by John W. Sexton

white black mood …
invisible spectral snows
forever freezing him in

the shapeless house …
I am squeezed through an udder
into the basement

older than the noises
of space … loud
that very first silence

an engine of starlings
… the exhaled breath
takes us higher

trouble in the brittle sky
… brought before
the commissar of toffee

father snail’s spiral home
he screwed himself in
he screwed himself out

the ladder of spaces
but no rungs … Xu Lizhi
steps into faith

as easy as
pulling the stars
with a pliers

by Mary O’Connell

The smell of roasted lamb —
spiky cypresses, cool at evening,
cast shadows in the slanting sun.

High in the upper room
the Master fills some water jars.
It would have been enough

to lay out towels and oil
for these twelve hefty Galileans,
but he bends and pours.

This is the night that rends the seam of time,
sets the spinning world back on its track.
This is the hour when Seder light grows bright

to push the powers of darkness firmly back.
The Elijah cup waits in the growing dusk
to pour out wine that drops down thick as blood.

Now towelled and expectant, the chosen twelve
carry unleavened loaves and bitter herbs,
reminders of the first Passover meal,

when Pharaoh held their ancestors in chains,
but now the fearsome seal of ordination,
more binding than the mortar of the slaves,

stamps each one with new unearthly power
taking His broken body in their hands
to heal and bring to wholeness on this earth

those who are broken, desolate and lost.
Continuing from Melchizedek of old,
they’ll move along his path and do his will.

Bearing a secret cross, they will retrace
the way to Golgotha, unsafe and steep —
a way of brigands, miscreants, and thieves.

by Mary O’Connell

Some may say that we’re endowed with rational free will.
Sigmund Freud refuted this, his theories haunt us still.
Starting with sex, one marvels at the beans he had to spill,
Oedipal neurosis was soon to fit the bill.

Eros and Thanatos are tearing us apart —
desire for love, a push towards death, even if we’re smart,
these drives are hard-wired into us from the very start,
so that we may be putting the whores before Descartes.

Have you been troubled by the monsters of the Id,
lurking in the shadows when you dare to lift the lid?
all those secret longings, forbidden things you did,
like pulling wings off flies when just a little kid?

The Super-ego wants the whole lot to be repressed,
The Ego asks what course of action would be best?
Confused, you make great efforts to get things off your chest,
the ‘shrink from hell’ may blackmail you with what you have confessed.

Internal psychic harmony will always have appeal,
but data lately verified by scientists can reveal
that neurons call the shots and our freedom is not real,
so how are we supposed to maintain an even keel?

The world itself is crazy, so which of us is sane?
Denial and projection are how we play the game.
Should we forget the ‘talking cure’, since pills can kill the pain?
Hours of analysis may end up down the drain.

The three pound mass of jelly that hides inside our head
is all we have to figure out our purpose, since we shed
the concept of a soul, and God, they say is dead,
which leaves our true identity just hanging by a thread.

by Maisie Houghton

Remember when I would muse:
you attempted omelettes at Christmas breakfast,
we walked the field of Queen Anne’s Lace?
But then — your own dismissive
Please don’t keep asking that . . .

I stumble upon this unnoticed hint,
the grey shroud of not enough remembering,
descending upon the mountain of your mind.
Where is your elsewhere, those bell-like moments
Of innocent uncertain childhood,
the quiet street, the beech tree beside the house?

Your elsewhere is nowhere now.
Amid the paraphernalia of canes, braces,
wheelchair lap robes,
surely there must be a mica shard of memory:
grieving for Beloved Dog’s death,
splashing cologne on our solemn five-year-old?
It’s wolf juice you tease, or could it be
a fragile sloop tethered in the harbor,
a green sail in a green sea?