by Alan Altany

I am a bundle of scars
sealed together in blood,
clumped into a cold fire
always smoldering smoke
whatever worlds I wander,
scars of stitched memories
never fully & finally healed
in a cloud of forgetting,
leaking wounds of the heart
& indelible, aching punctures
into the soul’s old innocence.
Scars are revealed in the eyes
& in each act of suffered love
like invisibly born stigmata,
accumulated symbols of life
lived in solitary deserts
& configured communities
where all bear original scars
from slow growth in wisdom
& God’s sharp, poetic silence.
As a massive heap of scars
I remain strangely grateful
for each & every damn one
as God’s very own signature
inside all my spirited bones
that bear his eternal brand.

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Alan Altany has BA & MA degrees in Catholic theology, and a Ph. D. in religious studies (University of Pittsburgh). After an academic career, he is a semi-retired, septuagenarian professor of Comparative Religions at a small college in Florida. In the past he has also been the founder & editor of a small magazine of poetry (The Beggar’s Bowl), a high school teacher, factory and lawn maintenance worker, hotel clerk, novelist, delivery truck driver, etc. He has published three books of poetry in a series, “Christian Poetry of the Sacred”: A Beautiful Absurdity (2022), The Greatest Longing (2023), and Intimations (2024). His poetry has been published by Tipton Poetry Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Valley Voices, Sand Hill Literary Magazine, The Hong Kong Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Montreal Review, and others. He writes with the steadfast support of his golden retriever, Zeke.