New Poems from Our Call for Submissions • Spring 2026

The loch is made and remade
every day—every moment, filling
and draining—from forty rivers.  

Each deposits untold amounts of peat—
kin to coal; kin to light and heat.  
But in the Loch there abides, as far

as we can see, only cold and darkness.  
Not a light shines under the surface 
but it gets trapped like a weary firefly 

in a dirty mason jar.  Its depths we know 
and name in meters and feet, as if 
meters and feet told us much more 

about the Loch and its secrets 
than they do about God
who reserves to Himself such immensity

of mystery we don’t recognize
that we daily walk and swim and stoop
through it all.  We putz about

on the surface or get lost under the waves.
For reasons of economics, the locals
each profess some kind of faith

in a creature that has had many sightings
and has yet no body—a well-known name
and yet no voice or sound; no roar

or murmur of breath.  Only silence.
Glitches and ghosts wink in and out
of the sonar.  But Mike, who calls

everyone who boards his boat my friend,
yet knows something of holiness.
When I ply him on the subject of his own beliefs,

he maintains that something ancient 
and knowing—some might and will dwells
in the depths, casting darker shadow 
within shadow.  But he believes even more
it will be better for us—and better 
for it—that we should believe and yet

never quite find—if finding should mean 
what it usually does for every other animal:
the zoo, the yoke, or the butcher.  

On a cloudless day like this, to look
on the surface of the lake is to behold
the marriage of pure shadow, pure light.

Blindness above and blindness below.
As once atop Sinai, Moses now finds
a small rowboat and paddles

to the mouth of the River Ness 
where he waits, wrestling with the current
rocking in the howl of the wind.

Woe to this heart
and to this half smile.
Woe to the inch 
and to the mile.

Woe to these eyes
that close in rest
and cannot scan the dark
to hold you to my chest.

Woe overcome the minute
and confound the hour;
the seconds pecking my wrist
as with me they devour.

Woe to the cup and quart,
the watt and calorie,
to the thermostat 
announcing each degree

of my pathetic comfort.
Woe to the one percent;
to the bespoke and tailor-made—
of all that vanity might invent.

Woe to these trifles that
I have named my pleasure;
Tip the waiter, pay in cash
take your measure

of life’s so-called abundance.  
But for the gift unsought—
the surprise that stills the pulse
for so long beyond thought…

please believe we chose
two names we’d come to treasure
when we were dreaming
and at our leisure.

In a few weeks we’d
have known which one was yours,
playing with the nicknames,
the sequence and the contours

of family history to invoke.
What were my plans?
Where are you now, dear,
my hand empty of your hand, 

dear…
dear…

Father, now in heaven, 
I want to thank you for the thing 
you gave me last, after days both hard and slow.
You were bed-ridden. I was spoon-feeding 
you liquids, your teeth abandoned in 
some fizzled-out stuff, on the sink, in a cup.
I said something odd. And you 
belly-laughed at breakfast.

Dear old man,.
it came up, and I was utterly 
drenched in it—the laugh, not your drink.
I promise, it eased my mind and tickled me so,
that even now I (almost) want to know 
how it feels to be so dispossessed 
of every yellowed, deep-rooted, sharp-pointed 
bit. At the extreme other end of bites 
and bitterness.

What do you think? —we used to talk 
of such things—I wonder, what if
this world went toothless, just for a day? 
We’d all feel helpless and foolish—but what if 
we found it…weirdly…freeing? 
In rooms of mirrors, where
we’d have to make peace 
with the images we see. Shy at first, 
our smiles all gums, like babies.

I think of it whenever the weariness 
sets in: that toothless, infectious 
whatever-the-heck-it-is you 
once blessed me with.

Dear Shekhina,

I don’t mean to complain.
I, too, am a mother. 
I, too, have borne 
an underdeveloped daughter, in plain 
need of — shall we say? — 
a rescuing isolation. And what 
did she know of my pain? My longing?
Only her own bewildering 
deprivation — the cloying touch 
of latex gloves — cold sustenance, 
machine-pumped, force-fed 
through silicone nipples.
 
On the third day, I raised her. 
Unbuttoned my shirt, 
pressed her gently to my breast — my heart 
startled awake — her head turning, 
startled as I, to find me. 
I will not — no — forget
her searching eyes, her long 
penetrating stare — Oh where 
have you been? I’ve been so alone — 
her confusion clearing, the sudden 
nuzzling in, the slow-weakening 
suck until she slept, 
exhausted.

Shekhinah Presence of God,
when will you lift me? Close glass 
walls are ever before, behind me. 
I have no strength to turn
or reach for you. You, 
my sweet fragrance,
my once-abundant flow. 
I do not know my own 
mother’s tongue. I am too young.
My cry has no words.

What strangeness:
caramel me with cauliflower you—
and ludicrous, 
the way you had to 
look a full fifteen inches below
to meet my eyes,
to ask for a kiss, my first, 
and how, in my giddiness, 
I didn’t see the hysterics 
of the situation or imagine 
what you’d think 
when I didn’t say yes or no
but only
pulled my desk chair 
over the dorm room floor
and stood on it —
my way of showing you
what sixty inches plus 
a little Latina gumption can do, 
when you need to reach lips 
at six foot two.
You split a smile
all across your chiseled 
Germanic chin. It’s hard 
to laugh and kiss 
at the same time —
but we did. 

