Join us as we engage the boundary between sacred and secular through works of poetry and devotionals.
Join us as we engage the boundary between sacred and secular through works of poetry and devotionals.
Upcoming Themes:
May 1-15, 2026: Looking for (My) Life
July 1-15, 2026: Joy
October 1-15, 2026: Invocations, Benedictions, and Other Prayers
February 1-15, 2027: Music
May 1-15, 2027: Doubt
Some Guidance for the Summer “Looking for (My) Life” Submission Call:
The window for the summer theme of “Looking for (My) Life” opens on May 1 and closes May 15 at midnight. Please note that we will not read poems or devotionals sent before or after that window unless we give you specific permission to send a piece early or late. Read the guidelines carefully and follow them. Keep in mind that we do not accept attachments.
I was watching an episode of the television program The Good Doctor when I was stopped in my tracks by the following scene. Dr. Glassman’s house had burned down, and he is digging in the sooty rubble for mementos, especially ones that symbolize his relationship with his daughter who had died years before. Dr. Shaun Murphy, an autistic savant, and a close, dear friend, comes searching for Dr. Glassman. When Dr. Murphy sees Dr. Glassman in the ruin, fishing into the ashes with his hands, he says, “What . . . are you looking for?” Aaron Glassman replies, “Oh, you know, my life. Just my life.” It is a powerful scene, full of despair and pathos. ((359) Dr. Aaron Glassman recalls the memories of his house with Shaun | The Good Doctor S6 - YouTube)
Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there, but Glassman’s answer provides a question to ponder. He’s looking for his life. His house, and the memories represented by the house and the objects in the house—even a bottle of fingernail polish he unearths—make up his life. Perhaps he does not answer with his full power of philosophical or spiritual insight at that moment, but his answer still stops me. Where do I look for my life? What constitutes it? What gives it meaning, hope, buoyancy? I ask these questions as the theme for this upcoming issue. Where do you find your life? What gives it meaning beyond the moment? What is your reason for being?
Dr. Glassman’s experience provides one of the angles for this theme—it is the angle of “looking.” The search for meaning may be ongoing rather than conclusive. In fact, I would argue that much important poetry is about the search more than about the discovery. I welcome poems and devotionals about the search, the “looking.” I also welcome—and dearly crave—poems and devotionals that give an answerto such an important question.
Do the flowers of the field merely exist, serving their time and then fading, or do they serve a higher purpose? Are they only for man’s enjoyment, or do they have a place in heaven’s economy? I hope every theme I present in this journal will help you, as a writer, investigate things of earth and things of heaven.
I look forward to how you will surprise me. Writers see the world in unexpected ways, and I love for you to take me into a scene as powerful as poor Dr. Glassman in his burned-out basement, holding up his daughter’s scorched bottle of fingernail polish, holding it and thinking back to happy moments when all around him screams destruction. CAS
Blue African Violet. Photograph by Gail Swanson
it makes sense why
it’s called that this toy, first
encountered in the nursery for some
or perhaps later in a science lab
it all starts as most things
at rest at rest at rest
then a sudden disruption
the toy has no energy, no battery of its own, it
relies on a disruptor a wind-up and a let-go proxy
setting one into another into the rest
the metal swing-set frame
shivers a little against the table but withstands
the metal balls clacking a sharp percussive knock
that cannot be stopped as one dangling
silver sphere smack smacks into
the next and the next and the next
and isn’t it nearly impossible not to become
invested in watching the pouncing
pendulums ricochet forward, back, forward,
back a little less each time, a little less
until all silvery spheres sit undisturbed
not nearly long enough—always
the lure of the next wind-up, the jostling
of young hands gathered around a lab table
pushing and pushing closer to be the closest, to be
the next to take up an outermost weighted clear wire
and just drop it
Poet’s Notes: "Newton's Cradle" flashed me back to several childhood toys that I remember filling those ambery, long days of childhood and early adolescence. While writing the poem, I was pleased to have several pleasant conversations about the toy and also glad to hear that my friends and family had some good memories associated with the kinetic toy as well. I was also surprised to learn that while I initially remember my much younger self as more of a reader/imaginative-play kid, in reality I also had plenty of kinetic toys where movement played a large role in learning about myself and about the world. I'd like to write more poems about such kinetic objects and toys in the future. It's possible that these poems are an artistic attempt to slow down just a bit the jet engine of too-swiftly-moving years.
