Segullah Journal

First Place, Poetry Contest
For K
Opinions vary as we wait to hear if her
health is billed clean as spic-n-span,
and in my bumbling fearful heartbreak I
find myself as useless in consolation as
I imagine; no more, no less … I loathe this
mortal question.
Standing bald and ashen, still she teaches
not just Sunday School, but tenfold—
the lines of faith and [...]

The fathers think of soccer
as the usual battlefield.
They expect to see warriors
where little girls were.
From beside the sweet crushed grass
by the equator of the field
where they watch their own daughters
hesitate, lend a hand
to another who is down,
and hear, Oh, sorry! No, YOU go ahead!
rise like doves from the din of the game,
they holler,
Get it! Get [...]

Uriah’s wife
Tresses unbound
Stepped unwise wet
Too open to sky.
Did she know?
Was she flattered by the attention?
Favored or frightened?
The loneliness of a soldier’s too frequent
Absence abated.
Lulled by earth-power
Did she walk reluctant or
Grasp with arms open
To have her name forever
Braided with tragedy?
Elaine Rumsey Wagner has a bachelor’s in math from BYU and a master’s in math from California [...]

For my father, gone seven years now
My father, inches away on my couch,
sinks his body into cushions where he stays
to slow me down with conversations.
Rippling syllables, staccato-like words,
round his soft ears as he pretends to bend
around my life and understand. He sees me,
his only daughter with two daughters of my own.
My body shaped from his, [...]

someday i will stand
barefoot beneath a blue sky and i will
feel you separated from me by
only a thin layer of skin and membrane and
you will be me but not at all me
and someday you will run to me with
muddy hands and
pull on my shirt and
lay your head in that warm place between
my neck and my [...]

Your spirit escaped in two deep sighs
like air hissed from a balloon;
and, no longer confined,
it filters through the house
dusting everything with your stilled presence.
Voices compel me beyond our converged time,
past the lingering smell of your cologne,
past your words, ah, dearest, your tender words
as they turn to whispers.
I contemplate the lonely moon, not quite full,
caught in [...]

Wooden slats subdivide the moon,
slice light into almost even strips.
Thick eyelashes sweep the stillness
of lines cast across your sleeping face.
Light stripes you, reveals you in fractions—
closed eyes, mouth, scar from your first shave.
Lines of light tremble in the thunder of a passing train.
You sleep on, undisturbed.
After one sacred day and night,
my restlessness answers your snores.
I [...]

For Gram
It’s been a summertime of solace
like I’ve had before, soaking
up the warmth of your
bright soul and listening
to your yarns and ponderings.
I’ve filled myself to overflowing
with your fresh perspective,
born of ice cream through the alleyway and
days with only soap of raging lye
and learning not to cater though you cherish.
With company along soon, we pull out
the [...]

Silver lines snake up my belly
and my daughter claims them
with childlike pride and I’ve
spent a few rounds
flat on the floor, unresponsive as
nobody’s business, so why should
I feel on the less-than side of the
catwalk?
Skin-deep seems a little underrated
as I try and button up and
cannot seem to fit myself—
except with my eyes closed—
into anything but
less-than, almost, tired
day-to-day-ness [...]

2008 poetry contestsecond place
It’s the kiss of nervous wing against dirt, dragging against gravel;
it’s a cry, a feigned weakness leading the predator away;
it’s a gift for facing danger:
her liver enlarged, cancer rampant,
pain not sometimes but always,
& always tired; her gaunt eyes—
the way she looked at us all that Sunday,
as calm as calm in being carried [...]

2008 poetry contest third place
There you were—
where even shadows smelled of creosote & sage,
four feet below mesquite roots, & dry drift in salt cedar;
erosion carved above you, & around you;
warm sand pouring through your fingers, across your legs …
And, somehow—below that dark horizon, in rain-charged air—
she felt to leave work, come home, & find & [...]

My leaves a series of prayers,
fitted jointly together,
equidistant, lifted up unto the Most High—
Bulbous, maybe,
but bound about by a delicate green,
enclosing a crisp yet mild heart—
Single-rooted in the dark earth,
thick with its secrets,
deep in the thought of growing.
Ellen Kartchner Gregory was born and raised in southeastern Arizona. She now lives with her husband and their [...]

I rebel against
tight tanned teenage bodies,
hoeing, and
cooked mushrooms.
I am a woman now.
Five children
pregnant-birthed-nursed
to widen flatten sag
me down.
I hide under clothes.
Usually.
But I flaunt
my battle scars in the garden.
I used to hoe
girlishly,
rushing the tool,
chopping wildly.
Now I sit small,
swimming suit and shorts,
sunscreen baked and
smeared with dirt.
I nip and tuck
weeds
between thumb and finger,
soil and green plant stains
grinding into the [...]

I rock my squalling baby
and study the orange cookbook’s
eating laws
for my mother-in-law,
who stumbles home
from dialysis
three times a week
too weary to cook,
or even eat:
No potassium (no
bananas). No phosphorus
(no tomatoes). No
salt (no bacon).
We make do.
With one hand I shift
my baby; with the other
I stir dijon-flavored
chicken. Too tough,
too dry (another rule:
limit water). Olive
salmon: better, still nothing
quits the nausea,
nothing [...]

