how to fall in love with a vacuum (to Augustine) by Betsy Brown

I ran by the river

and thought about God,
and about how my nostrils
and eyes and ears and tongue and fingers
are all teleporters--
I crawl inside one of these warm flesh elevators,
press a button,
and BAM! there I am,
on Planet Love.
and it's constant climax there in my bright pink spacesuit,
I can jump a mile high
and pick the planets out of the sky like peaches,
and drink the dripping juices
'til it's a mad, mad, MAD teaparty of Love.

I ran by the river
my ipod pulsed with Colombian hip-hop,
and I LOVE the sultry Spanish sounds a can't understand,
how my eardrums shiver,
and a South American summer rains in my brain,
and I love it because I hear it,
I HEAR it

and what about God,
this three-letter word
He
sounds like the wind in all the films,
a giant James Earl Jones explosion,
a Lion King looming, booming among the stars
this God,
the painters paint Him a Santa-Socrates hybrid
sculpted from cumulus clouds,
white beard waving in the wind,
watching.

so I laid in the grass and listened and looked
for this booming white sky-God
but He was not there,
and I reached out my arms to embrace Him
but my arms slid through air,
I climbed into my ears and eyes
and nostrils and fingers and tongue,
and pressed the button,
but when the door slid open
I did not find God on the other side.

i've never known a Moses,
a man whose skin touched God's skin--
so I sit in a chair I can feel
and I smell and taste the apartment air
(like candles and hard-boiled eggs)
and I touch a friend's hand
and I listen to the cars drive over the manhole on 6th avenue
and I try to love a vacuum.
--Someone clearer than glass
and quieter than sleep,
empty, but full,
untouchable.

I ran past the river
and thought about God,
and listened to Colombian hip-hop,
and ran and ran and ran and ran and

ran

Neglect by Danielle Perkins

This is what we call

Neglect.

It is ugly. And it is dark.

This is what we call

Regret—

When arrows miss their mark.

Junior Danielle Perkins is the scholar of the the house of Queen Elizabeth I. She enjoys living, simplicity, and photography. She also wants to live forever in Neverland.

Flying by Alex Sciaretta

From my window seat, I watched the propeller break the thickness of cloud that had momentarily embraced our aircraft. When we first took off, and the plane’s nose brazenly lifted off the runway, I was overwhelmed with a sense of humanity’s arrogance. How could we think our feeble hands and numb minds could clumsily meld metal and plastic, enabling us to invade the night sky like this?

Yet I was flying. As we gained altitude, I lost my sense of perspective, and the ground below me moved slower and slower. So slow that once this flimsy capsulation of man’s pride breached the cloud cover, all sense of motion ceased. I was left with the slightest queasiness in my stomach that betrayed movement.

I grabbed onto and sucked the nanoseconds after the breaching. For it was then that my existence was in the plane’s propeller (which whirled until its edges became tickling feathers or splayed paintbrushes) and in the crescent moon (which peered, bemused, at the oddity of the flying humans) and in the clouds beneath the flying craft (which alluded to the rising and falling chest of a loved-one under a down comforter).

Although I did not see us move, the crescent soon passed from my view, and the blanket-cloud was slowly pulled aside, revealing a landscape of what appeared to be illuminated bubble wrap. Each bubble had its own electric light bulb, and they just begging to be popped, to have their light spewed across the city blocks, dazzling locals and tourists alike. But the plane clamored evermore upward, and soon the bubble wrap was transformed into a myriad of diverse seed beads, all glued upon charcoal asphalt and begging my fingers to touch their texture.

And how I wanted to run my finger tips between their ridges and feel their round tops on my palm. But I had to let them go, for I was flying from New York City to Roanoke, where another seed bead garden awaited me, one memorized by my hand, one that I hadn’t seen in three months. Roanoke—as I flew, I wondered whether I would ever call Roanoke “home” again. Yes, there the seed beads intimately familiar, and yes, when someone asked, “Are you going home for the holiday,” I always replied “yes.”

But in truth, I didn’t know where home was.

Just a Moment in Time? by Ed Gruber

Is each second just a moment in time?

Or is it something else?
As we followed the Oncologist out of my little brother’s room we were prepared for the worst.
He put the X-rays up for us to see.
There was a small area at the top of one lung. It didn’t look like much.
“The cancer has metastasized to his lungs.”
Five seconds.
Five moments in time.
“It doesn’t look very big. How will you treat it? Radiation, chemo or surgery?”
Nine seconds.
Nine moments in time.
The look on his face and the cracking of his voice hit like a sledgehammer.
“That small area at the top of the one lung is the healthy tissue. The rest of his lungs are full of cancer.”
Seven seconds.
Seven moments in time.
Unendurable sorrow. A complete loss of sensation. Vertigo. Shortness of breath.
“What kind of treatment will he have to endure this time? He’s been through so much already?”
Six seconds.
Six moments in time.
“There’s nothing left to treat. He only has days to live. I’m so sorry.”
Eight seconds.
Eight moments in time.
Four shattered lives.
Eternity.

