Amethyst Review

Dragonfly

How dare you steal my eye and demand I slow down—
me, busy in my own fluttering about. There you go
flaunting your iridescence, flirting away 
with my hydrangea, flashing those hints of amber  
that lace your stain-glassed wings. I watch you 
cathedral the sky like the last lonely prayer,
taking my worries with you.

Shawn Aveningo Sanders shares the creative life with her husband in Oregon, where they run The Poetry Box. Her poems appear (or forthcoming) in Rattle, ONE ART, contemporary haibun online, McQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, Gyroscope Review, and Love Is for All of Us. Shawn is a multiple Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Touchstone Award nominee with prizes from the Oregon Poetry Association. Her newest book Pockets (MoonPath Press) was a finalist in Concrete Wolf’s Chapbook Contest. When she’s not writing, you might find her shopping for a new pair of red shoes or toy dinosaurs for her granddaughter. (RedShoePoet.com)

At Sea

When he was four months old we moved
his crib from beside our bed

to the tiny study beside the wall
with its National Geographic poster,

World Cetaceans, and for hours
he would stare: high-contrast orca,

lazy blue bottlenose, pink river dolphin.
They seemed to calm his kicking, his colic,

and we laughed and imagined the shapes
and colors of his future, Duke

Marine Lab, Biologist. But at 2 am
when we imagined him sleeping

we’d hear the tinkle of his music box,
pull-cord within the universe

of his grasp: Musician. Insomniac.
Shadows dancing on the wall. 

What waits beneath the what-will-be
like eyes fixed upon a whale?

We moved out of that apartment,
the poster torn and thrown away,

later our son blown out to sea, adrift
for years then tossed by storms,

all of us searching hard for some horizon
where perhaps blue dolphins leap.

Bill Griffin is a naturalist and retired family doctor in rural North Carolina. His seven previous books include the ecopoetry collection Snake Den Ridge, a Bestiary (illustrated by Linda French Griffin) in which creatures of the Great Smokies speak their minds and suggest that the dis-ease of our 21st century society could benefit from a dose of interdependence, reciprocity, and gratitude. Bill’s poetry appears in many regional and national publications. He has served as Poet-in-Residence at the North Carolina Zoo and was selected for the inaugural Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont Writer’s Conference, under faculty poet Frank X Walker.

Passage

I board the boat, escape
the city in search of Self,
float eye-level with drifting floes,
navigate grand galleries of ice,
gaze up at cathedral spires,
sculpted naves, pinnacles
and towers whose striations
blue, green, white dazzle,
trapped bubbles illuminated
by a sacred light.

Anne Eyries has poetry published in various journals, including Amsterdam Quarterly, Consilience, Cosmic Daffodil, Dream Catcher, Dust, Humana Obscura, London Grip, and Paperboats. She lives in France.

Plain

I don’t recall her name. Only that she
lived briefly in the studio behind
my Nana’s house and played guitar. I’d find
her sometimes in the main house, though, preparing
food, making herself a cup of tea,
or in the garden, petting someone’s cat.

I don’t recall her hair, what she was wearing;
nothing unusual, I guess. She told
me that she went to Friends’ meetings and sat
there, waiting. That she liked the quiet. Had
I asked about religion? I don’t know.
I did ask people things like that, at times.

Later, grown up, I’d try it too. I’d go
sit in a room with Quakers, listen, wait
to hear the Spirit speak. The Spirit led
me, ultimately, elsewhere; still, I hold
a memory of her among the chimes
and the nasturtiums, with no name, no car,
liking the quiet, strumming her guitar –
a passing wind that moved the garden gate.

Hilary Biehl’s poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, THINK, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection, Giants Crossing, was published in 2025 by Kelsay Books. She lives in New Mexico.

Home

All I wanted after forty-eight hours in a North Dakota monastery—
fourteen hundred miles from home—

was more God. More strangely slow chanting
of three-thousand-year-old psalms; 

more slow recitation of prayers—
a slight pause after each word 

as if we were engaging in a call-and-response 
with silence itself. What’s the hurry? 

Brother Louie said, when we asked about the pace—
smiling as he answered, as if he knew 

something we didn’t (which, of course, he did). 
I confess, I’d been on something 

of an acquisition mission just before our visit, 
convinced that we, my wife and I, needed to acquire 

a second home, a cabin in the woods 
where we could summer because—more confession—

I’d always wanted to be able to use summer 
as a verb. And didn’t we need a place 

to take our cats? (Never mind that they hate 
to travel; have been telling us for years 

to stay put, be here now.) Such was the unquiet state 
of my mind when I entered the monastery—

far from home, and wanting. Only to discover 
how hard it was to leave that place: 

the slowness of the pace, the depth of its silence—
some small part of which I carry now within—

or try to—returning as often as I can, 
from here, wherever I am.

Lisa Dordal is a Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and is the author of Mosaic of the Dark, a finalist for the 2019 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry; Water Lessons, a Lambda Literary most-anticipated-book for 2022; and Next Time You Come Home, a Lambda Literary most-anticipated-book for 2023. Her poetry has appeared in The Sun, Narrative, Image, Christian Century, Best New Poets, CALYX, and Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry.

