Master Jingzong; English translation by Fole, edited by Fojin When I was young, I liked staring at a patch of blue sky surrounded by fluffy white clouds. It looked so deep and boundless to me. I was fascinated and could look at it all day. This is my intuitive feeling, as a man on earth, […]
nature
Spiritual Melodies: Tully MacKay-Tisbert
The landscape of America is dotted with Christian influences, from the lamentations of oppression and hope of liberation that fused with African influences to form the melancholy blues, to the Christian rock that arose in the 1960s to become a formidable force of conversion in mega-churches. It is extraordinary that the culture of a republic […]
The Earth Which Preceded Us
From australianmuseum.net.au Insects are on your family tree. Ladybug ancestors and crustacean offspring.A family tree is years of hesitation. From microbes to plants. A chain ofinnumerable mutations. Flatworms andsponges following the design of turtle arms. We are part of a family tree that is more thana metaphor. The birds feed off our limbs. The Cycads and Conifers spread in every direction.Damp, […]
I know This Forest
There is a forest thatI can’t get away from. A forest of tombs stillas tree trunks. Thereis a forest. The smell of red pine needles-the pathways of my ancestors. There is a forest. When I am not alive like I usuallyam. There is a forest. When I step in minktracks, I know these tracks in my tendons.I know this forest. It pounds into […]
The Mud Softer Than Ivory
There is a forest that I return to when I can’t get away from the pulsationsof thinking. A forest of tombs as still as dead tree trunks and melodious as raindropson red pine needles. The paths of my ancestors.In this forest, I am not alive like I usually am. Stepping in mink tracks, I know this place inmy […]
Mendon Ponds
Life is just beginning todawn on most of us.But that happens here quickerthan most other places. Even though here, the glacierswere lured into a dead end,as the huge claws of timehauled across the ground likea long pause in someone’sconversation, leaving shoulder humpslike a bison’s, in looselyformed spherical organisms. Here, I feel the improbabilityof our connected minds.Codes in the maple […]
Ordinary Like Our Sun
There are many kinds of deserts,but they all reject the notion that lifeshould flourish. That’s gravity. A grim background disturbing the atmosphere. But it can’t make you fall in love, or at least that’swhat Einstein said. With an exquisite fussiness, it intones mystical equations and leaks blood in -alabaster basins. Gravity is a creature of two […]
Something Rather Than Nothing
Before slavery,oceans swept awayshadowsof sand pyramids. Before peace,there was just volcanicash on the seabeds- the color of Confederategray, like the eyes of a lost husky. Before the masters of war,there were border walls madeof barren clouds, ribbed and lifeless- above a million stillborn valleys. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work […]
Tea by the Batten Kill
Rinsing away theworld, from a widow’speak above the Batten Kill, with a cup of rose tips, everything burned leavesthe fragrance of her dried lips,like old questions interrupted. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, […]
Close to Timberline
Ascorbic acid tabletswon’t quench my thirst. I want the secret sourcesof the Hudson, log bridges,and vanished paths. Hydrating oil-in-lipstickwon’t cover my hunger. I want countless warm pondswrapped in cold weather. A thin mist. The deep woods. I want freedom. No paper flowers.No fairy tale weddings.No cloned puppies. Just early snow ontumbled rocks, and the fountainheadof majestic streams. […]