Freely Eady crafts poetry, vignettes, and micro creative nonfiction (CNF) from a quaint shoebox by the sea.

You can find her on Threads and Instagram.

Welcome to Issue 10 of Subtext, the first issue of November. In this issue, I’ll be exploring an incredible poem by Freely Eady that really dives into the color red and some wonderfully sibilant sounds. I’ve been enjoying her poetry for some time now, so I’m very glad to be able to dive into one of hers.

I think this month is going to be a good one. I’ve got some fantastic people lined up and I’m excited about where Subtext is going. I greatly appreciate all of the people that have allowed me the honor and privilege of featuring them and their work. I know this is only going on month three of doing this now, but if feels like longer (in a good way). I’ve had people suggesting other poets to me, people reaching out, it’s wonderful. This is precisely where I want to be: with a backlog of people ready to feature and write about. But don’t let the backlog get in the way of recommending more people to me (or even yourself!). As this picks up, I may start moving toward a biweekly schedule. Time will tell.

If you want your work featured, or know someone you’d love to see featured, you can email me, tag me on Threads or Instagram, or use the form on my contact page here on my website.

With that, it’s time to move into this untitled piece that Freely Eady wrote. I’ve been excited about this one (honestly, I’m excited by all of them: I’m a huge poetry nerd after all). It explores some really unique images and sounds and concepts. I love the tension between religion and decay here. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s dive in!

She ambles past
stained glass shadows
in the ancient sanctuary
as in some somber slumber,
soul severed from flesh and bone,
suffocating under rubble, dread.

This first stanza is eerie and beautiful. I love all the /s/ sounds it contains. The whole stanza takes on that very sibilant sound and it does some interesting things to the pacing and the meaning of the poem. That almost hissing /s/ stretches out the pacing when you read it. Try reading it out loud and you will see how you have to kind of slow down and deliberately enunciate the words to maintain their integrity. It physically slows you down. Which mirrors what’s happening in the stanza. “She ambles past.” Amble suggests slowness. A relaxed pace. Not that there’s really anything relaxed happening here, once you start getting into the rest of the stanza. “Stained glass shadows / in the ancient sanctuary.” I love what that first bit hints at, with shadows. It both brings that visual of stained-glass windows, and how the light kind of shadows through them. The world is a shadow beyond the opaque glass, but it paints the interior in color. But this is an ancient sanctuary. And as we get further into the poem, we learn this sanctuary is in ruin, in decay. And so “stained glass shadows” also lends toward the windows being shadows of themselves. Ghosts. The hint of the window still being there, but it’s not really.

And then in the ancient sanctuary, we move through my favorite lines, with the /s/ rampant and deliberately slowing you down. Like you have to pick your steps through the rubble and the ruin. I’m serious. Read it out loud and be deliberate in the enunciation. It will slow you down. “As in some somber slumber, / soul severed from flesh and bone, / suffocating under rubble, dread.” That deliberateness also heightens the unease of the words you’re reading: soul severed, flesh and bone, suffocating. It’s some heavy stuff that’s happening here. I definitely get the impression that this is talking about both the spiritual aspect as well as the physical. Perhaps this sanctuary/church was bombed, and the flesh and bone are real. Or maybe it’s someone losing their faith and religion. And we’re only at the first stanza! Let’s see where Freely Eady keeps leading us. I’m going to talk about the next two stanzas together because, in my mind at least, they are very connected. You can let me know your thoughts on this in the comments.

Crimson sunlight reminds her
of chilling horrors,
of saturated soil,
of giving birth.

Red candles lit for mercy,
for sleepless mothers,
for the grieving hearts
of lifeless women walking.

