The Sister from Below

is delighted to announce

Your Face in the Fire

is an Amazon Bestseller!

Cover art by Kathleen Russ

This happened because so many of you joined the book launch and

ordered a copy on June 1. A beautiful community effort.

Thank you, thank you!

If you haven’t ordered your copy yet it’s still available on Amazon.

Here’s another poem from the book:

Only the Blind

You have always belonged to the moon
Though sometimes it leads you astray

Past willows across the swinging bridge
To somebody’s grave by the river

Stuck in the cave of your skull
You grope for the disappeared moon

Down where it’s blue so blue
Only Blind Willie Johnson

Can sing your way home
Only Isaac the Blind can see

The banshee has got your bones
She’s beating her drum with your bones

And you’re stuck in the cave of your skull
No willows no swinging bridge

Who will plant you deep in the earth?
Who will water your toes?

When the banshee has got your bones
When she’s beating her drum with your bones

You have always belonged to the moon

Only Isaac the Blind can show you
That glow beyond the bridge

Only Blind Willie Johnson
Can sing your way home

Moon Goddess
Jemma M. Young

The Sister from Below

is delighted to announce the publication of

Your Face in the Fire

Launch Date: June 1, 2024

Help this book become a best seller!! 
Order your copy from Amazon on June 1 

Here is the first poem in the book: (Images added)

Sun Goddess, Jonny Ujiokubas

Fire is Your Name and Your Maker

Fire is your god’s
eye gleam     the tiger that prowls your dreams 

Fire is your sun     and your rising

Tiger, Franz Marc

You had to tamp your fire
down hard     back in the day of pointy bras
and girdles     when a spark in the back of a Chevy

could knock you up     Remember
when a fiery tongue could get you
                                                    burnt alive?

Fire in the hearth     now that’s
a woman’s business     embers
from Mother’s fire     offerings 

Peasant Woman by the Fire, 
Vincent van Gogh, Thomas Nugent

from the tree     kitchen fire
bedroom fire     birth fire fire
from the core of the earth     When cauldron boils

there is no fire that can’t escape     no fire
that will not leap and sass     change shape
be burning snake in summer grasses

The Tiger Lucky Eight, Thomas Nugent

hot breasted home wrecker
funeral pyre         I ask you
how do you keep from burning

Open Fire in Hearth, 
Black Horse Inn, West Sussex

your love to ashes?
l tell you how
Take a twig from the tree     Whittle a sharp tip

Mix Mother’s fire with yours     Burn
Make ash marks
on white paper     Write yourself down

your leap and your sass     your hot breasted
double edged axe     the tiger that prowls your dreams
                                                            your sun and your rising

(Poem first published in Ginosko )

Sehkmet Goddess of the Sun  
Robbie Bailey

The Sister from Below is delighted to announce the publication of

Your Face in the Fire

Launch Date: June 1, 2024

Watch this blog for more information

* * * *

News from the Muse of the Double-headed Axe*

*The Double-Headed Axe or labrys was sacred as a tool and a weapon. It belonged to the Minoan
Goddess. It is associated with the labyrinth—“house of the double axe.”

Roi Faineant

an online literary publication

has published four of Naomi Ruth Lowinsky’s recent poems.

It is difficult to find literary magazines which will publish long poems, and/or poems that take on the difficult issues of our terrible times. Hats off to the editors of this brave publication. You can find all four poems here:

The Muse of the Double-headed Axe

insists on sharing Her poem, below.

Labyrinth

Pilgrimage in the Shape of a Prayer

I.
You never know    where    you’re going
                                                until you get there
You never know    what    you’ll stumble into
                                                until you’re in it
so said the Labyrinth       one afternoon
                                                in late November
as your feet faltered     round the sudden     twists and turns
                                                 of the double-headed ax
When at last    you emerged    from that pilgrimage
                                            in the shape of a prayer
ruby red and gold trees    flared up    into a glory
                                            and you suddenly remembered    the Dream


II.
The Dream knows you    are a wandering Jew
whose bones ache    with the agony weight
of the world    forever    seeking sanctuary
forever    on a pilgrimage    in the shape of a prayer
you stumble    into    a small    Black Hole    A temple?
A trap?    A desecration of the Holy Land?    Can’t see a thing
but the bony labyrinth    of your ear hears    demonic chanting
bibinetanyahubibinetanyahubibnetanyahu
The One and the Only    Mr Security
The One and the Only    Judge and Jury
rousing your ancestors    to warn you
This double-headed ax blow    to the stomach
this manic metronome    with its hypnotic spell
means to render you    powerless    or is it
a call to witness    how swiftly sanctuary
                                                can turn    treacherous?