About the Poet: Melanie Faith is a poet, writer, educator, editor, photographer, and frequent doodler. Her craft books through Vine Leaves Press offer tips on writing flash fiction, poetry, photography, teaching creative writing, and more. Check out her poetry collection, Does It Look Like Her? (2024), about a forty-something artist, and The Price of Breathing, in which a librarian, a love triangle, and the iron lung all make appearances (Vine Leaves Press, fall 2026). Learn more about Melanie’s classes and creative work at: https://www.melaniedfaith.com/ .
Newton's Cradle. Drawing by Charlie Crawley
Too bad it had to end like this.
Everyone was having so much fun.
It’s hard to know just what we’ll miss
from all our aging in the sun.
Everyone was having so much fun,
dancing to the sound of music
while slowly aging in the sun.
We never thought that we’d get sick
and tired dancing to the sound of music,
holding our partners in our arms.
We never thought that we’d get sick
of feeling how slow rhythm charms.
Holding our partners in our arms
for as long as we could dance
that slower rhythm, we could feel its charms.
The world held magic and romance
for as long as we could dance.
Now it’s hard to know what more we’ll miss
from this world, the magic or romance.
Too bad it had to end like this.
About the Poet: After retiring as curator of historic maps at Princeton University Library, I moved out to Port Townsend, WA, and have traveled widely, preferring remote, natural settings. Since that transition, I’ve published Waypoints (2017), a collection of place poems, Twenty Questions (2019), a chapbook, Delicate Arch (2022), poems and photographs of national parks and monuments, Galápagos (2023), a collaborative chapbook of my son Andrew’s photographs and my poems, Nile (2024), a chapbook of poems and photographs about Egypt, Filing Order: Sonnets (2025), and CATechisms (2025), poems and photographs about my senior cat.
A Birthday Abroad
Paul J. Willis
The man was lost in Italy, where he
had gone to teach a class in poetry—
not lost, exactly, though at times he walked
the country lanes and paused in wonder, balked
by lack of understanding of the way.
His birthday came—his sixty-sixth—a stay.
Except, he did not tell his students this;
to focus on himself would be amiss
he felt, and so he kept his frigid room
and greeted all his family on Zoom.
The day before, at midnight, came a storm
of thunder and of lightning—not the norm
his students told him. Afterward he hiked
to where a butte of tufa lava spiked
the north horizon. On the very top,
a dripping forest spread its verdant mop,
and at its side a quiet chapel grew
as if it were a piece of forest too.
Inside, a spectral silence whispered what
he could not hear: The years! The years! A nut
of hazel rolled across the empty floor.
He stood and watched it, pausing in the door.
And then he fled through many a muddy field,
through crimson vineyards past their sparkling yield
of months ago, the grapes and wine all past,
and living in the lees of life at last.
from Orvieto (© Paul J. Willis, 2025), page 30,
permission to reprint granted by Paul J. Willis and Solum Literary Press, Anaheim, CA. solumpress.com
First things first: The window for the spring theme of tension opens on February 1 and closes February 15 at midnight. Please note that we will not read poems or devotionals sent before or after that window unless we give you specific permission to send a piece early or late. Read the guidelines carefully and follow them. Keep in mind that we do not accept attachments.
Now about tension: I recall several fine writers who spoke of tension within the work itself. One writer said she wanted to create additional interest within the body of her poem. She felt she had a good handle on beginnings and endings, but she didn’t want the poem to weaken or fade in the middle lines. One way to strengthen a poem in the middle section is to add tension—that is, elements that push and pull against each other. Another way of thinking of this is conflict, although the conflict may be something other than two characters who are in confrontation with each other. What can be said about a poem, in this case, also can be said about a thoughtful devotional.
The possibilities with such a theme as tension are great, especially if you think of tension within the work. However, we will be looking for poems or devotionals that in some obvious way bring tension to the fore. What are internal conflicts that cause tension (or tenseness)? What are diametrically opposed ideas in society that create an atmosphere of tension? (And here, I would beg for caution, for an overtly political poem or devotional often becomes a rant, and not a strong rant at that.) What are conflicts in nature, the push and pull of elements against each other? What are tensions in family settings, whether somewhat natural or unexpected? What are the difficulties in balancing a view of earth against a view of heaven. Surely, there is tension in the flesh versus the spirit.
Here are a few teases: When I crochet, the tension I keep on the yarn affects the regularity of the weave. On a chainsaw, the chain cannot be too loose, or it will fly off the bar, or too tight, or the chain will not rotate. Proper tension affects the outcome. Tense muscles might benefit from a massage. In a funeral message, a preacher may admit to earthly foibles of the deceased while proclaiming hope of the afterlife.
We look forward to how you will surprise us. Writers see the world in unexpected ways, and we love for you to create tension within us, the tension of expectancy! CAS
