by Tyran Schouten Oil on Panel
Cherry Hill Fountain
by Noah Heaps
1 Train Line
Digital Photograph
A small earth in a gold frame. Sometimes I think about life, and I can’t believe it really all happened.
All of It Happened
by Allison Walker Monotype & Oil Pastel
West Harlem by Hayden Davis
Colored Pencil and Posca Paint Pen
Harlem Lights
by Erin Kahn
Lights over Harlem
Last week of November
Strung on drowsy Lenox like a melody Electric ribbons wearying the night
Like raggedy piano keys
As the sun slides into slumber
On the corner the old church clangs the time: Clang, clang, clang 5 o clock on a Tuesday
Lights over Harlem
Last week of November
Breathing on Broadway like a goodbye Ruby diamond studded watches
Worn on the wrist of a cloudy sky
As the stars blink into being
The church on the old corner clinks the time: Clink, clink, clink When iced crystals blossom like China roses
Harlem at night
I taste the light
Of a hundred half open windows
I don’t belong here But here is belonging
For yesterday and today
As the moon dies into memory
My rickety heartbeat thumps the time: Thump, thump, thump
Too late to mourn what we’ve already lost But early enough to save what we have And sing a consummated dream Before another Christmas is dead
Snow Day by Evan Kirby Film Photograph
48 of 50 by
Sadie Veach
Did Jesus climb trees?
Did the soft parts of his hands Get scraped by The wrinkled wood?
Did He slip in His sandals
And cling tightly to the nearest branch Smiling at help in a swift escape from The potentially fast approaching ground?
He didn’t need to climb trees to Get closer to His Father, But perhaps,
On days when the veil was extra thin He could see Him smile Through the filtered leaves.
by Cole Gardner Acylic on Canvas
Mountains
Selections from ‘Divine(ing)’ Zine
by Kate Bennion & Hayden Davis Poetry/Digital Collage
Cocoon
by Claire Forste Watercolor on Paper with 22k Gold Leaf
“A friend of mine once told me that when a caterpillar enters its chrysalis it turns into a liquid before it reforms as a butterfly. She said we all have moments when we feel as if we’ve lost our form or we’ve liquified. Instead of feeling discouraged or lost we can trust that we’re growing. Don’t give up — your lowest point may be just before you emerge as a butterfly.”
Mariposa
by Claire Forste Watercolor on Paper with 22k Gold Leaf
“This painting depicts Monarch butterflies, which, in some Mexican traditions, represent the souls of the deceased. The cupped hands are those of a child. Both reference the shooting in Uvalde this year, while the melting and gold leaf symbolize hope for transformation in the wake of tragedy.”
Wolves or Shepherds?
by Kyle Durrant Collage
1 Peter 5
2 Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind;
3 Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.
4 And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.
Open by Joshua Jorgensen
I pray with my eyes open
For I can’t wait to see
The gifts my love has given This very day to me
He strengthens me when weary
As rays of light grow dim And any time I’m weeping I think only of him
Oh lover of my lonesome And oft abused soul
If you will look to me then Together we’ll be whole
I pray with my arms open
Though blemished they may be So willing and yet weary Still scarred by misery
But if I stretch them further Won’t he come take my side And fill the hole once left there Sweet love with me abide
By hand he’ll make me husband Consume my offered flesh Entwined with him at long last Eternally enmeshed
Oh yes pray with me open
For now I love a man With passion everlasting As I, Christ Jesus, can.
Vaguely Religious City Marginalia by Kate Bennion Digital Photography
A Descendant of Eve
by Sadie Veach
I used to dream at least twice a week that I was giving birth.
Telling people this always makes the tops of my ears feel warm, because there is something that people uncomfortable with discomfort hate about it. But, I feel I can trust you with my dream baby:
I’m always alone. Laboring in a wheat field. Panicking between contractions because I’ve never had a baby before and because I can’t remember how I got pregnant in the first place, which seems silly because I took a health class in ninth grade, and I heard stories on the playground. But then there is pain again, and the panic is replaced with sounds from my throat I don’t recognize. My back arches, my forehead glistens, I push and push and cry and push.
I never see the baby in my dreams. I wake up left with only the image of my fingernails bloodied from clawing at the dirt around me, and an elevated heart rate.
I mean, why do I even have these dreams in the first place? Maybe subconsciously I am terrified of the pain inherent in creation. Or perhaps, I am drawn to the drama of delivering a new life.
I think that is why, when I analyze my reflection during the in-between hours, I see Her.
I’m sure she was terrified of the pain that came as a consequence of that silly apple. I’m sure she agonized over her decision for weeks before she made it. I’m sure she, in whatever flat Garden way she could, experienced panic.
But yet, she craved the dichotomy. She knew somehow that this life she had surrounded by bees that buzzed and didn’t sting, was only halfway there.
