Halloween Sonnet Contest: A Private Prayer After a Funeral Sermon on the Afterlife, J-T Kelly

J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis. He lives in a brick house with his wife and six children, his two parents, and a dog.

A Private Prayer After a Funeral Sermon on the Afterlife

I can’t believe it’s right to be so certain.
I mean, there’s faith. I have a little of that.
But what do you see behind your holy curtain?
Is it all hollow like a magician’s hat?
I hope instead it’s more like the tide, or breath:
something that comes and comes again and brings
with it the body, the odor, of birth, of death;
something that weeps and roars and speaks and sings.
Or maybe there is no curtain. I know a story:
a darkness, fear and hiding, a field of blood;
but also roasted fish, perfume, and seeds.
You’re not a businessman, are you? Your glory
isn’t a balanced ledger. Aren’t you mud—
like me—that has to ask for what it needs?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Winning Poem: 12-Hour Sonnet Contest

I am pleased to announce that Maya Clubine is the winner of the first 12-Hour Sonnet Contest for her poem "Sun Inside My Brain."  Maya is a Canadian writer and MFA candidate at the University of St. Thomas (TX). Her chapbook Life Cycle of a Mayfly won the 2023 Vallum Chapbook Prize. You can find her and her work at mayaclubine.ca .  Sun Inside My Brain There was a little light show in my head, my vision clouded by persistent spots. No fractured skull or artery that bled, only peripheral light and distant dots exploding into fireworks of blue, and green, and red. It was as though my thoughts precariously hung like drops of dew, translucent and too small, distorting all that they contained they dripped things I once knew. I saw myself through glass. I can recall light growing into sun inside my brain, and then a rumbling like the car might stall, a ray of black behind a stroke of pain, and then what struck me as some kind of rain.
Read more

Winning Poem, Halloween Sonnet Contest: Magical Thinking, Coleman Glenn

Coleman Glenn lives in Bryn Athyn, PA with his wife and their six kids. His poems have appeared in  Light ,  Autumn Sky Poetry Daily ,  Blue Unicorn ,  THINK , and other publications.  His first collection, A Little Light (2024), is available from Amazon in both the United States and Canada . Magical Thinking At nine, I knew that I could use the force to tap into the universe’s flow and nudge a floating object off its course or sense a stranger’s mental undertow. With passing years such fluid powers waned as oceanic childhood shrank to youth and surety of wish-fulfillment drained, revealing rocky hollows of the truth: we’re made of matter — severed flesh goes rotten; someday a person I can’t live without will die; when I go, I’ll be casually forgotten. These facts remain, unmoved, severe and dry. Some few stray swirling fantasies survive: Existence is. A child is born alive.
Read more

Winning Poem: 12-Hour Couplets Contest

I am pleased to announce that Ella Harrigan is the winner of the 12-Hour Couplets Contest for her poem "Mother."  Ella Harrigan is a poet and student at Swarthmore College, where she is a senior editor at the magazine Small Craft Warnings . She was the 2020 Virginia Ball Creative Writing Competition winner, the 2021 Claudia Ann Seaman winner in nonfiction, and has been published in Polyphony Lit and the Swarthmore Review. Mother yes, imagine it. what, on accident, i took from you. the apartment bright and piled with books   rising from the floor like hills. flowers from a friend on the windowsill.   and you, in the shower, humming, washing your hair. your beautiful long hair.   imagine me unborn, my brother sitting in his old bedroom, home for the summer, picking his nails. his guitar untuned.   you love him. the red that shines through his beard reminds you of your father. the rest isn't clear.   in the kitchen, your mother calling on the pho
Read more

Winning Poem, 12-Hour Carol Contest: Alchemists' Hymn, D.W. Baker

Image
I am pleased to announce that the winner of the 12-Hour Carol Contest is D.W. Baker, for "Alchemists' Hymn."  D.W. Baker is a poet, father, and teacher from St. Petersburg, Florida. His work appears in Identity Theory, The Pierian,  and  Voidspace Zine , and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He reads for several mastheads including  Variant Lit . See more of his work at  www.dwbakerpoetry.com .
Read more

12-Hour Carol Contest: Let Us Praise the Autumn Birds, Ben Morgan

Ben Morgan is a writer based in London, UK. His sequence  Medea in Corinth: Poems, Prayers, Letters, and a Curse ,  is published by Poetry Salzburg. It retells the myth through poems, spells and songs. He has also published poems at The High Window, Oxford Poetry, Alchemy Spoon, One Hand Clapping, Stand and elsewhere.  Let Us Praise the Autumn Birds   Praise The boring autumn birds Of Regent's Park. Their beaks like spoons Scoop honey light From sepia lawns at dawn. Their quiet cannot be drowned out By Baker Street. Their wings - fieldfare, mistle thrush, sparrow, tern - Never - barely - glow nor burn, Would win no medals From Paris, but praise, Now, their glamorous subtlety, Whose bashful glories Nest like jealousy By Chester Terrace. The same intensities Riot in their breasts As in the eagle's, So commend their wise restraint, To leave those glassy lakes A bloodless grey. Winged September peonies! Bob-headed ambassadors Of fan
Read more