Spiritual Poetry – Page 7 – As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JOHN GUZLOWSKI

Posted on August 24, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

THE WORLD AFTER THE FALL
By John Guzlowski

Eve stood there
for a moment
and watched her grace
dry up like water.

Whatever sunshine
had lingered on her skin
was gone

and when
she looked at Adam’s face
she wondered
what she could say
to him.

They had words
of course—
They learned them together
but neither spoke.

What could
she say?

Sorry?

Next time,
it’ll be different?

I didn’t understand?

She just shook her head
and he did too.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in The 2River View, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

John Guzlowski’s writing has appeared in Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, The Ontario Review, The Polish Review, Exquisite Corpse, Manhattan Review, Modern Fiction Studies and other journals both here and abroad. Czeslaw Milosz wrote that Guzlowski’s first book of poems, Language of Mules, “astonished” him and that he had “an enormous ability for grasping reality.” Guzlowski’s poems about his parents’ experiences in Nazi concentration camps appear in his book Lightning and Ashes.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem participates in the ancient tradition of midrash, the questioning of and commenting upon what is written in the Bible. I have been engaged in midrashic studies both in my academic and creative pursuits for many years now, and whenever I come across poems that take part in this ongoing discussion I am drawn to them. The Bible is the foundation of Western civilization, but despite an unconscionable number of narrow-minded of readings and prosthelytizations, The Book is not a static enterprise, not a fixed proscription, but is a living, breathing entity, the questioning of which leads to an understanding of modern (wo)man.

On this series we have seen Betsy Johnson-Miller question the story of the fall, Father Kilian McDonnell question the patriarchal authorship of Genesis, William Kelley Woolfitt explore the story of Samson, and today John Guzlowski joins the mini-midrashic tradition being written within the pages of As It Ought To Be. May the questions be relentless and the conversation never end.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: PAUL NEMSER

Posted on August 10, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

MEETING YOU AFTER CHERNOBYL
By Paul Nemser

The last frozen day had come and gone, and we were
sleeping in the elbows of trees in the elbow of a town,
our sutures all sunken together as if we shared one wound,
as if we had climbed from a single pit

like a race of dinosaurs grown from a fused lump of eggs
that had slept in valley ice for three shifts of the North Star,
as the leaves undecorated the last few branches
which were skinny as bat bones or the bones of a squirrel.

There were cattle blotched with waning alphabets.
And there were eyes that had seen too many lights,
so we didn’t recognize the wells
we had drunk from all our lives, nor

the creek that flowed with clothes and flesh,
nor the seeds brought from all over the countryside,
from knived sacks in waterlogged barns, from pods
trembling on grotesque grasses.

We talked to each other until we could not talk.
It was gobbledygook, was joy, nothing to remember:
We would not be overrun like ants by a larger horde of ants.
The darkness would not come closer.

A dog would lift its howl to where the wind left
the tablecloths—crumpled, clawed up, drying in the sun.
A phalanx of trucks that had jostled our vertebrae
would sound like bubbles in a bottle.

I never missed you so much as waking from that sleep.
And I dream of you now lingering barely below ground,
all your twenty fingers warbling together as on flutes.
My pores open to you as to rain.

Years give way to lakes of white dust, to unyielding dirt-land.
The snouts of oxen stain pale as marble
when the beasts haul blades through the hardness that remains
of what decades ago had been garden.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in AGNI, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Paul Nemser’s book, Taurus, chosen by Andrew Hudgins as winner of the 2011 New American Poetry Prize, will be published by New American Press in November, 2013. His chapbook, Tales of the Tetragrammaton, will be published by Mayapple Press in summer, 2014. Nemser’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Blackbird, Fulcrum, Per Contra, Raritan, Third Coast, and elsewhere. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife Rebecca and practices law in Boston. Some of his family came from Chernobyl.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is one of those thoughtful, emotive, beautiful lyric poems that better expresses itself than I ever could. Some days the poems just speak for themselves. Are you listening?

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: THE BAAL SHEM TOV

Posted on July 27, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

TWO SOULS
By the Baal Shem Tov

From every human being
there rises a light
that reaches straight to heaven.
And when two souls
that are destined to be together
find each other,
their streams of light flow together,
and a single brighter light goes forth
from their united being.

(Today’s poem is in the public domain, belongs to the masses, and appears here today accordingly.)