A new life was necessary. For her. For Earth’s children. And I guess that is why she was willing to tear her current reality to shreds. Why she embraced the searing pain that would come from giving birth to humankind.
But this time, it wouldn’t be dirt under her fingernails. It would be fruit.
I often wonder what Eve’s first day in the Garden was
like. It makes sense to me that she was taken from Adam’s rib, because you need pre-existing human matter to create another human. But was she a fully formed adult? Was she a child? Or maybe, she was in the flowering stage of adolescence where her hips just began to widen.
A blossom in the Garden, grown from bone. Perhaps I am prejudiced, but I like to think she looked a lot like me. Created in the image of a Heavenly Mother, with thighs a little too thick for the rest of her body, and halfway curly locks that covered her bare chest. I see her when I watch in the mirror before a shower. When I shed myself and stare at her eyes on my face. But then again, she could look nothing like me.
I imagine when she saw herself for the first time in the reflection of a river or in Adam’s eyes she couldn’t help but think that this is what womanhood looked like. She was womanhood, in that instant. The amalgamation of the beauty and power inherent in female. These soft edges and powerful features. This soul. I wonder if she knew what women would go through because of her decision.
It’s called original sin. And most Christians believe in it. The notion that because of Eve’s rebellion we must all be baptized at birth to be cleansed from the very thing that gave us life. In my opinion, it is because Eve took the first step that Man and Other were not considered equal. Because the Other, the Woman, was the one who chose for pain to occur. Who chose to eat from the tree. Who tore down the progress-free state of the Garden and created a place for actual joy and growth, rather than days spent watching lions and lambs romp together through the grass.
Maybe that is why, as a woman, I have been taught by society to apologize for myself. To move when there isn’t enough room on the sidewalk for me and for the man coming my way. It’s almost like we are still apologizing for what Eve did.
Sorry, that was a bit off topic. We were talking about her first day.
In the Bible God says, “Let us make man”. Not “let me create man”. It is us. Multiple. Bringing to mind the idea that God is plural. Both a Heavenly Father and Mother. Parents creating children. The following verses state the God created man in His image, so it only makes sense to me that woman was made in God the Mother’s image. Divine beauty. She looked like her Momma.
But then we are brought back again to the question of what she looked like, and we know where that took us.
The first day.
The first human interaction.
Sometimes you meet people whose souls are made out of the same fabric as your own. People who know that you like jazz and black-and-white films before you’ve even said your name. You know the feeling. Those eyes that you meet on the subway that are shaped differently than yours, but look so very much like your own. In intent and story. Sewn out of the same fabric.
Born of the same bone.
I like to imagine that when Eve first met Adam everything was pure. There wasn’t prejudice or superiority or misogyny or fear. Just two souls, knit from the same vine. Perhaps, they looked over their gleaming bodies and noticed the differences in shape. Perhaps not. Maybe they heard the difference in their voices. Maybe not.
Different but not less than. Valid in their uniqueness.
I think Eve thought Adam was beautiful. With his long gangly legs and bare strong back, and the way his hips were straight instead of rounded like hers. So much wonder in that first gaze.
The first time I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art I was overcome by the love I had for marble statues. It’s like my eyes couldn’t take enough of them in. Softness in stone was what impressed me the most. The way they could be strong and beautiful at the same time.
People looked at them like Eve looked at Adam. Expecting nothing from the nakedness. Just admiring. Bodies as bodies instead of bodies as objects that can be owned and manipulated to satisfy.
I like to think that is what Eve and Adam saw. Interesting bodies. Beautiful and strong.
I especially like thinking of Adam on this first day, because it only makes sense that he be respectful and curious and giving. Man wasn’t created thinking he deserved more. That’s a learned trait. Adam must have seen Eve merely as another human. Someone with the same opportunities as him. Someone who deserved the same opportunities as he. And while I’m sure he was curious about the differences in their bodies, he knew that ultimately it was up to him what he did with
his skin, and it was up to Eve what she did with hers. Perfect equality on the first day in the garden, because no one had taught them otherwise.
No one showed them behaviors that would contradict their natural instincts to share. No one told Adam that he shouldn’t like that particular flower because flowers are feminine. No one told Eve that she should stop gushing about how the grass felt on her toes. They just were. Natural. Whole.
Admiring each other like works of art because that is what they were. Masterpieces from the Creator Himself.
But to have a love like Eve. My word.
What do you think they talked about? What filled their heads in the comfortable silence?
I used to dream of my soulmate. Not like the dream I told you about at the beginning, but dreaming with my eyes open, searching crowds for a face that felt familiar. A same fabric heart looking for mine too.
I say I used to, I mean that I still do, but it differs now. I look for him in aspects of myself. Things that I wish to improve or attributes I can’t help but love. I look for someone who would annotate the pages of my life thus far with small handwriting and sticky notes, dogearing the pages he doesn’t understand and burying his chest in the spine. A same fabric soul that helps me feel like the way I do when I dance barefoot in the dark.