Ed Gruber is the Facilities Manager at The King’s College. He loves riding and fixing motorcycles, working with youth, and eating twice as much as he should.

A Magical Gift (On Anna's 10th Birthday) by Robert Jackson

Below is a little ditty I penned for my daughter's 10th Birthday, when I gave her a promise ring. She's a huge J.K. Rowling fan--read the entire series 5 times through!

I know your love of Potter's craft

will help you understand

the special spell I want to cast

by giving you this band.

For dark arts do, indeed, exist

to mar and turn the good

from doing all that goodness knows

it can-and, yes, it should.

So, with this ring I offer you

my pledge to be your Dad,

and teach you every spell I know

to help you fight the bad.

I'll walk beside you, as you grow,

giving all my smarts

to ready you with incantation-

just like old Hogwarts.

Now I bless you with this band,

and you must solemn-swear

to give your life to Magic Pure

and Truth, my Princess Fair.

Dr. Robert L. Jackson is the associate professor of English and Education at The King’s College. He is married with four lovely children, and it’s been said that he is somewhat in love with Robert Frost.

Untitled by Amy Leigh Cutler

I took the Lord's supper tonight;

the body and blood of Christ
has never been harder to swallow.
I waited in line and when I dipped
my bread I heard,
"Partake and live in freedom."
The words shook me to the core.
My face twisted, fists clenched,
jaw tightened.
I've been drinking too much.
Keeping my body around
to keep from getting lonely.
I've been waiting for
the law
to sew itself onto my chest
in red.
Let them all see your shame.
I didn't think the cost was too high.
Failure after failure;
a slur here,
kiss there,
smiling all the while.
Waiting for the law to strike
bright through me,
paralyze me with the weight of
my own inadequacy.
"Partake and live in freedom."
I've been trying to sew myself back
together.
I paint shame on my face
and laugh away the weight of what
I know is coming.
I'm naked,
manic,
and waiting,
but no one wants to throw the first stone.
They are waiting for something,
not sure what.
Throw the fucking stone-
I'm guilty.
The ones who raise their arms to throw
were the ones who touched me last.
I don't meet their eyes.
"Partake and live in freedom."
My eyes are squeezed tight
to keep the dirt out.
No one throws.
The stones are falling
but I'm guilty.
In the middle of my sin.
I've made no effort to change.
I didn't ask for mercy,
but the men are gone
and He's telling me
to live.
The body and blood of my Saviour
has never been harder to swallow.

Amy Leigh Cutler is an alum of the King’s College and a native New Yorker, born on Staten Island. She recently published her first book of poetry, Orange Juice and Rooftops, and the book has already made it to the front of Barnes and Noble. Check it out at: http://www.amyleighcutler.com

Numbers by Abby Bean

It's about time I speak of You again...

Master of mathematics,

Add, subtract, divide

the number three, repeating.

You are a black whole

divided into so many peaces.

The smaller You become,

The larger You become, to me,

The greater You become.

Creator, You become, to me,

Daily, daily, daily.

You are

Divided into so many pieces, and

I try to reach into the center

of You. But these

Spirals are my rivals,

and the more that I unravel

You, the more that I

Unravel. Unrevealed Revealer,

I revel in Your mysteries,

I hum celestial symphonies

And grow amongst Your trees.

I glimpse the surface

of Your holy waters, and

Find in my complexion

the reflection of You.

I am content

with Your infinity,

and find myself satisfied

with my finite mind, divided.

Infinity,

the number three repeating,

Fractalizing Father,

Wholly Spirit,

and a Rising Son,

Three in One

Defies Your natural laws

with such an order

that Your self-contradiction is

the only truth,

Your fiction is all that's true.

You, multiplied,

In Suns,

In earth,

In water,

In a tree.

In Adam and

in Abraham,

and me...

Alpha and

Omega,

You have been,

And are,

Infinity...

Abby Bean has been scribbling verse on scraps of paper since she was eleven years old, covering such topics as mathematics, tree frogs, cities, and the sacraments. She writes in pursuit of God and believes poetry to be a precious form of worship. She will keep writing as long as she is searching, which she hopes will be forever.