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Kindness & Karma


Kindness & Karma is a special reader space. This is one of the pages where readers can send their personal stories, unique experiences and photos. Each month the editors solicit responses from our readers to questions that embrace unexpected inspiration. Please send along your name (last name is optional) and state or country. (Editors reserve the right to edit for content and word count.)
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The Sanctuary Team wants to know...

Emerging & Professional Poets Alike:
​We're still collecting poems about women's empowerment through April 10th. We will share your poem here and our editors
will select their favorite submission 
​to be published in POETRY CORNER mid month.
​
WRITE TO US!

Reader responses will be collected through April 10th.

The Feminine Voice
​By Victoria Twomey (New York)
Oh how I love the women poets of the past,
their voices set free from the closet of time –
heart songs sent forward through a crack in the door,
filled with the thoughts that must have paced to and fro
in the suffocating prison of position,
when no one could abide their earthly yearnings,
written with a tactile tongue –
words woven like violet vines
around the warm flesh of belly and breastbone,
their thoughts burning the page like molten gold.
 
It seems so often these women were waiting –
 
for men to return from the cruelty of war
so they could tend their bodies, maimed and broken
like crushed marionettes tossed aside by a puppeteer,
 
waiting for men to return from far-off journeys,
as they peered out of windows, caressing silken curtains,
waiting in doorways for the sound of the postman,
or on rooftops, searching the sea for signs of a ship.
 
An audience of women, all looking at a stage,
watching seasons and affections change,
as they penned their loneliness and drank their sadness like ink.
 
They wrote with wisdom –
 
from Italy, Senegal and America,
from France, China and England,
 
all on the same road to the same death,
as they were abandoned by fickle youth,
their hair losing its color, becoming transparent and grey,
their usefulness fading as they began the long, slow disappearance
from kitchens and bedrooms,
from churches and gardens,
from nurseries and fields.
 
They left behind needles and thread,
pottery, scattered pearls and desires –
and sepia images where they sat with perfect posture
beside their husbands,
with sons and daughters in their laps,
eyes like black marbles, looking straight ahead
as whole worlds spun around in their inner orbits.
 
And yes,
 
they left behind their flocks of words
that now fly from reader to reader
like blackbirds swirling from tree to tree at sunset.
 
You live on my sisters, your usefulness eternal,
your femininity outliving the shell of vanity,
your voice is my voice,
fitting me like a shadow, so close to the bone.
Cut From the Same Cloth
By Amy Beth Acker (New Jersey)
​How is it that like scissors, we can
snip away the pieces of ourselves
that don’t work for the world and
thread-by-thread, unravel the scraps and
strips we don’t want hanging off our
mannequin tween bodies for the boys
to see? Here we are,
trying in vain to give the cool girls
the appearance of sisters
cast from the same mold and dressed in
the same outfit in two different sizes as if
what’s on the outside is what makes us belong
to a family or a world.
 
*          *          *
 
I’m looking through piles of old clothes
at the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market.
A twenty-two-year-old child who wants
to fashion herself a therapist is
searching for buried treasure. I hope
these pants didn’t belong to someone who
upon dying, left an imprint of herself
in the nubby wool, clutching her identity
like an overfilled Naugahyde handbag
from beyond the graveyard, unwilling
to share a small piece of it with me
for even a moment of her eternity.
 
*          *          *
 
Under the fairy lights of a wedding tent,
head tilted back in ecstasy for all to see,
wrapped in smooth black silk, leaving
little space for undergarments
or imagination, I flow like ink in water
as I get down on the dance floor.
The music wants to take me with it.
Knowing they’re cut from the same cloth,
I grasp my daughters’ hands, pulling them
with me into the cosmic revelry,
unraveling ourselves over and over
and over,
expanding infinitely and indefinitely
into the dark of night.
Untitled
By Jaclyn C. Stevenson (Massachusetts)
The guru reflects
on intrinsic costs of beauty,
on gaslighting and Gucci
 
Emanates shades of competing chemistry:
powdery fragrance beds,
light-to-dark swipes made earnestly
 
For the effort is the end-game,
The contours hide the truth
 
and soften it with ring lights
and greying shades of blue.

signposts and sole entities.
By Shannon Ellis (Stirlingshire, Scotland)
for you my legs are signposts for your
misplaced destination,
for me my legs are sole entities,
they sing to me at night.
they accelerate for me amongst dark shadows when
other legs come too close.

my legs are gateways, steel doors, heavy vessels.
they carry torso and torment,
they grow crops harvested each day.
they speak to mother nature in earth tones.
i wish i understood them.

my legs translate my joy in hard and softs,
steps, movements, swaying languidity.

Upcoming Topic
Archives

​NEWS...

February:
Celebration of Black History Month
Additional Themes:
Relationships
Healing


Next newsletter goes out:
February 3rd
​
Next Coffee & Conversation:

February 15, 2023
How Attachment Styles Affect Relationships​

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  • Open Book
    • Featured Interviews >
      • Archives: 2021
      • Archives: 2020
      • Archives: 2019
      • ARCHIVES: 2018
      • ARCHIVES: 2017
      • ARCHIVES: 2016
    • More Interviews >
      • Archives: Interviews 2020-2021
      • ARCHIVES: Interviews 2019
      • ARCHIVES: Interviews 2018
      • ARCHIVES: Interviews 2017
      • ARCHIVES: Interviews 2016
    • Autism Awareness 2022 >
      • Autism Awareness 2021
      • Autism Awareness 2020
      • Autism Awareness 2019
      • Autism Awareness 2018
  • Blank Canvas
    • Featured Artists >
      • 2022 Featured Artist Updates
      • Featured Artist Archives: 2021
      • Featured Artist Archives: 2020
      • Featured Artist Archives: 2019
      • Featured Artist Archives: 2018
      • Featured Artist Archives: 2017
      • Featured Artist Archives: 2016
    • Selected Works
    • Culture Crawl >
      • Archives: Culture Crawl
    • 2022 Focus on Youth >
      • 2021 Focus on Youth
      • 2020 Focus on Youth
      • 2019 Focus on Youth
      • 2018 Focus on Youth
      • 2017 Focus on Youth
      • 2016 Focus on Youth
    • 2022 Celebrating the Men in Our Lives >
      • 2021 Celebrating the Men in Our Lives
      • 2020 Celebrating the Men in Our Lives
      • 2019 Celebrating the Men in Our Lives
      • 2018 Celebrating the Men in Our Lives
      • 2017 Celebrating the Men in Our Lives
  • Body & Spirit
    • Healthy Body >
      • Archives: Healthy Body
    • Healthy Mind >
      • Archives: Healthy Mind
    • Nutrition and Exercise >
      • Laura's Corner Table
      • Archives: Nutrition & Exercise
    • Personal Safety >
      • Archives: Personal Safety
    • Alternative Therapy >
      • Archives: Alternative Therapy
    • Navigating Relationships >
      • Archives: Navigating Relationships
  • INSPIRED LIFE
    • TRAVEL JOURNAL >
      • Travel Journal Archives
    • YOUR MONEY & BUSINESS >
      • MONEY & BUSINESS ARCHIVES
    • CAREER JOURNEY >
      • CAREER JOURNEY ARCHIVES
    • Smart Steps >
      • ARCHIVES: Smart Steps
    • Trailblazers
  • GUEST ROOM
    • Ask an Expert >
      • ARCHIVES: ASK AN EXPERT
    • Kindness & Karma >
      • Archives: Kindness & Karma
    • We Hear You >
      • Celebrated Readers
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    • Submit Your Work
    • Book Giveaway 2022 >
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