I listen for the familiarity of his voice as if I have accidentally misplaced him for a moment, the small moment between heaven and here.
There has only been one time when someone was with me in the field of my dream. Someone who held my hand and cried with my weeping and encouraged my strength. I don’t know who he is, but he had brown skin and eyes that I swear I had seen before. And the way his soul looked at mine made me feel like anything was possible. The boy who came to me in my garden. The boy who loves my dreams so much he showed up in one.
My own Adam.
Would he follow me if I took the fruit? Would I take it?
Vaguely Religious City Snapshots
by Hayden Davis Digital Photography
Does the Journey Seem Long Lyrics
Does the journey seem long,
The path rugged and steep?
Are there briars and thorns on the way?
Do sharp stones cut your feet
As you struggle to rise
To the heights thru the heat of the day?
Is your heart faint and sad, Your soul weary within, As you toil ’neath your burden of care?
Does the load heavy seem You are forced now to lift?
Is there no one your burden to share?
Let your heart be not faint Now the journey’s begun; There is One who still beckons to you. So look upward in joy
And take hold of his hand;
He will lead you to heights that are new—
shared by Melany Chavez
The Journey by Melany Chavez Digital Photograph
by Lynn Tsai Oil Painting
Hideaway
Central Park in the Summer
by Abby Mitton Digital Photograph
Riding the Long-Distance Bus to Pittsburgh
by Ted Bushman
Most people can afford the bus. They don’t ask for your ID. They trust that you just want to get somewhere. They know that the long-distance bus Is not a destination.
The world is taut and rigid with ice. The setting sun stains the rim of the sky orange Like it’s been burnt, like it’s still burning And in the dimming firelight the silhouettes of the trees are naked brambles Frozen mid-ritual. Whether it’s supplication or sacrifice, mourning or lauding, Nobody has an opinion.
Personally, I wonder how trees can be Christian Or celebrate Christmas. (Set aside how we treat them, amputating their lower halves And displaying them in our houses, wrapping them In glass and wire, as they die slowly, In bowls of sugar water) They spend half the year in icy agony. What God could a tree believe in? Who but a mad tyrant would transform life-giving water Into ice?
At a gas station I saw a sign “Hiring, up to ten dollars an hour” My sandwich costs eight. I wonder if I can bear to know that; I wonder if I can talk to the girl behind the counter Without damning myself forever Demanding my lunch from the glimmering goddess without a high school degree Or the glorious Hephaestus sweeping the faded tiles, With the patchy beard and the thick prescription goggles.
I wonder if I can bear to know What all of these silent passengers are hoping. How many are reading about the exploits of people more famous than they?
How many hope to be famous — or at least fabulously wealthy? How many have broken like misguided ships on those rocks?
How many burned bridges have led all us to this ferry?
How many bad ideas, taken to their conclusion? How much advice, ignored?
The life-giving water is frozen all around us. Our limbs are locked in ponds that, a season ago, were good for swimming. As the bus rattles on and the sunset disappears, the country disappears We and the trees and the icy highway Are left alone in the dark.
The trees are more Christian than I am, They were there when it began. They know how to wait through winter, Through the brutal season’s span. A glowing star cannot melt the ice, But a Sun can.
by Aniston Eyre Watercolor Painting
Sheep Meadow in Central Park
O Little Town
by Amanda Jacobsmeyer Blackout Poetry, Mixed Media
William by Claire Forste Watercolor and Pen
IN DEFENSE OF BOTTLING ANGER
by Kristin Perkins
Lord, help me not fear my rage or the fear that prompts me to it.
Lord, let this anger burn down the barriers that stop up my ears.
Lord, aid some maddening to the purpose of reimaging this place, my home.
Like all good Mormon girls, I learned the ways to bottle my rage.
My mother, a strong woman, told me not to. Told me it was wrong to push pain down. My mother, who fought forest fires and climbed electrical poles, tried to coax her shy daughter, me, to speak. Chastised her shy daughter, me, not to bottle it inside.
But since when was bottling an evil thing?
I want to picture it there — not an industrial plant but a small operation of women living in the kitchen of my ribcage and bottling the wrathful harvest for cautious storage somewhere in my gut. In the warm, soft home of my body, I want to imagine the steam and sweat and jars and lids. Noises, rhythmic but not regular. Like the women I saw at the orphanage making their tamales or the nuns I saw at the monastery laying the mint on drying racks. The work of tomorrow’s meal. The work of preservation. The faith in a future where this might be useful.
I want to find meaning in the bottling of anger. I know this goes against the common wisdom of my coming-of-age — feminist encouragement of unchaining, unbridling, of uncontrol. Heaven knows, I’ve bitten my tongue and choked my words enough to know that pain. Enough to taste iron. Botulism in shrunken bits of my own holy, holed soul.