The Baal Shem Tov: Rabbi Yisroel (Israel) ben Eliezer (d.1760), often called the Baal Shem Tov, was a Jewish mystical rabbi. He is considered to be the founder of Hasidic Judaism. (Annotated biography of the Baal Shem Tov courtesy of Wikipedia, with edits.)

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is a quote from the Baal Shem Tov that gives rise to the age old question: What is poetry? If poetry is beautiful lyric that speaks to the human condition, that considers love with eloquence and a care for words and ideas, today’s quote is most certainly that. Today’s post is dedicated to my husband, with whom I am beginning a journey as a “united being.” May we shine brightly together from our single light.

Want to read more by and about the Baal Shem Tov?
Wikipedia
Jewish Virtual Library

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LYNNE KNIGHT

Posted on July 6, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

Photo by Matt Phillips

AGAINST ORDER
By Lynne Knight

Tear the line into pieces.
                                                                                                    Open it out:
                          Let silence be
                                                       part of all that must be
said.
I can’t.                                                                                   I can’t.
It looks so disorganized. I want
to move it like furniture
back into place.
It’s a curse, your obsession for order,
my lover says, wanting me
                                                                                             wild—

So, to justify myself, I point out
that light in the night sky
may be traveling, but the stars stay
where they are.

Or do they?
What if some night Cassiopeia
fell apart,
splashed down like water?

What use the well-appointed bed,
the vacuumed rug,
the alphabetically arranged books
if a star came splashing down
like water, fiery water,
burning everything in its path?

All my molecules about to scatter—

just the thought of it makes me clutch
the sheets, press myself into the mattress—

but ah, the wonder of it, to be
moving inside my lover’s
arms then, any second bound
to explode—

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle , and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Lynn Knight‘s fourth collection, Again, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2009. Her previous collections are Dissolving Borders (Quarterly Review of Literature), The Book of Common Betrayals (Bear Star Press), and Night in the Shape of a Mirror (David Robert Books), plus three award-winning chapbooks. A cycle of poems on Impressionist winter paintings, Snow Effects (Small Poetry Press), has been translated into French by Nicole Courtet. Knight’s awards include a Theodore Roethke Award from Poetry Northwest, a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, an NEA grant, and the 2009 RATTLE Poetry Prize. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Editor’s Note: The desire for order and the need to control. So tempting. And yet, what control have we in the face of nature? In the face of love? We can try to keep this life as tidy as we like, but what use are our efforts in the face of a falling star? From the macro to the meta, today’s poem takes us on a wild journey through the mind of a poet who struggles against the wild, only to succumb to the wonder of what is beyond her control.

Want to read more by and about Lynne Knight?
Official Website
Sixteen Rivers Press Author Page
Poetry Society of America
Verse Daily
Connotation Press Author Page

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: VALENTINA GNUP

Posted on June 22, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

WE SPEAK OF AUGUST
By Valentina Gnup

Alone in my kitchen, I copy
a chicken salad recipe from a Woman’s Day magazine
and plan tomorrow night’s dinner.

We don’t know what will happen
between one raindrop and the next,
yet we speak of August as if it were a contract,
a promise the sky made.

When I was twenty-five I married a drummer
and silenced him with disapproval.

Now I’m married to a poet—
he reads poems on the porch
and pets my head like a puppy.

My daughters grew tall as honeysuckle and left—
they took their soft skin, their buttermilk biscuit smell,
the endless hungers that organized my days.

My domain has shrunk to the narrow bone of my ankle.

I did what was asked.
I did what I feared.
Like every woman I have ever known,
I became my mother.

I stroll through the rows of houses and yards;
above me a skein of geese break in and out of formation—
fluid as laundry on a line.

Other women are out walking their dogs,
murmuring to the mothers inside their heads.

In the eastern sky the first star is out,
preparing for the long night of wishes.

At dusk every flower looks blue.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle , where it was given a Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention in 2010, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Valentina Gnup has her MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She is the winner of the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize from Cutthroat journal of the Arts and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Prize. In 2005 her chapbook Sparrow Octaves won the North Carolina Writers’ Network Mary Belle Campbell Book Publication Award. Her poems have appeared in the Hiram Poetry Review, Nimrod, Chelsea, Brooklyn Review, Crab Orchard Review and many others. She and her husband live in Portland, Oregon.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem could be about regret or acceptance. It could be about rites of passage or about the inevitability of the cycle of life. The young woman makes mistakes. The experienced woman knows what it is to have made compromises, to have made sacrifices, to bend with the wind, and to become her mother. There is a nostalgia inherent in today’s piece; a longing not for the past, but a bittersweet looking both forward and back. Gnup’s startlingly honest reflection is paired with beautifully-wrought moments of language and imagery that heighten the joy and pain of a lived life.

