Creative Writing Commons^™

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

Double Columns Prayer, Ira Lightman

On Earth As It Is

No description available

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.

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.

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.

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

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 …

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.

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?

Three Poems, Victoria Bosch Murray

On Earth As It Is

The doctor asks where it hurts.

With the tip of a borrowed pen you trace the absent rib,

that Biblical scar, tickle the edge

of the raised ridge, a vacant dune between

land and sea just below your left breast—

like asking where pleasure starts,

where whiskey settles, when you first knew

his hand in your heart.

Prayer, Jake Ricafrente

On Earth As It Is

Our state—of books, condition, the body politic—

Is disrepaired, or worse, and wanting light to spill

Past veils, the banks of secrecy (chadors, Swiss laws,

And airy fabrication: all the latent bric-

A-brac of want), I probe the minor predicated clause,

Some ancient honey fungus, a continental shelf

For aims, designs. The world is tired of itself.

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.