Arlene Weiner: While I live
While I live, let me pour as through a sieve
the mixed and muddied waters of my loves,
hold the gold and let the silt go.
George Yancy: If the State of the World Makes You Want to Scream, You’re Not Alone
We must face the weight of such social evils and be prepared to also face the ways in which we are complicit with them, especially when we are often indifferent.
Martha Collins: Blessing
there, and throughout our earth, let us grieve
for the graves we robbed, and then
let us bless the graves of the dead that remain
Valerie Bacharach: The Synagogue
Someone enters the sanctuary, picks up the chair
thrown by the Rabbi,
places it gently with the others, a straight row
waiting for bodies.
Sydney Lea: Heterodox
A knows of B
That after grim chemo his hair came back
The doctors reckoned they’d licked his disease
Jericho Brown: Nativity
Come trouble’s birthday,
I think of every gift people get
They don’t use. Oh, and I
Pray.
Thomas Merton: Prayer
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Pablo Miguel Martínez: Adiós, o virgen de Guadalupe—
…urge her back
to her celestial jefe. Go back
where you’re safe, chula.
Jane Varley: The Language of Prayer
She was beautiful on a hilltop
above the Red Lake River where clouds
dashed sunlight and the scent
of cherry and lilac drifted in, drifted out
Mike James: Trying to Pray
Some nights I dream of hands holding water
Some nights they are a man’s hands
Some nights a woman’s
Patricia A. Nugent: Swear to God
I’ll strive to focus on what I want rather than what I don’t want by holding the vision of a kinder, gentler leader and nation in my heart.
James Wright: Trying to Pray
This time, I have left my body behind me, crying
In its dark thorns.
John Samuel Tieman: Self-portrait with folks in St. Louis
still I recall the rains in the islands
the cold in Mexico and how
I imagined my mother standing
on the porch looking south
Stacy Bannerman: In 2020 Live Your Prayer
We need spiritual warriors willing to do the hard, heartbreaking work of becoming the light; capable of walking through the valley of the death of their old life and finding their way out.
Vox Populi 