Nova Music Festival

Hostages

III.
The Dream knows you    will stumble
    into this damp and gloomy     spider web of tunnels
        a double-headed ax    a labyrinth of passageways
            You walk    with the walkers    who can’t see
                                                    you    seem to be    a spirit    in this underworld
                You come at last    to a well-lit room
                    a group of young people    wounded    bandaged
                        dazed    confused    held prisoner
                            Are you called to witness    the abducted?
                        Are you called to hear    what they remember?
                     Just yesterday    they were ecstatic    trance dancers
                a synchronized flow    of mandalas    within mandalas
            spheres beyond spheres    in the company    of Great Buddha
        on a pilgrimage    in the shape of a prayer    for peace    for joy
    between Jews and Muslims    loving the land they share    all day
all night    in the desert    until suddenly    at sunrise    Nirvana cracks

    gun shots    hand grenades    terrorists are hunting them    running
        running    weeping     shrieking    corpses scattered    everywhere
            and they    the survivors    abducted
                Where was the army?    We served our time
                    We would have saved us    Now we’re stuck
                        in this hell hole    without our phones
                            How can we text    our terrified mothers?
                                What would Buddha say?

Destruction in Gaza

Eye and Child

IV.
The Dream transports you stumbling    into a temple    or is it a mosque by the sea?    The Dream
shows you    the spirit of a girl who reveals    I am the “Unknown Trauma Child” of Gaza
Did anyone survive under the rubble that terrible night   when the bomb crashed into our home
like a double-headed ax?    All I could hear was    shrieking    shrieking    Then nothing a tunnel
of darkness    a sudden bright light    as the ancestors gathered    fragments of my soul
so I can visit with you    in your dream    so you can see me whole    a radiant loving child
of radiant loving people    May they come to me    as ghosts who walk the labyrinth
a pilgrimage    in the shape of a prayer    May you greet them    here in this sanctuary
made sacred by your sorrow    Sit with us    Meet my mother who was tender    Meet my father
who was playful    Meet my older brother    the joker    Meet my younger sister    the dreamer
and that unknown unborn one  in mother’s womb  who never will see   the light  of the new day
This is my family   broken pottery  shattered lineage  cast away flesh and bones  No one is left
to identify   our bodies   No one is left   to grieve   May you be our witness   our weeper
                                                                                     May you gather  and treasure  our souls

Underworld

V.

The Dream knows   you are weary                still stumbling   on difficult terrain
    This pilgrimage  in the shape of a prayer    has not yet revealed the  Temple of your Soul
        The Dream is a labyrinth   in motion            in the shape of a butterfly
            in the shape of a double-headed ax              it cuts through tumult  and you find yourself
                ascending a Rock   given a hand up            by kind people   who know   sorrow
            “This Rock”   they tell you                       “is our Sanctuary   without walls
           where all who love this land                call it Palestine  call it Israel  may gather to pray
        that the Rock will hold us   know us     help us face   the hard truth   of our history
    the hard truth   of our geography           the hard truth   of our kinship   in catastrophe
        We bring prayer rugs   and prayer shawls       We prostrate ourselves   we daven

We’ve come to hear    the Stone speak”

I am the voice    of the land you love

Hear O Israel    Hear O Palestine

I am your Mother

I say    “Enough Already!

Salaam is Sholom    Sholom is Salaam

Make Peace!”

Sacred Rock

The Sister from Below

Is Pleased to Announce

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky’s poem:

“The Ghost of My Father Remembers Himself

Playing the ‘Moonshine’ Sonata” 

has won Synkroniciti’s “Space” Poetry Contest.

Katherine McDonald, the editor of Synkroniciti writes:

Synkroniciti is thrilled to announce the winner of our “Space” poetry contest, Naomi Ruth Lowinsky’s “The Ghost of My Father Remembers Himself Playing the ‘Moonshine’ Sonata.”  Much of the poetry we received for the “Space” issue was outstanding, but this poem stole our hearts and brought us to tears. Naomi’s father grew up Jewish in early 20th century Germany and was a great believer in the European musical tradition, a student of the musicologist Besseler, who studied with the esteemed philosopher Heidegger. As the second World War began to brew in Germany, he found himself not only homeless and stateless, but a cultural orphan, disowned by the institutions he respected and cherished. Immigrating to America greatly disillusioned with culture, institutions, and God, he found community in the American South and began to reconstruct his life through the redeeming power of music. Announcing the sorrowful “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven, which he translated as the “Moonshine Sonata,” he was momentarily baffled that the southern audience laughed, but played anyway. “In America I learn   Moonshine    will get you drunk.” Naomi’s command of language, her rich imagery, and her use of visual spacing as a tool to slow and control narrative rhythm are finely honed and the effect is breathtaking, rich in empathy, vulnerability and drama. The poem is in three parts, three episodes from her father’s life, presented out of chronological order. The second and third sections take the visual form of waves, recalling both the undulations of the river Neckar and the broken accompaniment of Beethoven’s most famous sonata.

We will be publishing two of Naomi’s stunning poems in “Space” and two more in “Family (March 2024).”  “Space” debuts at the end of the month.

Here is a link to the “Space” issue of Synkroniciti: