The Fulcrum
John Mitchell III
All that I do will be undone, all my work, the so called progress, incremental advancement toward greater margin; the budding business operating off the boulevard, all will be forgotten, or worse, remembered as someone else’s triumph, consuming another’s mind in a future season full of the same headaches, snow storms, and surprise inspections. I’ve no boat, no net to cast on the other side. Would I even remember how to swim if I saw Him on the beach, stoking the charcoal fire, preparing a breakfast of bread and some fish?
JOHN MITCHELL lives with his wife and two children in South Dakota. His poetry is published or forthcoming in The Penwood Review, Clayjar Review, Solid Food Press, and elsewhere.
Jesus Cooking Breakfast
Douglas M. Jones
When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread…Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." – John 21:9, 12 Once past his execution, his followers returned to work; he watched them fish a while, enough to charcoal wood he’d gathered along the beach, enough to gut a pile of fat Musht fish, his robe still wet. He’d bunched dried grass for kindling, then clicked and clicked his flint, but paused before he called them to indulge, not wanting undercooked filets. And since he had no coins since resurrecting, the bread was gifted from a villager. His friends strolled up the beach, unsure, eyes big with dread, still puzzled by these slack appearances. He flipped a piece, grilled true, he said, and lifting it, he offered it on bread.
Jesus Building a House
Douglas M. Jones
What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? – Mark 6:2-3 When Joseph passed, raw Jesus sold his skills to other, older builders, who, at first, barred him from shaping lumber; desert hills made wood scant, reserved for roofs. They nursed him making bricks, a mix of clay with wheat chaff in water, this hindered cracks. He bent and filled an open mold, then scraped it neat. He’d count, then loose the form, a stiff brick drenched in barren sun, then again, again, hundreds side by side, imperfect rows, hardening. No time for shade, he joined those hewing slabs from limestone for the lower wall, roughed in. He side-eyed those so deftly squaring trunks, rough cedar smoothed, its sweetness filled his lungs.Douglas Jones holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Idaho and an MA in philosophy from the University of Southern California. He has published work in McSweeney’s, Antiphon, Cathexis Northwest, Amethyst Review, Phil Lit Journal, Relief Magazine, Dappled Things, Christianity & Literature, Moonstone Press, Spaceports & Spidersilk, Valparaiso Poetry Review, River Oak Review, and California Quarterly.
My Son’s Disappearance
Jeanette W Stickel
I gathered the dry twigs
of my withering hope,
the brittle branches and brambles
and piled them in a mound—
each thought of goodness
tossed on the pile,
each abandoned assumption,
each doomed desire.
Like Abraham preparing
for his sacrifice
the pile grew high
as did the inner turmoil.
I’d let it all go. Let hope burn
and cover myself in the remaining ash.
But my mind was stayed—
an internal spark ignited
and hope not consumed
but flared into a refining love-flame
then dampened.
The dying embers
drifted upward
and sparks danced
across the night sky
toward hope's home.
Cormorants
Jeanette W. Stickel
At dusk, when waves turn gray and shadows spread across the cove’s rock walls cormorants cling to vertical stone— black on black, they disappear but glints of sliver appear when moonlight strikes a moving wing. Perched on tiny ledges they settle for the night. In stillness they turn to stone. When morning comes, they’ll spread their wings and fly again. They soar in light but cleave in darkness. I do the same.
Jeanette Stickel’s poems have appeared in Spiritus, Sojourners, Fathom, Ekstasis, Todd Point Review, WayWords, The Orchard’s Poetry Journal, Canary, and in an anthology published by Wiseblood Books entitled Homage to Soren Kierkegaard as well as the Mendocino Women’s Poetry Anthology. She also received a first-place award for a collection of poems at the Mendocino Writers Conference and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Long After
Tricia Gates Brown
Some days, walking through this farm your younger self built—farmhouse, henhouse, woodshed, well house, barn— I imagine this man to me, tanned and toned and seductive. Now on dark mornings when I align myself to the still-hard plane of your back, firm hips, muscular arms, and you turn into me still half-asleep, I grieve preemptively for the day your flesh abandons me to memory and machinations of imagination which will keep pulling you back. You, always skeptical of spirits and afterlives, will not escape the pull of my moon on your eternal sea long after you are gone.
Tricia Gates Brown works as a writer and editor in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Her poetry has appeared in Timberline Review, Relief Journal, and Monterey Poetry Review, among other publications, and her first poetry collection, Of A Certain Age, was published by Fernwood Press in mid-2026. Her debut novel Wren won a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal, and her second novel will be released in July 2027. For fun, she plays with ceramics and textiles.