Ten days before her stroke
my grandma, yoga limber,
rested her torso flat, raised
her legs in slow scissors, rising
upside down. I applauded.
She grinned.
I showed her my first
tae kwon do form: front stance
low block, step and punch.
She watched me:
taut face, jerky motions,
scared of my own flesh,
awkward, yet gleeful.
She clapped.
We joyed in moving.
Something in her soul
was stolen, with that [...]

A tiny tree: glitter-spangled
ornaments, blinking lights,
perched on her narrow
shelf. Machines sustaining
life (and fear) sang carols,
a choir of beeps.
Beneath the tree, her picture: look.
This figure swathed in gauze,
held by hissing tubes,
is nothing like
my husband’s sweet-eyed mother.
Christmas Day we opened hollow gifts;
left the children, unsuspecting,
and visited the ICU.
We held her empty hands.
Too stunned to cry, we watched
her [...]

Don’t tell me about rose-cheeked Arcadian youth
gathering daisies on a hillside
piping tunes to their cloud-fluffy sheep
under the stars.
No, these were foul-smelling, lusty
men with dirty necks, greasy hands,
snorting, arguing, joke-telling, nose-picking
men—one wearing stolen
sandals (although I admit he felt
guilty about it)—gambling on who
had the best aim as they chucked rocks
at a nearby lizard.
You talk about salt of [...]

My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon. . . . Let this thing be done for me: let me alone [...]

Rumpelstiltskin cried
because you belong to me;
baby spun golden,
milky skin stained with roses—
eyes fished from the blue North Sea.

this day in bleak midwinter.
gray sky wraps earth with
angel sleeves and snow
drops heavily onto soot singed drifts.
we are tired, you and I.
a train mourns distance.
twilight seeps into tree bones—
obscures the falling sky.
the kitchen waits unswept and cold.
you hold me close.
we burrow into blankets like
two groundhogs revisiting slumber.
nestling next to me, you sigh.
tomorrow we can be [...]

I got your jewelry, a couple of scarves, and an old dress
I claimed just because it looked like you.
But familiar though the earrings are, the scarf, the dress,
the emerald pin, no matter how I squint into the past
I can’t make out your face and now I fear
I never really saw it. Being a mother too,
this [...]

Leviticus 12:1–7
Sand scorches my feet
like ashes,
a forgotten fire.
Sun on my face
welcomes me back
from eighty dark days
to witness bloody horns,
spatters of careful slaughter,
a pool of blood sliding across the sand
black and sticky, like my own,
but sprinkled on a holy altar,
consecrated.
If I could step inside,
stroke the wide cloth
brown with years of sin,
write my name
with my own
human redness,
would [...]

Midsummer.          Eventide.          Live waters.
You:          broad-backed bundle of golden sheaves
hewn down,
washed,
rushed
headlong through death’s threshing current.
You:          pre-ripe, holy harvest
wrested from these, your people;
gathered to those, your people
who attend from iridescent pastures.
You:          Firstborn son,
First fruits of my womb,
Firstling of our flock,
First raised of our labors  . . .
Enfolded now in the arms of the
First raised from the [...]

Almost naked,
she stands before the full-length mirror,
loving her reflection.
Three years old, still baby soft.
“Look, Mom,” she says,
bending backward,
her round belly protruding.
“I’m so big!”
Yes, you are, I say,
and ache,
knowing the day will come
when her view of what is
beautiful
will change,
and she will no longer see it
in herself.
How I wish I could capture
the adoration I see now—
pour it [...]

It begins as
gentle emptiness,
nudging me toward food
as though I simply forgot
to eat
and it must remind me
of my negligence.
I bat the feeling away,
irritated that it comes
so often,
dreading just a little
its progression
toward hollow gnaw,
sticky thirst,
mild fuzzy weakness.
Each time it comes—
this instinct rooted in clay
I am so little acquainted with—
I think about spirit,
and wonder why,
when mine is withering [...]

First Place Winner, Poetry Contest
Luke 1:25
Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.
He wrote, “My prayer was heard!” I thought,
      Which one?
Can faithless prayer be answered? Or do old prayers
carry old faith’s fervency, like remnant
odors on old cloth? Is this the [...]

Honorable Mention, Poetry Contest
I peered into a puddle
and saw the sky,
as if I had lain
on the pavement and looked up
through the spreading fingers
of the trees.
Gazing
into the sheen
of the sidewalk,
I watched the heavens
and saw them tremble
at my passing.

Emily Summerhays lives in New York City, where she works as a grants writer, occasionally sings in a [...]

Honorable Mention, Poetry Contest
And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. (Gen. 3:20)
I.
Laurel tossed, we leave ourselves
lost as we are
the wanton world our choice.
We ate to know,
we ache now to be
known as we are.
Moving, a glance over our
slumped shoulders, vows broken by our voice,
we trail our glory
through the [...]

Honorable Mention, Poetry Contest
Do not steal my fire and ice, make null
my trial, void it with another name
than pain. The cut of a blade opening to bright red
is revelation, not in later epiphany,
but present sense, the now of living, now of
lava coursing down my throat to scorch my
inside self. I know on my tongue the [...]

Honorable Mention, Poetry Contest
she was (young) driving safely home
after work and realized (strange)
that she was going (instead of East)
West, and slowed the car into a
parking (unused)-lot to turn around.
Finding (somehow) herself on the
wrong (the passenger) side of
the car and starting to move back
she, hearing mother’s voice,
(or God’s) say,
don’t move over just run home now! [...]