The Book of Daniel

You wouldn’t think the Book of Daniel would
leave Daniel out, but tell me, you who’ve read
the book, how many flowers Daniel could
identify by name, what Daniel said
when asked what was his favorite color, food,
his favorite place to pause from life and think
about the future or just sit and brood,
which hand he cupped when he would take a drink.
You see? Of course, the lion’s den, the feast,
but Daniel? Could he tell a joke, laugh at
himself, get out of his own way, at least?
Which kind of person was he, dog or cat?
We might say cat, as lions were his friends,
but, honestly, Dan’s mystery never ends. 


Cogito

As for me[,] Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me, my
countenance changed in me: but I kept the matter in my heart.
					Daniel 7:28 KJV

The kings of Babylon, the Persian king,
the burning fiery furnace, lions, all
just made me ill. My visions would appall
much sterner minds than mine. My reckoning
was not reliable, but here’s the thing:
I was rewarded for it. Kings would call
me in to read the writing on the wall,
to parse their dreams. What more could misrule bring?
It’s obvious the worlds aligned askew,
unobvious to what. Inscrutable
to me. In prudence, I too wore a mask.
My made-up tales were taken to be true,
prophetic, regnant, irrefutable.
How strange, since I yearned, not to tell, but ask.

Dan Campion is the author of Calypso (1981), The Mirror Test (2024), A Playbill for Sunset (2022), and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (1995) and is a co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981, 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2019). Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Able Muse, Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, THINK, and many other magazines.

Counting Time in Rain

The gap between now and yet,
between this and maybe is eternal
and yet (yes) can swaddle tight, can
dense in moments like raindrops, each
an inhale for spoiled earth,
another logos, rainbow catcher,
friend.

Friend? No.
But why the over-puddle leap? Perhaps abandon
is the stuff of faith, which is to say life, and welcomes
are welcomed with wet feet.

Tyler Rogness is a poet and essayist from Minnesota. His work has appeared in Ekstasis, The Rabbit Room, Sehnsucht, Amethyst Review, the Clayjar Review, and elsewhere. He writes occasionally on faith, life, and language at awakingdragons.com.

Remnants of The Medicine Wheel

Solitary trekkers glide along the trails today
jingling prayer beads and water bottles,
freshstarting pilgrimages that never get old.
They can see so much deeper 
before the leaves begin.

On the twentieth day of March,
I must have a new-year prayer 
to the Awakened Air, 
and the Sun don't care
about the books and boxes in the house
where I hid from winter. 
Peace.  May you find where two trails cross,
where you must learn to give way:
step aside for the southbounders,
offer directions to the next post office
and shelter.

Remnants of a medicine wheel.
You know the incantation:
North: Winter, Ancestors, Wisdom, White. 
East: Spring, Innocence, Birth and Belief, Green.
West: Autumn, The Look-Within-Place, Black; 
South: Summer, Illumination, Fire, Passion, the Gold Morning Star, Red.
Turn. Turn. Turn,

Where did you start on the wheel this time?
I walk toward Northeast.

Only by touching trees, shoulders, rocks, hands, 
the first rhododendron buds 
can you circumnavigate to the balance of all directions
where we share our lonelinesses. 

 

Born in North Carolina, Robert Merritt lives in the mountains of West Virginia. He is the author of Early Music and the Aesthetics of Ezra Pound and the poetry collections Sense of Direction, View from Blue-Jade Mountain, The Language of Longing, and Landscape Architects. He has recently published in moonShine, North American Review, Psaltery & Lyre, and The James Dickey Review. He is Professor Emeritus at Bluefield University. He has served as visiting professor in English at Jiangsu Second Normal University in Nanjing, China, and as a vice president for The National Association for Poetry Therapy.

Stone against stone

stone against stone—
a low rasp.
she circles the room
grain turning to dust.
I flinch at it.
I turn to the stove,
the pot catches wrong,
salt sharp in the air.
across the room
her sister sitting low—
feet folded beneath,
palms resting
on the packed floor.
My mouth opens
then I swallow.
The room
still moving—
Her breath shallow,
shoulders tight.
uneven.
she moves past us—
arms heavy.
She will not set it down.
sisters close enough to touch.
eyes still don’t meet.
I start to move.
my feet stay planted.
the sister’s gaze,
lifted—
fixed past us.
my hand forgets the sock.
How does she not hear
her sister’s footsteps—
circling.
the stone goes quiet—
my hand slows
she remains
low on packed floor—
I hear her steps,
quickening.
I want to take her arm—
turn her.
her hands
still full.
my hands
folding and folding.
I smell the
salt in the air—
waiting for feet at the door.
everything else thins.
Mary does not.

Alexandria Marianne Leon is a poet and mother living in Oregon. Her work explores faith, embodiment, and domestic life through lyric attention to ordinary rituals and inherited silences. Her work has been published in Radix, Foreshadow magazine, and elsewhere.