The Material Soul by James Valvis

My daughter wants to know about the cat.
Will it go to heaven when it dies?

My wife is content to tell her that it will, but I know it won’t.
That cat, according to the faith we practice, has a material soul.

Our heaven is a heaven for humans: not cats, cows, or cabbages.
How could we even begin to move, to live in any way,
if every bacteria we killed was equally made in God’s image?

But I don’t pretend to understand it all myself.
Heaven has always seemed to me less likely than hell.

It’s certainly harder to imagine what it is like to be there
and what might deliver you there in the first place.

In many ways, the cat is more deserving of heaven than I am.

The cat has never yelled at my wife over nothing,
never flew off the handle at my daughter for her trichotillomania.

It’s not easy to conceive of a place that invites none of the things we love.
It’s even harder to imagine a heaven where a beloved daughter misses her cat.


James Valvis, Washington, USA

Mother Psalm 8 by Rachel Barenblat

When all else fails, a stroll will put you to sleep.
We walk beneath trees still mostly green, here
and there a branch burst into purple flame, until
Whole Foods looms glossy at the sidewalk's end.
We load into the basket beneath your sleeping form
a pumpkin and a gourd hooked like a swan's neck.
All the way there my sister and I talk about marriage
and I wonder with whom you'll walk like this someday
remembering aloud the house you grew up in, our
spiral staircases, the boxes of dolls in the basement.
The minute we stop, you wake; I pepper your head
with kisses, try to adjust your already-drooping socks.
It's autumn in Newton. My muddy iced coffee is the last
of the season. Little man, you can move yourself now
across the floor with intent, though you pause and sit
contemplating whether the ball that's rolled away
is worth the effort of the journey. It's always worth
the effort of the journey: the ball, the book, the child
you may someday try to raise, as clueless as we.
Make your way across the room. Pluck sweetness
from every interaction, extract smiles from strangers.
Go get it: we're cheering each painstaking step you take.


Rachel Barenblat, MA, USA

Selkie by Lori Lamothe

“The most common theme in selkie folklore, however, is one in which a cunning young man acquires, either by trickery or theft, a selkie-girl’s sealskin.”

For years, you wore ordinary as a housecoat.

Typed memos by day and made weak

martinis by night. For years, you were the one

they could count on to sweep all the unsaid things

under the rug. Sometimes you’re oblivious to blue.

Sometimes a shadow caught in a pool of light

makes you want to scratch off your skin,

dissolve in tides of wind that swing out and across

the street’s moonlit lawns.  Now, with your life

half gone, your child of amber eyes and ruby shoes

hands you what was nailed to the bottom

of a long-lost trunk. For six nights

you sleep on shore, cocooned in love’s sheer

blanket. On the seventh you slip an arm

into fur that still glows like coals, feel

how this shell of warmth still holds

an echo of water’s deep lullaby.

As you dive into a tango of stars, you turn

and watch her hand moving in adagio,

perfectly timed to the story you always told.

Lori Lamothe

A Small Thing by Kathleen Brewin Lewis

In second grade

my daughter fell in love

with origami,

her fingers becoming

more and more adept

as she folded and pressed

the brilliant paper

into whales, frogs, cranes

the size of her fist,

then began to make the cranes

smaller and smaller

until she had created a bird

as tiny as her fingertip.

It seemed impossible to--

would be impossible for--me,

but she rose

and walked with great grace

to come and place

her delicate masterpiece

in my hand. 



Kathleen Brewin Lewis, Atlanta, USA

Physics by Angelica Joy Romans

She pressed flowers,

Calla Lilies, Scarlet Pimpernel, Bindweed

In her physics book, page one hundred

  and thirty-four

where forces defined motion

"Weightlessness is not zero"

she skipped that sentence,

of reason and explanation

and settled for the crumbled

mummers of Biology

snug in the corners

of her physics book

Angelica Joy Romans

Werrikimbee by Joe Massingham

The brown earth snake winds up the hill.

We travel on it, ants in space

held in by tree upon tree upon tree,

one dropped by bat or bird to mark

each year since the start of counting

four hundred million years ago;

and ferns for festivals and feasts

in case the months go unremembered.

Somewhere in a green curve

the firework bursts of two hydrangeas

dazzle the eye, pull in the breath, attract

butterflies, their very familiarity

reminding us we both are strangers.

Author’s note:  Werrikimbee is one of a number of rainforest National Parks on the north-east New South Wales coastal escarpment.


Joe Massingham, Australia

Stopwatch by Jason Sturner

Everyone is dead.

Slumped against steering wheels,

on the floors of kitchens and bedrooms,

face down in swimming pools.

Bodies litter the malls,

the halls of prestigious universities,

they're in hospitals and sports bars,

at desks in corporate offices.

In the center of the oval office

lays the body of our president,

maggots crawl out

from beneath her eyelids.

The rats beneath the streets

lift their heads and twitch their noses.

Vultures fly off trees

into waves of decay.

Remnants of humanity crumble,

are buried, eroded and grown over.

We are dust and fossils; we are history.

The planet is lush and productive.

Out in an unnamed ocean

a new breed of dolphin is born,

its flippers more like modified claws.

One day, it will use them to grasp the shoreline.

Jason Sturner, Illinois, USA

This poem was  first published in Down in the Dirt Magazine, June 2009

Less is More by Geralyn Pinto

Less is more, of course                                                                       

That’s why we’ve shown them how 

Bright, bounded bamboo thickets

Are better than sprawling, untidy rain forests.

The zoo workers have even crafted a salt lick

Painstakingly patting sodium chloride

Onto the side of a gash in the earth

Which has municipal water flowing through it

And pretends to be a forest stream.

(The real river that loitered around

Splendid, aimless and occasionally wild

Was long ago domesticated to factory use

So that a distant CEO with greasy charm

Could declare dividends to a grateful public).

Rock surfaces were carefully constructed,

Neat little dens built for delicate young cubs

And a deep ravine dug all around. Just so.

The only thing they did, which you probably

Never saw in raw tiger country,

Was to erect a bright red board

Warning Homo sapien visitors to the park

That this was the lair of Panthera tigris,

Ruthless, lone hunter with a predilection, (sometimes)

For human blood.

Whoever did it hadn’t reckoned that two legs

Are better than four;

Two hands cleverer, faster than paws

Furnished with pads and claws;

One well-organized brain superior to

Brute muscle, olfactory sense and night vision.

So there’s no real need to worry

Because in ourselves we’ve proved, haven’t we,

Beyond a niggle of doubt that

Less is more?

Geralyn Pinto, India

Seals by Byron Beynon

This morning you telephoned
that two seals were swimming
in the Tawe,
they brought with them
innumerable seagrams,
navigable rhapsodies
gleaming with motion,
a lustre of sea-eyes
that floated in fields
where tides registered
global warmth, changeable seasons;
for a moment
they held your breath,
sensed their need to escape
at one with their tidings
delivered across the miracle of unchained waters.


Byron Beynon, Wales, UK

On Things Lost by Nadya Avila Chant

I must not dip my fingers
In the ashes of my sacrifice.
I must not gaze at summer skies
In search of balloons I let go
Long ago
Or beg the wind to return my whispers
As it often does my screams.

No.

And neither must you linger at this dusty altar,
Singing dirges to your lamb,
For I am only borrowed carbon:
I too, am a gift to be returned.

Nadya Avila Chant, USA