Nashville's Whit Smith makes his debut at the Sept. 8 Poetry Night at the Blue Chair.

Mindy Melton at Sept. 8 Poetry Night.

Musician Linda Heck reads poetry on Sept. 8.

Sewanee junior Spencer Hupp reads at the Sept. 8 Poetry Night at the Blue Chair.

Uzzah

You stumbled

You tried to save it

The ark

The sonic drive-in fountain drink

From tumbling

Cursed your son's clumsiness

As he reached, and missed. 

What is it worth saving the floor

Of a Dodge Caravan 

In the place of a little boy's feelings?

He's gotta learn somehow

And so do I

How to be a son

How to be a father

How the Holy Father could be a father himself

When he kills his children

Arbitrarily

For reaching out to steady his cradle

The empty seat between the cherubim

The invisible man who empowers his judges to

Genocide the Hittites, Amelilkites, 

the Cherokee and Chickamauga who taught us 

How to live on this holy mountain.

--- by Charles McClain

2 Samuel 6:3-7

They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in front of it.  David and all Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord, with castanets, harps, lyres, timbrels, sistrums and cymbals.

When they came to the threshing floor of Nakon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God.

The Poetry Project submission invitation

Encouraged by the Episcopal Peace Fellowship of Otey Memorial Parish, the Poetry Project is welcoming submissions of poetryresponsive to national concerns by local and regional authors on the themes of reconciliation, peace, dignity of the human spirit, and racial harmony. Poets who submit their works will receive, at a public reading, a copy of the anthology-chapbook to be published in late September. Authors will retain their copyrights.

    Submissions should be prepared in standard clean format, 81/2 x 11, double-spaced; poems, ideally, will appear on one or two pages, but longer works may be considered. All forms are welcome; three poems or six pages maximum, to be submitted by August 15, 2015. There are no reading fees. 

    All submissions should include a short bio and self-addressed, stamped envelope for return of manuscripts. Send to: The Poetry Project, Sewanee, P.O. Box 641, Sewanee, TN 37375.

Contact: Dana Hay, e-mail: haydana7@gmail.com, Telephone: 931-636-4508.

Mail: P.O. Box 641, Sewanee TN 37375 if you have any questions.

Know

“Stay close, my heart, to the one who knows your ways…” - Rumi

I’d break the mold

Cast a maple spell on summer,

tether tonight’s dream

I’d stand inside the dream

Tadasana,  mountain to

stones in the river, silent

under paddle strokes.

I’d be diamonds in the smoke,

shining out our anthem.

I heard it yesterday.

Stagecoach Road wore fire pinks

along its limestone shoulders

I’d be the feathery sedum

beside it, delicate Tennessee triskelion

ready with all three arms

to wrap you up

in waterfalls, in high humidity

with leviathan heart,

whispering a sturdy pledge,

like the one of armadillos to fire ants -

we will follow you to the end of time.

--rosalynn cimino 2015

Seeking Crépusculaire

Be awake. I want to take you places.

You. The Myth. The Breath. The Lady.

There is no crucifixion in this abattoir.

-------

I want to show you how sweet the folds of wind are,

when nothing is ever lost

Float our way to Ouagadougou

To buy you indigo in the grand market

So you can dye our life that perfect hue

I’ll even give you all of Aldebaran in exchange for a kiss

But don’t tell Rohini, for she knows more than she lets on

She knows we’ll always arrive too late for Krishna’s favor

-- Invited or not, his funeral pyre is where we’ll burn our tomorrows

Or perhaps reincarnation is only a fetish for you

Though I claim it’s my blood’s only wish

And if I must return, let me be a collie and you my collar

You will always let me know -- who I really belong to

Oh, I’m sure I’ll grow weary of your antidisestablishmentarianism

But whether your church fits on the leaves of a strawberry

Or swims deftly within your womanhood

You are loved -- when only loss seems to have endurance

I promise, nothing is merely nebulous in our new world

even the colloquial pronunciation of the kingdom’s name

Where the streets hold jubilant signs of dancing

when your words start sweet

But with a hemorrhaging tango, those words sharpen as they go

And I see your wounds are deep, and mine not deep enough -- -- Yet

Such cruelty in your art, dear -- but it is -- your art

so pry loose the healing scab and cut me amazing,

I welcome your razor -- what I deserve -- for trying to fade

But the metamorphosis is closing the distance on one leg

And you can’t scream a question like “huh?” and expect grace

Absent of eloquence, in the luminous lines of your lips

Our sins are still so ephemeral

Then why, pray tell, is love fond of exclusivity?

Oh, the codswallop of the whole present situation

Is the only thing standing between you and me

Is you and me

Lady, we needn’t heed those traitors, we could slip into onomatopoeia

Where our kindred stories percolate in the minds of babes

It’s a dream-like murmuration of that we have created

A verbal map to transmogrify our fleeting connection

There the edges of our loves are riparian

Keeping the flood of doubt in the river’s throat

Saving the villagers the cost of enchantment

And the divvying up of our liquid assets

I have gratitude for our every interrupted breath

And I will not readily make an enemy of serendipity

So come, this is the apotheosis, our treasure to be claimed

But my hands are clumsy, my words higgledy-piggledy

Thus I may not be your best tour guide

But no tour guide will ever love you more

We are merely desiring a goddess softly in the storm

She sleeps in the cleft, laid bare in forgiveness

That is our one true place to live, where all is verdant

And splendidly open to you without fear

We claim now

We are here

We are crépusculaire

--- Kevin Cummings