, You already know this—and everything else, for that matter. And if You really are the all powerful You so many people imagine, the one with long white hair sitting on a throne in heaven (wherever that is), maybe You’ve got Your finger raised right now, pondering whether to unleash that lightning bolt and smite me for being insubordinate.
Two Poems, Nancy Scott
Two Poems, Nancy Scott
On Earth As It Is
The glue holding the kitchen chair legs
is gone; dried in some season
I didn't see coming or going
and the windows need washing again.
Practice, Ray Vukcevich
Practice, Ray Vukcevich
On Earth As It Is
Meditation is hard. You try, you fail. There is that straight spine business, and the folding of the legs, and the breathing -- in and out, in and out, and the way words just keep poking their noses into your mental tent, dragging your attention away from the movement of air through one nostril or the other, sometimes both, all the aches and pains to ignore or embrace. Yes, it's a struggle, but the rewards are great -- the control of time itself, the wonderful realization that all the moments of your existence don't necessarily occur in any particular order. …
Benision Before Your Venison, My Dear, Gordon Mcdermott
Benision Before Your Venison, My Dear, Gordon Mcdermott
On Earth As It Is
Quello infinito e ineffabil bene
What continues from that leastless
yeasty body, that sunny-
science in the bleb of the ‘that’,
no, —the that—
which is directed, like light, to a loved body
inductivly, indelably, and reductivly
rendered to be that
which had once meant who
as in ‘Our Father which
art in Heaven’
—which body was bread
Double Columns Prayer, Ira Lightman
For You, Adam Jordan
For You, Adam Jordan
On Earth As It Is
I checked the bush. I tried the sky, the crickets' legs, soccer fields, and apples' cores. I stoodunder thunderclouds, kitchen counters, catechism teachers inside superstores. I studied Crusoe's isolation after Harold and the Purple Crayon.
Two Poems, Margaret Pritchard Houston
Two Poems, Margaret Pritchard Houston
On Earth As It Is
I wonder sometimes
why
in that flashing instant
I agreed to this.
To the straining of ligaments
pressed
by my created creator
widening, in my blood-red womb.
Creation, Wendy Galgan
Creation, Wendy Galgan
On Earth As It Is
There are no stars visible from here.
Just crumbling cornices and pointed brickwork,
and the gray parchment of the midnight sky.
Too much light escapes this city,
too many streetlamps and turn signals,
too many bulbs left burning
to scatter their illumination through steel and glass
and throw a corona between the sky and us.
2 Poems, Marion Deutsche Cohen
2 Poems, Marion Deutsche Cohen
On Earth As It Is
"“Time should be more elastic”
more topological.
Space too.
Pain, while necessary to alert and keep us alive
shouldn't hurt so much.
God In Ocean City, New Jersey, Christine Fadden
God In Ocean City, New Jersey, Christine Fadden
On Earth As It Is
Sometimes, God, summer weighs on me like wet ropes. My lungs seize trying to have the most fun in the world before school starts. September is Hell and we all die and go there after Labor Day. Yesterday, I saw my English teacher stuffing her bright red face with pink cotton candy. She is supposed to be reading books all summer, not coming here—wearing her hair down and eating the same things I do. I felt like the boardwalk was going to explode one splinter at a time under my feet, even though yesterday was the kind of day my …
The Santa Who Laughs, Chantel Tattoli
The Santa Who Laughs, Chantel Tattoli
On Earth As It Is
There are faces of toast bearing your visage on Ebay. MARY IS MY HOMEGIRL tee shirts. A flash drive in your image Mary marketed for its capacity to keep 512 MB of data en womb: “Oh Maria, keep my data safe” engraved on your halo and your LED heart red-blinking while data transfers over. But you are too much a saint to mind it. Or maybe you’ve learned to take cruel jokes. That?