Want to read more by and about Valentina Gnup?
The Best American Poetry
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation / wagingpeace.org
the-green-heart call

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: PRAYERS LIKE SHOES

Posted on March 30, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

FROM PRAYERS LIKE SHOES
By Ruth Forman

STAND

why so afraid to stand up?
someone will tell you
sit down?

but here is the truth
someone will always tell you
sit down

the ones we remember
kept standing

PRAYERS LIKE SHOES

I wear prayers like shoes

pull em on quiet each morning
take me through the uncertain day

don’t know
what might knock me off course

sit up in bed
pull on the right
then the left
before shower before teeth

my mama’s gift
to walk me through this life

she wore strong ones
the kind steady your ankles
i know
cause when her man left/ her children
gone/ her eldest son without goodbye
they the only ones keep her
standing

i saw her
still standing

mama passed on
some things to me
ma smile sense a discipline
ma
subtle behind

but best she passed on
girl you go to God
and get you some good shoes
cause this life ain’t steady ground

now i don’t wear hers
you take em with you you know
but i suspect they made by the same company
pull em on each morning
first the right then the left

best piece a dress
i got

THESE HIPS

these hips ripe plums
don’t believe
come
taste

these midnight moons
made a sugar’s juice
know how to curve a line
make a knife shiver
in anticipation

these hips ripe plums
don’t believe
run yr hand long this

n tell me

God did not know what She was doing
when She
gentled her hand
in a half moon
two times
smoothed
the most perfect
fruit
on earth

THE AIR ABOVE OUR TONGUES

We do not speak. afraid
of what might happen to us

the air above our tongues
prays for us to speak. afraid
of what might happen
if we don’t

Prayers Like Shoes: Whit Press, in partnership with Hedgebrook, presents this magnificent collection of poetry from highly acclaimed writer and poet Ruth Forman. “Ruth Forman’s Prayers Like Shoes is a book you will carry with you for life, give to people you love, and turn to in times of joy and sadness. Her words are as natural as grass and air, and the stories they tell will travel from the page to your heart.” — Gloria Steinem

Ruth Forman is the author of three award-winning books: poetry collections We Are the Young Magicians (Beacon, 1993) and Renaissance, (Beacon, 1997) and children’s book, Young Cornrows Callin Out the Moon (Children’s Book Press, 2007). She is the recipient of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize, The Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, The Durfee Artist Fellowship, the National Council of Teachers of English Notable Book Award, and recognition by The American Library Association. She provides writing workshops at schools and universities across the country and abroad, and has presented in forums such as the United Nations, the PBS series The United States of Poetry and National Public Radio. Ruth is a former teacher of creative writing with the University of Southern California and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and an eleven-year faculty member with the VONA-Voices writing program. Also an MFA graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, she frequently collaborates on film, music, dance, theatre, art and media projects. Her latest collection is Prayers Like Shoes (2009) on Whit Press. When not writing and teaching, she practices a passion for martial arts: classical Yang family style tai chi chuan, tai chi sword, bo staff and karate. Ms. Forman currently lives in Washington, DC.

Editor’s Note: Today’s feature is more than a book of poetry, it is a gift. When my father passed away I found myself more determined to go on, to function, than to break down and mourn his loss. It was a book of poems that enabled me to weep, to grieve. It is a rare book that allows you to access the real human being who dwells within you, beneath the surface of what you imagine to be your ‘real life.’ This is such a book.

On the strong recommendation of a friend I bought Prayers Like Shoes. Because time is a luxury in my life, I began reading it while waiting for the bus. By the time the bus arrived—by the time I reached the bottom of the first page—I was in tears.

I read from cover to cover, on bus and train, first on my way into the world, then on my way home again. At times I felt the Woman inside me awaken, celebrate. At times I felt inspired to speak up in the name of peace. I wondered at love, at the nature of man. Throughout—within the delicate, vibrant, intricate fabric of Forman’s weaving—my heart was so close to the surface that the tears fell when they would.

