Amethyst Review

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.

Praise

After Gerard Manley Hoplins’s “Pied Beauty”

Praise the stitched world—
the fox’s rusted flank against snow,
lichen freckling stone like old thought,
the heron’s patience, blue as held breath.

Praise what does not announce itself:
moss working shade into green,
seed learning dark by heart,
the creek repeating what it knows
until the rock listens back.

For the uneven gifts—
scarred bark, split fig,
a wing that lifts despite the wind,
and the body, forgetful yet faithful,
still turning toward light.

Praise the brief and the returning:
firefly, frost, a hawk’s shadow
loosening from the road,
the small correction of spring
after we thought it gone.

All this—
unwilled, unowned,
held together by breath and time.
 

Sam Aureli is a design and construction professional, originally from Italy, now calling the Boston area home. A first-generation college graduate, he’s spent decades immersed in concrete and steel. Poetry is what truly feeds his soul these days. With retirement still a decade away, Sam balances the grind of his day job with the refuge he finds in writing. His work has appeared in The Atlanta Review, West Trade Review, Underscore Magazine, Chestnut Review, Stanchion Magazine, and other literary journals.

Purification

When the sun rises 
I do not always notice
how she mottles the clouds
with pink and gold and silver,
moment by moment changing colors.
I do not always appreciate her presence
nor exalt her life-giving warmth.
Ah, but the good earth notices
and feels the roots of her trees 
and every slumbering thing
reawakening each spring.

The birds and squirrels understand
the magnanimous shelter of their green canopy.
Cherry trees, star magnolias, dogwoods 
flower in her honor.
Seeing a squirrel draped over a limb,
basking in her presence, I am reminded
to keep my appointment with the crimson-
leafed beech. I walk deep into the woods
of Pine Brook, run my fingers over the beech’s
elephantine skin, marvel at its quiet flourishing.
Tucked away from man’s intrusion, this tree
is a refuge. Anew I appreciate the soft voices
of the woodland, the moss beneath my bare feet,
the coolness of the brook drunk by so many creatures.
Not to be happy seems wasteful
for in these moments of pure attention
I reconsecrate my relationship with my own nature.

Lynn Palumbo is a practicing Zen Buddhist with a love of waterscapes. Her poetry has appeared in Urthona (UK, a Buddhist journal), The Avocet (USA) and a Tiferet anthology (USA). Her essays have appeared in Braided Way and Tiferet, and short fiction also in Tiferet. A former teacher of English on the college level, she is a devotee of Romantic and medieval English poetry and the transcendentalists. She is currently writing a YA novel.

The Book

The book no one will ever write
is the Book of Silence, of course.
Written with closed lips and wide-open eyes
in blue ink filled with the light of wheat stalks
flowing in the sea wind.

The Book is never finished.
No one can remember how it begins.
Its words go with that distant freighter
fading over the hard, blue line 
of the horizon.

Mike Dillon lives in a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle. His most recent book is Nocturne: New and Selected Poems, from Unsolicited Press (2024).

Unknown Destination

People walk, ride bikes 
on the asphalt path near the river.
Life circles around me 
while I wear you like extra skin,
a coat stitched with grief.

Your death unexpected,
you’ve passed on to where?

I rush to the riverbank,
listen to the muddy water
sigh & moan, gaze 
at the choppy ripples,
no reflection,
murky depth unknown.
Barges slow dance their way
to the next destination.

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in The Literary Nest, Rat’s Ass Review, As It Ought To Be, The Beatnik Cowboy, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, One Art, The Loch Raven Review, Panoply, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best New Poets nominee. Her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.