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Prayer

Amy Small-McKinney

April 27 2026

Turzec, Belarus

Daniel Toretsky

What is it with light 

I mean the kind that struggles through


My city window in winter

Spare and shy


& Then the dark how it creeps in 

Shoves the spark away


& I remember 


My aging body is not a sun

Will not be returned someday


Well here I am Shekhinah. I am asking you:


Wrap me in your light one more time.

Let me wear the white shawl of light


For my child’s child and for the child

Still inside this old body.

Amy Small-McKinney

Amy Small-McKinney is the author of three chapbooks and three full-length poetry books, including her newest full-length, & You Think It Ends (Glass Lyre Press, 2025).  Her book, Walking Toward Cranes, won The Kithara Book Prize (Glass Lyre, 2016). She has been published in numerous journals, for example, American Poetry Review, Ilanot Review, Minyan, The Nu Review, Tiferet, and Verse Daily, among others, as well as anthologies, including 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium (Ashland University).  Her poetry has also been translated into Romanian and Korean. Small is a Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate Emeritus, 2011. January 2026, Small-McKinney taught a One Art virtual workshop: Speaking To & Listening To Our Aging Bodies.

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