Segullah Journal

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

We are watchmen for your safe passage; pacing at the harbor, readying for unloading, the bustle, the clatter exclamation, reunion. but for now, we, watchmen wait impatient knitting together our nets, our brows, our families, passersby. coming or going? they ask, and we smile. staying, continuing, watching, ever hoping, ever vigilant, until, with wind’s last [...]

air cools. rich, lucent blue ripples, flaxen with slanted sunlight. canoe slips through narrow pine-shadowed inlet, nuzzles coarse sand. jumbled cargo awaits— remnants of play. laughter fades sun-weary, content. sandcastles sag as little waves greet one small stray shovel. suntips slide behind the alp. wind stops. the lake rests silent as glass. In her previous [...]

she’s no longer a child but no more than a child yet still plays Narnia and builds mansions of Lincoln Logs and blocks her eyes glow with tears when I confirm her cautious suspicions about Santa she remembers wearing the same clothes to school all week— easier to find every morning on the floor, before [...]

How did she see peaches, never seeing a Cezanne? This mother of my mother who passed to me, across a generation, her own deep-burning need for Beauty. Or so I’m told. “You remind me of your grandma,” my mother used to chide as she coaxed me from pages abloom with Renoirs and Monets. “Only she [...]

Leaning over the bathtub rinsing the dye out of my hair, I notice that the droplets splattered on the porcelain look like blood. It reminds me of my mother, whose death had nothing to do with blood or bathtubs or hair-dye, but who had always prided herself on not coloring her hair: “It crosses the [...]

Since you were born I’ve never been alone, never will be, standing now at zero on a line that stretches out forever to the right. Always at the edges of my sight you pull at me, your dance a haunting grace. Nevermore I’ll live in just one place: my restless senses stretch like tentacles into [...]

I swaddle you tight to mimic the watery womb of your metamorphosis, where you emerged, tugged by froggy legs from your mother’s belly not two hours ago. The doctor cut you free from the enchanted pond of your gestation and laid you on her chest, a lump of jelled flesh held together by waxed skin, [...]

Dawn rides the morning air over silent houses and abandoned gardens, flickering light along the edge of the windowsill, ushering in my grandmother’s fearful cry. Like a crumbling yellow leaf dropping suddenly from an ancient oak, the stillness shudders and startles me from my dreams. I find her, golden, warm and white. Eyes, closed as [...]

Did Eve fear death the first time she bled? Did she yell for Adam, sweating from his labor, to come running, afraid he would be alone again? How many days did she wait and wonder, cleaning, bleeding, avoiding her husband’s glances and rough hands? Did she dress and trudge through mud to the altar kneeling [...]

Dawn cracks open the shell of night, leaks light into far corners of hard hearts, reveals hope waiting like a trusting child. The earth exhales, blows fog and darkness back into the black night, inhales new air, faith as fresh as rain in summer. I memorize the map of stars disappearing overhead. They remain in [...]