You in me, I in you by Pulkita Anand

 

Image | AS Photography

You in me, I in you

Woke up to the rustling of the pages of the morning

The night’s smoke of failure cleared by the sunlight

Lightening pours from every pore, boiling and boiling

Expanding cloud of nothingness carrying the self

Wafted in the vast sky, wheezes the oceanic soul

Ferrying on the fleet of forgiveness

My distant relative, happiness comes daily

Whom I don’t remember or recognise

Meanwhile, the song is drifting and again

From an empty cup, I filled my cup

Freshened by the dews, the soul feasted

Listening to the silence of grass, trees, and stone

Nothing is lost, hold the golden moment

We are a special limited edition

In the dark, constellations of stars and white flowers shine

Love, hold, and let go with faith in every hour

Fall and rise again with every fall

On the whole, I learned my role

© Pulkita Anand

Pulkita Anand

Pulkita Anand is an avid reader of poetry. Author of two children’s e-books, her recent eco-poetry collection is we were not born to be erased. Various publications include Tint Journal, Origami Press, New Verse News, Green Verse: An anthology of poems for our planet (Saraband Publication), Comparative Women, Origami Press, Asiatic, Inanna Publication, Bronze Bird Books, SAGE Magazine, The Sunlight Press, and elsewhere.

Follow Feed the Holy.

imitatio dei by Meridawn Duckler

 

Image | Luis Felipe

imitatio dei

When I want a world, I want it yesterday;

at parties, I’m awkward but believe my absence would be noted.

At work, I’m assured nothing arrives some way

though I have no confirmation, only the great jade ocean

slipping on the surface of the world like a marble

the sky, a blue canvas over the world rim

or a jar of school paste under the blue-lined pages trembles.

No one imagines me as a child because what never begins

can’t end. But if I was a child, I was one who made things.

I made my eyes two light switches, lying in bed, 

sliding trees off my fingertips, wearing planet rings

starlight reflected off my fingernail bed

on the street where I’d hidden a hard charcoal heart

under heavy rock: this was how diamonds started. 

Previously published in Anti-Heroin Chic

© Meridawn Duckler

Meridawn Duckler

Merridawn Duckler is a writer and visual artist from Oregon and author of INTERSTATE (dancing girl press), IDIOM (Washburn Prize, Harbor Review), MISSPENT YOUTH (rinky dink press), and ARRANGEMENT (Southernmost Books). She won the Beullah Rose Poetry Contest from Smartish Pace. Work in Seneca Review, Interim, Posit, Plume, Massachusetts Review, and Ninth Letter.

Follow Feed the Holy.

Pulsar by Ajanta Paul

 

Image | Gilbert

Pulsar

Suddenly a word

becomes filled with light.

It is a neutron star

freighted with mass.

You explore its unimaginable 

density as it spins

innumerable times

in a second, heavy

with meaning. 

It beams

its radiance across 

the vast expanses

of your imagination

releasing spaces and

illuminating corners

you never knew

existed within you. 

The pulsed light

that reaches you

is the inspiration

igniting your poem.

© Ajanta Paul

Ajanta Paul

Ajanta Paul is a widely published poet, short story writer, and literary critic. He was a former Principal of Women's Christian College, Kolkata. A Pushcart nominee, Ajanta has been published in literary journals including Capella Biannual Journal, Offcourse, The Statesman, The Wild Word, Atticus Review, and Spadina Literary Review. 

Follow Feed the Holy.

ARRAYED by Ray Whitaker

 

Image | Stephane Hurbe

ARRAYED

As still as death

no movement in this dark place

no chest rise and fall

no stars, the dark sky belying a spark

well hidden, as if

under a thick layer of leaves

the forest at dusk.

Sometimes the light finds us

penetrating, a rare occurrence

through the underlayment of dark’s cold blanket

and the wolves… 

the wolves, even as cognizant entities, spiritual

arrayed in a fan on the utmost slope

looking down at us

show some respect, 

giving us our new respect.

not the deference of black fear, 

for our ability to protect ourselves.

© Ray Whitaker

Ray Whitaker

Ray has four books published and two chapbooks. His work has been published in eleven different countries. Ray was a Delegate to the 2024 Writers’ International Panorama Festival. He participates regularly in several Zoom poetic events worldwide. Among them, he has been spotlighted on a US National Poetry broadcast from Quintessential Listening Poetry Online Radio in 2024, and also an International Poetry Recital hosted by The Fertile Minds out of India.  In July 2025, he was the featured poet in David Leo Sirois’

Spoken World Online, which is associated with Spoken Word Paris.

