Amethyst Review

John the B and Me

I’ve had in my own way my desert days,
Though never ate
A locust, never held a crowd enrapt
By pointing out to them how trapped,
How reprobate,
How lost they were, adrift in sinful ways.

Yet from that place where I in comfort dwelt 
I could not see
Beyond the limited parameters
Of my own will nor know the grace that stirs
Up fervency,
And desert nonetheless that surely felt.

My prophecy is one of self-reproach:
I’d somehow lost
The knack to see Him in the crowd and could
Not realize His nearness till I stood
Before His cross
Yet somehow had not noted His approach.

Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, Amethyst Review, America Magazine, Pensive Journal, Forma Journal, and The Society of Classical Poets. He is a certified catechist with the Archdiocese of New York, a Benedictine oblate of St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, NJ, and editor of The Catholic Poetry Room.

Gargoyles
 
They all are far more solid than we are,
the gargoyles on the grand cathedrals. Stone
lasts long. When we are piles of ash or bone,
the gargoyles’ eyes, although they don’t see far,
will still behold a town, a shooting star,
their ears will tremble to a mourner’s groan,
their shoulders shrug from which a falcon’s flown,
their tongues curl insect-like from jaws ajar.
Some people think all things are conscious, no
exceptions. We don’t know what gargoyles think,
but I suppose, perhaps, of us. That might
explain their grins and grimaces, their wink,
which takes them years, their gap-toothed overflow
of rain through lips that part with shrewd delight.

Dan Campion is the author of Calypso (1981), A Playbill for Sunset (2022), The Mirror Test (2024), Star Anchors (2026) 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.

Naming

Once, I didn’t know the names of birds.
Their voices dropped
(welcome but unaccountable) from trees
likewise un-christened.
And a slant light glistened,
and I, to seize
the living moment, stopped –
but it had passed already beyond words.

Once, I didn’t know the names of flowers.
They always caught
me by surprise, pushing their starry noses
through gravel dust
with an unreasonable trust.
Of course I knew the roses
but not that twinkle in the parking lot,
anonymous among the weeds and burrs.

But “tanager,” you said, and “violet,”
“nuthatch” and “aster,”
pointing to the cones
of Douglas firs. So now I see
fixed patterns in the bark of every tree.
Even the great blue herons
accept their name – oh blessing or disaster
that made astonishment articulate.

Hilary Biehl’s poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, Able Muse, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection, Giants Crossing (Kelsay Books, 2025) received the Poetry by the Sea Book Award. She lives in New Mexico.

The World Above
		
we came across
a wooden handmade six-step ladder

designed on a pine crate-box
along a dusty red dirt road 

in the Verde Valley
fields of barley swayed, both sides	
	
a symphony of grain rustling, 
a whispering in the breeze

climbing, standing at the top,
gazing at the clouds

how I wish
I could have heard your voice sooner,

now, who created this moment
beneath twilight,

as the Gambel’s quail ran by?

Mary L. Serantoni is a poet based in Arizona, originally from Chicago, Illinois. Her work appears in Poets for Science, Farraday Newsome: Memento Vitae, My Body Is Your Nest for Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum exhibition, Museum of Northern Arizona’s PoetryMaps exhibitions (2024, 2025), Amethyst Review (UK), Blue Heron Review (Spring 2026), Syncopation
Literary Journal, CAN (Vol.5, Issue 2) and forthcoming in Zephyr Haiku – 
Winter Issue. She holds a BA from Chicago’s DePaul University, and is a 
member of a local Poetry Workshop through a local nonprofit. @serantonimary

Ecdysis

When I have shed my skin and left behind 
a pale and translucent memory of myself, 
will you find it, coiled upon coil 
in a great long moebius band? 

But if you try to pick it up, to feel 
the texture, running through your hands,
to hold it as you once held me, the memories 
will crumble into a litter of dust and scale. 

