My youthful myths were invented at my mother’s knee and St. Catherine’s, a conceived, delivered temple for ghosts who took of the bread in their ceremony of the dead and conformed to ceramic monuments with a list of saints that read Linus, Cletus, Clement, and Sixtus. Mea culpa. My moment…

Before the orange ball of fire hides behind trees in the cemetery, Long Mountain, and the Blue Ridge, it lights up the peonies, wisteria, the stone sentinels, and farmlands carved into the hillside to the east, putting its positive glow on the petty worries of the day, the unfulfilled longings …

The curve of the lens bends the ray of light as it shifts to the delicate strand of web on the leaf. Brown edges betray the gold grandeur of autumn illuminated by the morning sun that quickly climbs to the top of Dickie Ridge only to move in an arc that hides the leaf’s glory, leaving it in silent splendor.

Leaving Newark Behind The musty smell of moisture-laden Cotton and wool upholstery In 50s sedans Produces an irrational Revulsion… Perhaps it was the Motion sickness while Listening to “Three Little Fishies” Playing on the radio, The smoke from My parents’ L&M’s, and My father’s press and release Of the gas pedal again and…

Taylor Cherefko 2/22/09–10/3/22 The day lilies are almost In bloom, struggling for A spot in the sun next To the cattails along the small Rivulet of water that Divides grasses, tall And thick from Rainstorms. The front yard is dotted With colorful frames that House swarms of bees And wild flower honey, Thick and sweet on the tongue. This is the meeting place Where friends gather To ascend Smith Run Road,

Poetry is a physical, invisible source of light that peeks from holes inside of us; it is a voice for the physicality of eyes and fingers and a product of the process of healing from little scars and gaping eyes and ears of small children. A “journey of a nervous impulse,” it is an untreated spasm sifted in neurotic channels and recorded in words that flip Webster’s dictionary, leaving it to wander

More space than matter, I wonder why I haven’t drifted apart from myself (though to be true, I have more than once), gluing the atoms together and forming what I thought I should be or what everyone else thought I was. Not recognizing the image that stares at me from the computer screen, I gaze into silver-backed glass and see a distorted etching of a face that seems pale and unfamiliar, with thinner lips, more lines,

I take the bits and the forces that bond them together, and scramble them in the clouds above and in the bowels of the earth to rearrange the way I see myself in order not to fear the view. I see your skin touch the sky in splendor as you focus your will onto those bits and rearrange them into a pattern that is more pleasing to the eye of the soul, but with each passing day, each week, each month,

~after Edgar James Maybery Though smaller than the cliffs of Folkestone and Dover, the cliffs of Lyme Regis bring back memories of sailing from England to Calais. This is a lonely landscape — a solitary boat in the still, open water and a cluster of masts, one bow, and a…