Remain motionless and unite with what you desire and do not approach…Distance is the soul of beauty.
~ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

The sun is out and so, despite
the algae blooming in the water, are
the bodies, in their yearly
Faustian pact with the sun.

What serpentine lies he whispers
as his rays dance on waves and glisten:
eternal youth, eternally elastic skin;
bikini lines that shed private hair

and cellulite; bellies that bounce back
from babies like you’re still twenty;
skin that tans without damage.
And it asks nothing in return.

Meanwhile, I teach my children:
water safety, sun safety, to stay
between the flags, to keep away
from rips, to keep a grown-up in sight,

how to judge if the water is safe
for putting your head, as my eldest
delights to do, beneath the waves. 
How to judge a rip. To judge 

your own heart before the hearts
and swimwear of others. How to look
at bodies without owning or wanting
to own, to ignore the serpent's 

other whisper: that all these 
could be yours. To see instead
the maker’s giddy delight mirrored 
in every jubilant leap from earth 

into salt, to know the gravity 
of flesh yet reach again, again for Eden’s 
shameless heights, soaring
in the neap-tide of light.

In the first minute of our first class 
on modern world history, my aging 
professor, Richard Newhall, raised 
his left fist inside that black leather 
glove and screamed, “Religion is madness.” 

We imagined our own missing fingers.
He hurled us rushing the wire 
against murmuring machine guns
on a muddy field with towering blooms 
from mortars and heavy artillery

before the novice Yanks understood 
what the French, the Brits, the Boche, 
the Russians and a dozen other 
belligerents had learned by heart, 
if that fragile organ survived.

I’m old myself. What if our aging 
teacher opened his shell-shocked hand 
from a gory trench to help the German 
sniper with telescopic vision save 
him from the First World War?

He still earned his right to proselytize.
I’ve come to my own faith in a hard way too. 
Blood drips to my desk from the ankle 
wounds in the ceiling. It clots 
on my keyboard. It stains my hands.

The day after Christmas evergreens burned
white flames. Fog set in, thick cream, 
clotting the mountain passes with ghosts.
The Cascades in mourning wore hoar frost. 

In the three hours it took to reach you
lanes vanished, every border dissolved.
I drove the summit blind, reciting each city:
Yakima, Ellensburg, Cle Elum, clicked 
past like beads on a prayer bracelet.

In Seattle, the nurses baked 
your last birthday cake. When we sang 
your eyelids fluttered moths, pale paper
wings skimmed my cheeks. 

The ghost of the father you could have been 
flickered in the corner. I like to imagine
that sober and in your right mind
you might have shaken his hand.

Later in a hillside cemetery, a caretaker, 
metal staff his divining rod, probed 
for uninhabited ground, and wind,
that wailing, forsaken child, plucked our coats, 

worried the trees, unsettled the crows 
who watched from stark branches, smoking, 
gossiping, shrilling each time 
we stumbled under the weight of you.

My first cut splits dappled flesh,
the web of your mouth trembles.
I offer you summer’s slippery crescent moons, 
you gentle them between paper lips,
the juice of your smile running—

Years ago, I peeled a white curl of moon 
from the skin of a tree, layers of birch bark 
unraveled, the wound an open invitation.
How quickly the inside rots 
once the skin is gone.

This final wound, now yours and mine,
 an opening wider than my words can fill, 
when breath whistles lungs, rattles 
the ribcage, beats wings against the glass

Promises long dormant, stir like parting 
scales from a bud that swells to blossom, 	
embryonic leaves beneath, so new
this green has no name. 

Beyond the apricot trees
the overcast seam, holding land to sky,
frays. Light leaks in like water

rushing the orchard, flooding the plank barn,
three pied horses in the field.
Suddenly as birdsong, we recognize

it has always been this way, 
each joining, a basting stitch, 
temporary by design-- 
horizon, shore, boundaries, 
flesh, 

and in that moment, we know, 
what we, who are all exiles, know:
nothing is not enough, 
everything is not enough.

At the field’s edge, the forsythia 
casts down her gold, as Icarus might 
discard his wings.

The word poem originated from the meaning to make or to create. God is the Prime Creator of humanity. He is the Divine Poet; and we are His poems. He designed us to be creators; this means we’re all poets.

A mystery suspended in the air,
the tongue of the poet makes us aware
by inflaming the imagination—
with aesthetics of awe, what could compare?
Birthing the dawn of a revelation,
imaging beauty to a mind that’s bare.

Heaven’s purpose pours through a poet’s pen
taking us to places we’ve never been,
where a magic unveils all mysteries.
A crown of flames perched on a poet’s head;
igniting truths with the words of fairies,
 that shimmers with life to arouse the dead.

A metaphorical voice that’ll affect
and awaken dreams that will interject
words from the lips of the Poet Maker,
giving life to unite spirit and flesh.
Humanity breathed by the Creator,
living poems, God’s artistry expressed.

To see people as walking trees
is to see more clearly than most.
Oh, to be aware that my flesh
is but soil fleetingly transformed,
and that my blood is water borrowed
from the rivers and the seas.
Oh, that I may be as faithful as a tree,
as holy as a rock,
as selfless as a flower.
I gladly return the life
you have given me, Mother Earth…
that life may carry on,
that others may live,
that we may be reunited.
And when all memory of me has passed away,
still I will know,
still I will know,
that I always was,
and I always will be,
a part of God.