I read that first line as applying to both of these stanzas. That the “crimson sunlight reminds her” of the horrors, soil, birth and the “red candles lit for mercy.” Red is obviously a very important and symbolic color. It’s weighted by a lot of connotation and meaning. I just absolutely love how much work that first line is doing: “crimson sunlight reminds her.” The chilling horrors, saturated soil, and giving birth. This is an evocative image. Because sunlight pools and spreads. It bleeds and flows and floods. Chilling horrors could refer back to the flesh and bone, the rubble of the sanctuary. And saturated soil. Those sibilant /s/ sounds again. Violence is very present in this poem. With chilling horrors and saturated soil, coupled with the opening stanza, I get a read that suggests war and brutality and slaughter. How a church is supposed to be a sanctuary. A place of peace and beauty with the stained-glass windows. But now everything is rubble and red. Saturated soil gives me the visual of so much blood and violence that it makes mud. Happening at a church, a place of sanctuary, suggests the loss of innocence.

Violence and the loss of innocence in such proximity to childbirth and mothers. It gives a sense of unease and disquiet. How the “crimson sunlight reminds her…of giving birth.” How, for me, this ties directly into that following stanza. Again, I read this as the “her” in the poem being reminded of “red candles lit for mercy” by the sunlight. Not that candles are actually being lit. This ties back to the idea of the shadows of stained-glass windows and rubble. These things are not necessarily there anymore. Just the bombed out husk and rubble of what used to be a church, a sanctuary. For me, this interpretation adds to the overwhelming sense of longing and despair that fills the piece by Freely Eady. And the next stanzas I think lend to this read of the poem. We’ll get there in a minute.

Let’s talk for a bit about “for sleepless mothers, / for the grieving hearts / of lifeless women walking.” Those are some heavy and loaded lines. And I think they are heavily influenced by the previous stanza. In particular, the line “of giving birth.” Bringing all of this together: the crimson sunlight, pooling blood and red, horrors, saturated soil, and giving birth. This does not paint a hopeful picture. Heavy blood loss during childbirth is never a good thing. Not for the mother and not for the child. For some reason, I also think of miscarriages here as well, with the pooling of blood. And then the candles lit for mercy. For the grieving hearts and lifeless women. Sleepless mothers. I read and I feel a deeply profound sense of loss and sorrow here. That children, the babies, were murdered or died in birth, or were miscarriages. Grieving hearts and lifeless women walking really pushes me in this direction. Mothers that are sleepless because of exhaustion and pain and loss.

I feel like there’s some type of massacre I can’t quite recall. Maybe even something biblical? Like the plagues in Egypt and the death of the firstborn. But these seem to go beyond that. Maybe it’s just commentary on how war and violence always harms and murders the innocent first. Either way. That’s how these stanzas read to me. The horrors of war. The horrors of losing a child in birth. This entire poem also reads as a kind of extended metaphor for lost faith as well. Like she (the speaker) is touring through the rubble and remains of her faith and religion and remembering why she lost her faith. The next two stanzas start to explore this concept, with silence and unanswered prayers.

She kneels at the feet
of a stoic statue and wails,
sounds of disbelief
smashing against silent saints, dispassionate stone.

Prayers, unutterable,
pain transmuted,
peace — a distant chant —
she once remembered.

There’s also the touch (okay, maybe more than just a touch at this point) of the violence and harm of war and conflict. “Peace…she once remembered.” This part of the poem is also where the identity of the Catholic church comes to the forefront. Plenty of churches and religions have stained glass. Plenty use candles and then obviously mercy. But elements of Catholicism have bled through regardless. Red candles and mercy, which pushed me to think about the Catholic ideal of Divine Mercy. Lighting candles for prayers and saints. All very Catholic ideologies. And now, specifically, “silent saints.” There really is a lot happening in this poem.

These two stanzas are just so incredibly raw and visceral in their despair. The emotion held here. Screamed here. As it’s all been building and building throughout the poem, through the severed soul, the flesh and bone, the rubble and dread, the crimson sun and red candle, the saturated soil and blood, the birth and loss, the lifeless women walking. It all boils and roils to these two lines. These two lines that still bring chills and shivers to my body as I read them for the umpteenth time. These two lines that you can feel to your core. The absolute and all-consuming despair let out. How simple these lines are. How little imagery or showing is really there. But the raw power. How easily these lines grab you. These lines that are the main reason I was so drawn to Freely Eady’s piece to begin with. These lines: “she kneels at the feet / of a stoic statue and wails.” I can hear. I can feel. I am her in this moment. How much weigh that wail carries. All the weight of the poem, the death, the violence and hate, the shattering and destruction of faith and religion. “And wails.” I don’t think I’ve had such a visceral response to so few words in a while.