Follow Feed the Holy

Who Will Hold Me When I Die by Nancy Machlis Rechtman

 

Image | SHVETS Productions

Who Will Hold Me When I Die

The TV accompanied my life

Like a soundtrack playing in the background

I wasn’t really paying attention

Until the sonorous voice of the broadcaster solemnly proclaimed,

“She was surrounded by her loving family

As they said their last good-byes.”

The words rattled me

And the solitude pierced my heart

Until an unbidden tear trickled down my cheek

And I clicked the remote to Off

Then flung it across the room

And not for the first time, I wondered

Who will hold me when I die

When I’m bedridden

Hauntingly alone in a stark white room

Surrounded by the monotonous beep of machines

Just as the beat of my heart inevitably slows

I will sift through the memories that are all that remain of my life

Searching for the minuscule flecks of meaning

That has been my reason to hang on

Yet no one else will be able to see them

They will be so elusive that I will grasp fruitlessly as they flit through my brain

Trying to keep them from vanishing like the wave

Of a magician’s wand

Before the lights go out.

© Nancy Machlis Rechtman

Nancy Machlis Rechtman

Nancy Machlis Rechtman has had poetry and stories published in Writing In A Woman’s Voice, miniMAG, Discretionary Love, Young Ravens, and more. Nancy has had poetry, essays, and plays published in various anthologies. She wrote Lifestyle stories for a local newspaper and served as the copy editor for another paper.

Follow Feed the Holy

Poems on Love and Light by Shaun R. Pankoski

 

Image / Andrea Piacquadio

Poems on Love and Light

Rumi Said

be a lamp or a lifeboat or a ladder

illuminate the dark row to safe haven climb out of the muck become the lotus

Surrounded

I want to be that wild bee, drunk on peony nectar.

I want to be the Java sparrow, sitting in the backyard cherry tree.

I want to be the porcelain crab, tucked in a left-behind conch shell.

I want to be wrapped in fondant, soaked in the juice of a dragon fruit,

anointed with the scent of stargazer lilies.

I want to be the morning sky. I want to be on fire.

Seeds and Stardust

Earth nudges her seeds.

Sky grabs a fistful of stars. Seeds reach, though shyly. Stars run wild in the dark.

Two mothers, two kinds of love.

© Shaun R. Pankoski

Shaun R. Pankoski

Shaun R. Pankoski (she/her) is a poet, most recently from Volcano, Hawaii. A retired county worker and two-time breast cancer survivor, she has been an artist’s model, modern dancer, massage therapist, and an honorably discharged Air Force veteran. A 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have appeared in ONE ART, Quartet, SWIMM, Thimble, Mackinaw Journal, and MockingHeart Review, among others. She was selected as a finalist by Lefty Blondie Press for her chapbook manuscript, Tipping the Maids in Chocolate: Observations of Japan, and as a first runner-up for their Editors' Choice Broadside Series for her poem, Lupine.

Follow Feed the Holy

Lip Service by Daniel Romo

 

Image | Fadi Imane

Lip Service

Someone says what you want to hear so you call it a 

day like old bread that’s edible yet not an ideal meal 

because settling for crumbs is the Poorman’s validation 

in the same way sweet nothings live up to their name. 

We take things to heart most when we’re hollow and 

hungry, so customers order ahead and mobile orders 

pile up at the coffee shop where anyone can walk 

away with a drink that’s not theirs. But some kind 

of honor system exists in a world of caffeine and 

convenience—thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s 

wife or latte. The church next door to me just installed 

a new fence to keep people off their property, but isn't 

sealing off sanctity the opposite of what Jesus wants? 

I ate a burrito for lunch while watching college football 

on January 2nd because win or lose, the day after any 

holiday is just as celebratory, worthy of a hearty bean 

and cheese type of communion. The are days when 

our heads fall into prayer or self-preservation, and 

what gets us through it all at times like this is the sort 

of unexplained pep talk we mysteriously get, as if a 

whispering in your ear that you can’t put into words 

but is like the bright side beginning to look up, like 

the sweet scent of yeast rising.

© Daniel Romo

Daniel Romo

Daniel Romo is the author of American Manscape (Moon Tide Press 2026), Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023), Moonlighting as an Avalanche (Tebot Bach 2021), and other books. His work can be found in The Los Angeles Review, MAYDAY, Yemassee, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, and he lives, writes, and rides his bikes in Long Beach, CA. More at danieljromo.com.

Follow Feed the Holy