But somewhere, somewhere, I will be 
dancing my glittering dance, 
singing my sinuous song, 
waiting for you to shed your skin 
and dance with me.

Edward Alport is a retired teacher and proud Essex Boy. Currently he is a poet, writer and gardener. He has had poetry, articles and stories published various webzines and magazines and performed on BBC Radio and Edinburgh Fringe. His Bluesky handle is @crossmouse.bsky.social. His website is crossmouse.wordpress.com.

Eschaton

These summer evenings of low clouds and heat,
The lake goes milky in the last minutes before sunset,
Light clinging to the waves as the Earth darkens.
If other worlds are coming, Lord, bring them slowly..

James Owens‘s newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Christianity & Literature, Relief, and The Windhover. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario, Canada. He sometimes teaches writing at Laurentian University.

Questions 

Spiral after spiral, the spider keeps time
as she spins her sticky section of the web.
Web-time expands until her trap
becomes a DNA magnet that captures
airborne material from other creatures.

Breath after breath, stitch after stitch,
the seamstress keeps time with her needle
as she creates textile paintings and mends
clothing. It’s a mystery how stitch-time
can stretch out like a field of wildflowers.

She wonders if a shirt or sweater
finds it satisfying to be worn day after day
despite having many holes, and if the spider
feels satisfaction that its web still catches prey
even as it becomes tattered. 

The seamstress considers curiosity holy,
and ponders whether mystery satisfies
better than understanding.
Knowledge, mystery—
will one outlast the other?

Meg Freer grew up in Montana and now enjoys the outdoors in Ontario. She holds two music degrees and a creative writing certificate, is a member of The Ontario Poetry Society and League of Canadian Poets, and is Poetry Co-editor for The Sunlight Press and a Contributing Editor for Traces Journal. She co-hosts a monthly series featuring poetry performed simultaneously with live improvised music. Her prose, photos, and poems have been published in many journals, and she has published four poetry chapbooks. During 2024-25, she served as Poet-in-Residence for the McDonald Astroparticle Physics Institute at Queen’s University.

Mokelumne Wilderness Insomnia
Sierra Nevada, California


Early September had a foot in winter.
Sunset, then nowhere to go but inside the tent, 		
double-layered, still exposed, 
crescendoing wind playing pines like strings. 

Nestled in the sleeping bag, 
I could see nothing of the wild nightlife,
listened to murmurs (a deer mouse checking us out?)
whooshing (an owl swooping down on its prey?) 
rustling (a bear stalking our food box?), 
disembodied sounds.

Eyes open at 2 a.m., I emerged,
raised my gaze to close-packed stars, 
the sky a pointillist painting, darkness illuminated.
I felt embraced, significant. There was meaning, 
beyond the sparkles and below.

Simona Carini was born and grew up in Italy. She writes poetry and nonfiction (memoir, food, the outdoors)and has been published in various venues, online and in print, including Amethyst Press anthology Thin Places & Sacred Spaces (2024). Her first poetry collection Survival Time was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions (2022). She lives in Northern California with her husband, loves to spend time outdoors and in the kitchen. Her website is https://simonacarini.com

Isaac Sees the Light

Before moving to Colorado, Raima Larter was a chemistry professor who secretly wrote fiction and poetry and tucked it away in drawers. She has published four novels, a nonfiction book, and numerous short stories. She is Nonfiction Editor at Utopia Science Fiction. Read more at raimalarter.com.

Rosh Hashanah 

The new year came
And with it the rain,
The rain on my face
And the revelation too:

Tingling magic
In prickling droplets.
I looked up at God, 
In the billowing gray.

It came back like a song,
As it danced through my soul.
It's back again like a sigh,
Baruch Hashem.

Zoë Glimcher was born and raised in NYC. She studies English and Art History at Wellesley College. Using modern imagery, Zoë strives to bring the beauty of form into the present. Her poetry has won multiple prizes, including the Wainwright Sonnet Prize and an Honorable Mention for the Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize.