J.K. Winters (Western Voices 2022)

Bio: Over the years J.K. Winters has been an instructor of writing, literature and psychology. Along the way, some of her own fiction, poetry and articles have been published in literary publications, professional journals, local newspapers and magazines, and online. She has also written a novel (as yet unpublished) as well as a full-length play entitled “Midsummer Nights’ Spell: A Play on Words,” which was produced in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2017. Email her at jkwintersauthor@gmail.com

PARADOX—

Lost:

While worlds whirl like Sufi dancers into the mists of space,

I find myself stretched thin between comfort and curiosity.

In the time of trauma, how to cultivate neurons of joy?

Ecstasy postponed, hope nags at the edges of tranquility,

and I long for a marriage of the momentous with the mundane.

Regained:

We are verbs limping lightly over purple passions,

skipping over the whims of destiny, our silences sizzling.

God is a circle, 

a contained whisper

while we seek to live the spaces between stories,

stories that go past their endings into beingness:

mathematics turned mystical

with every myth its own version of the truth.

***

NON SEQUITUR

While we wait for the world to end…

I grow frightened by smiles.

Because I am collector, not creator?

   Pollution.

      Revolution.

         Evolution.

Anti-government on government dole.

Life is how we tell it, so in the fragile calm,

meet the Deity at the dumpster.

***

THE GROUND LEVEL OF GRACE

These are the eyes

that see God in taverns and temples

(a marriage of immanence and transcendence,

earthbound yet buoyant,

dissonant and distinct).

Life is a flirtation that disrupts assumptions,

and so, we clink our communion cups

with outbursts of lusty laughter.

***

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Setu, April 2022