Silence
Our first issue of 2026 is live
Shhhh…it’s here. 🤫
We hope this issue will be a companion to you in the stillness. May these wrestled words written in the secret places attune your heart to hear the whispers of God in your own times of solitude.
Thank you, again, to all of the poets and writers who submitted work to us. We are so grateful for you all.
-Alexandra O’Sullivan, Founder
Night Swimming by David Pitcher A free diver dropped over 800 feet into the ancient darkness of the sea whose silence brought him into its body and squeezed. How long does it take the mind to forget the halls and rooms of sound? I’ve worn quiet like a blanket in the dusty waters of Lake Michigan, treading water too far from the shore to swim, with lights gone out from an anchored and sleeping boat at my back. The silverblack lake makes space for the petrified prayer of the heart. And in that silence I have smelled incense, its soft towers swirling under the stars, whose shining has become the many voices of a massed choir.
About the author: David Pitcher is an Indiana poet and shelter worker who has been featured on NPR’s The Poets Weave. His poetry is forthcoming in The Wheel and Anti-Heroin Chic and has appeared in LETTERS, The Pedestal Magazine, Confluence and elsewhere.
Benediction by Renee Kalagayan I crawl palms-and-knees to church, grasping no holy thing but bereavement, wringing like rags my bleeding hands. The homily ends, and the blessing— chapped hands held outward, upward, cupping only air and incense, hung in expectation, a reaching-toward. I cannot tell what, only that some feathered starling fled from my throat with a shriek for mercy. Then my startled silence. When with difficulty I draw my hands back to myself, I find my palms are filled not with answers nor my dead beloved’s fingers but—amen—with the same miraculous air, and—amen—with grace.
About the author: Renee Kalagayan is an Asian-American writer and editor from South Carolina. Her work is featured or forthcoming in About Place, South Florida Poetry Journal, Carolina Muse, Listening Journal, and others.
The unshrineable by Jaslyn Thienbunlertrat Osborne Bay Beach, Crofton, British Columbia On the walk to the sea, I heard it: the tuneless hum of a worker bee, single-minded, somehow joyous. Under the trees, I saw him: that slippery ribbon, slick with intent, twisting liquidly into shadow. And then the sky opened wide its arms, blue depth, sea’s mirror. Like a weary traveller, I drank my fill: gasp of white foam, waves reaching many-handed, faint blur of wings. And that stream, forest-born, like a tear slipping off earth’s chin, wound its way from soil to sand, its graceful waterfingers reaching for the sea. And so I walked to that shore like a pilgrim to a shrine, clothed in silence, reaching into the living icon of the world. Beyond, the hunched shoulder of the mountain; below my feet, white barnacles quietly blossoming. And the sea’s peculiar music went on, that murmur, those repetitions; indulging its own liturgical rhythm, unhindered by human cacophony. On the walk to the shore I felt it, the thing that is neither earthquake nor fire, nor even the pounding choir of intemperate wind, but something like a small voice, still as the fawn that stared back at me ears aquiver, with deeps in its unfathomable knowing eye.
About the author: Jaslyn is a Thai-Taiwanese writer, reader, and student of the Source of all joy and truth, which St. Augustine calls “Beauty ever ancient, ever new”. She hails from a relatively quiet corner of British Columbia. When not reading or writing, she can be found staring goggle-eyed at trees and birds in her neighbourhood, taking long walks, singing with her loved ones, or laughing—one of her favourite pastimes.
As you go, quietly… 🤫
Let’s have a moment of appreciative silence for our contributors: Eliza Coco, Heather Cadenhead, Julie Sumner, Elle Rosamilia, Ray Smith, Eileen Berry, Rachel Landrum Crumble, September S, Mark Gaspar, Emma McCoy, Laura Kauffman, Sarah Dixon Young, Sharon Rhyne, David Anderson, Cameron Miller, Ollie Burgess, Dawn Paoletta, Jaslyn Thienbunlertrat, Meredith Chester, John C. Mannone, Maria Mecham, Megan Willome, Colin Sandberg, Abbi Bodager, Molly Graham, Renee Kalagayan, LB Blackwell, David Pitcher, and Liz Moss 👏
You can read the new issue here. 🎉
Over the next several weeks, we will be featuring works exclusively from Silence. Feel free to leave comments about your favorite poems and encouragement for the poets 😊
Silently,
Alexandra, Caroline, & Danielle
Thank you for including my poem in such wonderful company! This issue is so lovely.
I'm really excited to read this issue.