And I love how Freely Eady brings in the /s/ sounds again. “A stoic statue and wails, / sounds of disbelief / smashing against silent saints, dispassionate stone.” I love the line “smashing against silent saints.” Her wail, her sound of disbelief and it smashes. And the saints are silent. Quick aside, I honestly think Freely Eady could cut “dispassionate stone” and just rely on the silent saints. Though, I do love how “dispassionate stone” adds to the sibilance of the stanza.

And we move to the following stanza, after that soul baring, soul crushing wail, and it becomes softer. It moves away from the /s/ to the softer /p/. It’s like the speaker in the poem has expelled all of her everything and is left with “prayers, unutterable, / pain transmuted, / peace — a distant chant — / she once remembered.” All the rage and anger and pain is gone. It’s like she’s left empty now, the unanswered wail took everything she had and there was nothing to give it back. I love the tension the line break adds here, because for a moment it almost looks like she has gained peace. “Pain transmuted, / peace.” But the peace is distant, just something she once remembered. That line break creates a false hope.

I do wonder what the pain has been transmuted, or changed, into. Perhaps the disbelief in the previous stanza. Or perhaps it has been turned into nothing. Turned into empty because she has given it all and been met with silence. And pain turns to despair turns to nothing. Or perhaps she has been transmuted, the pain of living and being human transformed.

In a crumbling corner,
an injured starling probes
the ashes that remain.
It hops forward, searching
for a scrap of safety,
finds an opening,
ascends away.

At first glance, at least for me, this last stanza seemed a bit out of place. Like we moved away from the woman wailing in the rubble of the church too quickly. Instead, I think we’ve seen an echo. The ruins of the church, the woman, the blood, the wail, all of it. The church was bombed and there was death. That much is suggested and inferred from the rest of the poem. In the end, we are presented with the starling. “In a crumbling corner, / an injured starling probes / the ashes that remain.” It does not seem like the bird was disturbed at all by the woman’s wailing. Which begs the question why not? Starlings hold some incredible symbolic weight and have been seen as representations of the gods’ feelings. They (and their murmuration) are often seen as symbolic of intuition and change. The starling is also an incredible mimic. Rumor has it Mozart had a prize starling that would sing parts of his songs, and potentially even contributed to some compositions.

I see this poem as an exploration in the loss of faith and religion. A scathing rebuke against war and violence. A reminder that we are subject to our actions and our behaviors and that no matter how much we pray or wail or fight against the saints and gods in whatever churches or sanctuaries there are, we as humans are responsible for our actions. We are responsible for all of the atrocities and crimes. To me, the starling at the end is a representation of a haunting. An echo of the church being bombed and destroyed. Of the woman dying inside it. Desperate for a savior or a miracle and being buried by “silent saints.” And the starling mimics her final wail. Her futile prayers.

Because the starling finds “a scrap of safety, / finds an opening, / ascends away.” The bird is not bound by our failures and wars of humanity. The starling can escape it all. Is above it. While we flail against the promises of gods and churches, the starling simply finds its own way out. I think that’s an important lesson.

Freely Eady, this is an incredible poem and I’m thrilled you allowed me to feature you and your work on Subtext. I loved your usage of sibilance and sound in this poem, how you blended it with imagery and the recurrence of red, and how you explore the idea of someone’s faith and religion collapsing from doubt and fear. And I think this is also a firm rebuke against violence and war. Altogether, an incredibly profound and important piece.

I have always enjoyed reading your prompts and your poetry. And I always look forward to seeing more of your work.