But I bear testimony that there is purpose in the bottling.
In the times when the anger blooms fast, grows wide, and a thousand careful hands of my ancestors rise in me to set to the work of bottling this. The miracle of pickled things. I want curds. I want tinctures. I want remedies. Make me balms in Gilead.
I want to delve deep into myself and see the storehouse shelves. The anger, frustration, the hurt, and fear that I’ve bottled over the years glittering in my belly like so many jewels. I want the maturation of common rage into something vinegared, sharper, smarter.
And then I want to unscrew the jars.
Lord, let my hurt be made sustenance among the tented camps battling for good. Let my screams be preserved until they are bitter, sweet solutions. Let me find usefulness in clenched fists, tight jaws, in screams, in tears, in spit-flying “this can’t be it.” There must be a better world than this. Let me not drain my anger of its force, but let its force find, in the ingredient of time, a new and stronger savor.
Finally fed, let my body find direction in its dance towards justice. Let all that is vicious and proud in me be brined until — bitten into— it has become what it always really was — a kind of furious love.
Relief from a Pulpit with the Symbol of Saint Luke ca. 1180
Master Christophanus or Stephanus
The Met Cloisters
Magnificat
by Kate Bennion
With thanks to Rob Myallis for his translation notes on the book of Luke
The ox is freed from its stall ready to roll forth in earth-shaking joy a wave, a pulse of liberation–muscles roiling sinuous and sweaty as an imminent storm. boundless now, with bliss plunging forward as one whose very existence is a promise of movement both in and out of time–
I, alive again, rise again, arrive again and walk toward you to tell you this: the mercy of One who Remembers. I speak of what has been done, what has been given in service of every generation–Power, utterly remade
You and I, the lowly, we are filled we are exalted we are named
Listen–I am telling you what is
Open the gate.
by Jenna Hazelwood Digital Photograph
Washington Square Park
Dwellers in the Great City
by Erin Kahn
Every December I visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche. The Tree is decorated with angels carved in 18th-century Naples, gifted to the Met by their owner many years ago.
A day or two after visiting it this year, I happened upon a chapter called “Christmas in New York” in an 1882 book called New York by Sunlight and Gaslight. These were some of the parts that stood out to me:
New York attests its Dutch and English descent by the heartiness with which it “keeps Christmas.” For weeks before the great day of the Feast the city is in gala attire… As the festival draws nearer, the bustle and excitement increases throughout the city, and when Christmas Eve is reached New York is fairly crazed with enthusiasm. …
Towards eleven o’clock business begins to slacken, the crowds of purchasers fall off, and soon the stalls are closed, the lights go out, and the dealers prepare to go home. The city becomes quieter, and by midnight the Christmas purchases are over, and New York prepares for a little rest. Yet not long does the silence continue. When the bell of old Trinity tolls the last stroke of the hour of midnight, there is a momentary hush in the streets, and then rolling down from their lofty height, through the dark thoroughfares and over the silent waters of the bay, come the rich, glad tones of the chimes, filling the air with a burst of melody. “Christmas has come,” they seem to say. “Awake and rejoice, ye dwellers in the great city. Banish your cares and lift up your hearts. For one day let sin and sorrow cease. ‘Glad tidings of great joy’ await you. Christmas has come: Christ is born.”
The chapter reflected my own thoughts and feelings about Christmas in New York and Christmas in general, and for a moment, it felt like a coming together of everything I’d been thinking about over the past few weeks. I put it all together and wrote this poem.
No one keeps Christmas like this impossible
Universe we call New York City
Decked in her gala grandeur
She almost outsplendors the moon
Coaxes little crinkled stars
To nestle in tinseled avenues
Crazed with expectation Manhattan awaits the morn
If we’re lucky it will snow
Crushed stars hushing the night
Then another city emerges Beautiful and bright
Ye dwellers in the great city Greet the glorious light Gather joys like roses
To gild the tender night
(Me, I stroll the glowing streets
Disbelieving nothing Feeling everything Lost to wonder)
Meanwhile quietly the Met Puts up a Christmas tree
Garlanded with angels Golden sensors dropping peace
A gift of grace to grace the city
To herald his birth for 300 years 300 years is little room To ponder the marvelous meaning Of infinite God bound in a babe Like an almost invisible star
Precious hallelujahs
From Naples to New York
These angels sing each night anew As they sang before our birth
But only those who linger In the stillness after Trinity’s chimes Have rung both lofty heights And depths with gladsome rhymes
Will hear the holy silence Between the Eve and Christmas Day
Listen—can you hear it? Listen—will you listen?
Snow Day 2 by Evan Kirby Film Photograph
2022 Harlem YSA Ward New York, NY