I wondered what the people on the bus thought of me with my book of poems and my well of tears, but, mostly I was inspired. I was reminded of what I love in poetry. Experience. Connectivity. Reading someone else’s words and feeling that I am not alone, that I am part of a community, of a human world. That life is beautiful and painful and hard and that it is poetry—honest, vocal, unapologetic, lived, felt, lyric poetry—that makes the living more bearable, that gives us permission to experience emotion while offering us an outlet for the same.

I chose the quote above by Gloria Steinem because, first of all, what poet is touted by Gloria Steinem?!, but also because it speaks the truth about this book. I want to give a copy to my mother, to my Sisters, to the people I love and admire who engage with poetry as I do. I will turn to this book when I want to feel, and also when I want to remember why I write poetry. I cannot imagine a greater gift than that.

Want to see more by Ruth Forman?
Ruth Forman’s Official Website
Buy Ruth Forman’s books

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: HEARTWRECKS

Posted on February 23, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

FROM HEARTWRECKS
By Nicolas Destino

RESURRECTION

Back in the city they were erecting the moon every night with ropes, pulling, as everything needed to rise to reverse what fell. In an upstate kitchen, amid the languid, flat dough, they got the news that there would be no more bread, not until the moon was back up and pulling of its own accord.

INDIGENOUS

Miraculous to be part of the snow globe with the penguins on the icebergs and the icebergs with the cold shock and miraculous to be inside the dome with the curvature of the dome and the penguins’ head and the cold shock far from the city where this is not taking place and to be apart from the towers and a part of interiors with the curve of the moon made from clay.

SLEEP THERAPY

Things like giraffes, that’s all, and catalogue items, ordinary things; driving in the snow in the repetitive shapes of snowflakes, and things like fruit markets and police activity activating the amalgams of scriptures inscribing all the checklists that qualify a city, but the real story is the flashing number right in a waiting room, outside of which people have held doors in restaurants for strangers, or have stolen their pocketbooks or parking spaces, or have let doors slam on strangers, but the real story is that I would give up all these dirty thoughts for healthcare.

Heartwrecks: In this debut collection, musical notes, paint pigment, and lives of the heart converge in fantastical worlds of invention. Nicolas Destino’s adventures through relationship, music, and visual art revitalize the lyric and re-imagine the ordinary.

Nicolas Destino’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Barge Journal, 580split, 322 Review, and others. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Goddard College, and his first full-length collection of poems, Heartwrecks, was released by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2013.

Editor’s Note: Nicolas Destino’s Heartwrecks is one of the best and most original books of poetry to be published in recent memory. The poet himself has said, “These are not poems” because these vignettes are so imagistic, visual, and painterly that they are more akin to waking dreams than to the written word. Not only does the poet embrace the visual and painterly, but Heartwrecks is rife with musicality and deeply interested in the language of music. The book also contemplates urban life, marriage, partnership, natural disasters, weather, and life as seen from within the curved glass of the snow globe. All of these concerns are wrought from the finest materials, the poet’s masterly handle on the lyric guiding the reader through an incredibly deep, thoughtful, stunning, humorous, and intensely pleasurable book of poems that ought to be read from start to finish. And then again. And then again and again.

Want to see more by Nicolas Destino?
Nicolas Destino Official Website
Buy Heartwrecks from Sibling Rivalry Press
Buy Heartwrecks from Amazon

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: WILLIAM KELLEY WOOLFITT

Posted on December 22, 2012 by asitoughttobemagazine

Joyland photo 1_0

SHE REMEMBERS THE WEDDING OF SAMSON AND HER SISTER
By William Kelley Woolfitt

From my hiding spot, what I saw of him
was as I thought the lion dying and torn,
or the bees—flitting from the carcass’s
dark cave—might see, buzzing with the mad
desire to make honey, replenish the stores

he emptied to bring combs to my older sister,
sweet and glistening, in the bowl of his hands.
What I saw, my sister would grease on the seventh
day of their wedding feast: feet of the destroyer
and judge, her groom, who yielded to the siege

of her tears, parleys, and cajolements,
unlocked for her the secret of his riddle.
Feet she would wash, pamper, and oil; feet pale
and blue-tinged as a ewe’s cloudy milk.
I heard in the clamor of his footsteps

and did not believe the convulsing of pillars
that was to come, the crack of flame.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

William Kelley Woolfitt teaches creative writing and literature at Lee University. He has worked as a summer camp counselor, bookseller, ballpark peanuts vendor, and teacher of computer literacy to senior citizens. His writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Cincinnati Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, Shenandoah, Los Angeles Review, Sycamore Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem engages in the ancient tradition of midrash, of questioning and interpreting what is written in the Hebrew Bible. This piece explores the biblical story of Samson, that fierce Jewish warrior who was brought to his knees by love and who went on to destroy his enemies, bringing down their temple with his bare hands. Kelley Woolfitt re-imagines Samson as a husband, using that template to foreshadow a volatile marriage. This Samson is a man who will bring his bride honey combs fresh from the hive in the cups of his hands on his wedding day, but who will later bring about “the convulsing of pillars” and the ominous “crack of flame.”

