Cultivation

  By Saunie Krewson

  The slash and the burn found us

  words harvested

  broken-backed by a lifetime

  of cultivating fields

  dealt fallow by neglect or exhaustion

  the joker always wild

  and resurrected.

  Echo of sighs

  from enumerable lips

  that could have been mine

  hints painted across darkened skies

  hand-cut letters

  smithed in an inferno

  of tea readings

  not denying

  A maze of hints

  led us to conspire

  these rutted furrows

  cut deep into our earth and brow

  a land tended by the absence of herdsmen

  This has become our home

  About the Author

  Saunie Krewson's poetry has garnered popular and critical acclaim from angelic friends and several overly critical cats. Haunted by her ancestry of authors from the 19th century, writing has always been understood as a inherited affliction as well as a frequently broken oracle of the divine.

  https://www.recapitated.net

  The Heart of Christmas

  By Haven Malone

  Photo by Kathleen Chambers