Want to read more by and about William Kelley Woolfitt?
Draft Horse
Cerise Press
Literary Bohemian

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: RABBI RACHEL BARENBLAT

Posted on December 8, 2012 by asitoughttobemagazine

Verzi-Headshot

SUFGANIYOT
By Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

In oil, pale circles roll and flip,
doughy moons inflating.

The fun part: poking a finger
inside, giving a wiggle and twist,
pushing a dollop of jam
knuckle-deep, then two, ’til
the cavity gleams raspberry.

Latkes are pedestrian.
These puff like a breath held.

There, and here,
a million women finger
these cupped curves,
probe the soft center,
push the sticky treat inside.

We glance at each other, faces hot.
We lick the sweet from our hands.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Zeek and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat was ordained by ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal in 2011. She serves Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, MA. She holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington, and is author of four poetry chapbooks as well as a collection of Torah poetry entitled 70 faces (Phoenicia, 2011.) Her second book-length collection, Waiting to Unfold, will be published by Phoenicia in 2013.

Editor’s Note: Tonight at sundown Jewish people across the world will begin the eight-night celebration of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. This is a holiday that reveres oil—that magical substance that lit our way in days of yore and ensures Hanukkah will not be forgotten by the mouths to come. Every year I follow my mama’s recipe for sufganiyot, deep-fried treats that take the concept of the doughnut to a whole new level. While I have yet to perfect my own sufganiyot, my mama’s are inspiring, like today’s poem. (And like my mama herself; let’s be real.)

With today’s piece Rabbi Rachel Barenblat elevates these phenomenal holiday treats from the realm of the epicurial to a heightened world where femininity, sexuality, and deep fried delicacies become one. Welcome to a lyrical orgy that conjures up a feminist reclamation of the kitchen scene from 9 1/2 Weeks. As I sink my teeth into these soft, hot desserts this Hanukkah I will be thinking of Rabbi Rachel Barenblat and the women of the world who are making tradition their own.

Want to read more by and about Rabbi Rachel Barenblat?
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat: The Velveteen Rabbi (Official Website)
Velveteen Rabbi (Blog)
Buy 70 Faces from Phoenicia Publishing

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: TAWNYSHA GREENE

Posted on November 10, 2012 by asitoughttobemagazine

BREAKING BREAD AT AL QALZAM
by Tawnysha Greene

My first time alone
with the women in Saudi Arabia,
abayas, head covers off and I see

their faces, their hair free. Hands touch
me, lead me down
a line of greetings, kisses, whispers

in Arabic that I try
to return, trilled rs, long ms,
they laugh, because my words are

Egyptian, not Saudi, not
ours, they say. I watch, follow
what they do, sit on the ground, drink gawa

from tiny gold cups, nibble whole fried fish
with my right hand. We break bread, strangers,
now friends, uncovered, naked

in a way, because they speak to me of love.
They motion with their hands, point
to themselves, each other, then

at me, pause to see
if I understand, stop between streams
of Arabic to say daughter, sister, lover.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Tawnysha Greene is currently a Ph.D. candidate in fiction writing at the University of Tennessee. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including Bellingham Review and Raleigh Review and is forthcoming in PANK Magazine.

Editor’s Note: When I first read today’s poem I was reminded of Reading Lolita in Tehran, a fantastic book I read recently about women in Iran and their relationship to their country, their government, their gender, and the veil. I was also reminded of Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet whose soft-spoken reflections on the Middle East are often humbling, and, in particular, of Shihab Nye’s poem “Red Brocade,” one of my favorite poems of all time. Today’s poem is rich with sisterhood, with women bonding in their own sacred space—a tradition that dates back to a time before the patriarchy and remains a critical aspect of the feminine to this day. While I was drawn to all of these aspects of the poem, it was one stunning moment of emotional lyric that made me fall in love: “naked / in a way, because they speak to me of love.”

Want to read more by and about Tawnysha Greene?
Mandala Journal
Salome Magazine

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: