Amethyst Review

Asis

Asis wants my earrings—
Miss Pooja, I like your earrings,
They are so soft.  Can I have one?

In my mind, I take them off
And place them in her palm
Right then and there—
With that innocent voice,
I would have plucked out my eyes, to be fair—
I just worry it will cause a fight,
Since Aditi also said she liked them.

I laugh it off and give them both a 
Squeeze before I leave.

As I reverse the car, I catch the
Tear-shaped orbs in my ears swinging
In the mirror and regret not thinking
To give each of them
One to keep.

When I had walked into the classroom, 
Aditi had asked me,
Miss Pooja, why do you wear those earrings?

She was persistent, too, she asked a few times

I thought it a curious question—
Not where are they from, or
Were they a gift,
But why do you wear them at all?

I have always known God spoke
Through children,
I wonder why He has asked me this

I mean, I ask myself why a lot—
Why do I pray, why do I exist,
But I have never asked myself
Why I wear earrings…
Is it so important?

I guess it is that
They remind me of Him—
The swimming turquoise circles with
The red dot in the center,
Like sindoor on His serene forehead,
A point of calm in the cosmic ocean

Rain slams my dashboard,
I am distracted

It is curious the children
Have caught on,
That they are just as drawn
To the symbol

There is some magic in
These things, I swear

They have garnered more compliments
Than any other article of clothing
In my closet, and

Every time I start to get
A little too attached
To them, one mysteriously disappears,

Turning up about a week later—
Stuck in the folds of a skirt,
My braid, my shower cap,
Somewhere

Never deserting me completely,
Just reminding me why I wear them

Of course, I cannot wear just one,
The other would be incomplete
Without its pair—
Shiva and Shakti,
Destruction and creation,
Renunciation and passion.

Honestly,
I have felt distant from God lately, and
Every time this happens, I wonder
If this is the time He has run down the drain,
The time I will not find Him again.

But every time, He finds me
In my hemline, the shower, the twists of my hair

And it turns out,
He was always in my house, right there,

Playing hide-and-go-seek,
Reminding me
It is silly to wear one earring
Without the other, but that I should
Never be too attached to either

I cannot peel little Asis’s smile
Out of my mind, I cannot
Shake the thought that,
Had she grinned a little wider, I would have
Glimpsed the universe inside her.

Asis said my earrings were soft—
They are stone, I would never have
Thought to use that word to describe them

I am as My servant thinks I am

I remember her arms refusing to let me go,
Settling so gently around me,
They felt like like snow—

I know
He has found me again.

Pooja Muthuraj (she/her) is a Master’s in Business Analytics candidate (’26) at the College of William and Mary and the editor of Religion of Love Journal (religionoflovejournal.com).  She has let poetry write her for as long as she can remember, with recent work published in Last Leaves Magazine, Hedge Apple Magazine, Furrow Magazine, Rainy Weather Days, The Shallot, Noetica, and The Gallery.  She was a finalist for the 2025 Goronwy Owen Prize in Poetry, and her first chapbook, “18, Whatever that Means,” was published in 2023 by BookLeaf Publishing.  You can follow her on Threads @paadi_padutthuraval, where she occasionally shares work.

Grandma's Kitchen

Formica green and gold
around the table
the silver edge withstanding
her fingers as they rolled
and tapped in time,
as the gnarly knots
drummed their tune.
 
Gnocchi and meatballs,
all homemade,
turned with fingers
and protruding knuckles
whose strength abides
amid the rows of hand-cut pasta
and the balls of meat and dough.
 
A window and a sink
where plastic leaves and pink blossoms
rest in a statue of Mary,
a religious icon transformed,
put to good use,
and doing its work 
as the water flows.
 
A back door and a dog,
the yard of pavement
where I bounced a ball
with nothing else to do,
alone in the world, yet
there was always a seat,
even if the chairs were few.
 

Margaret Taylor-Ulizio is a canon lawyer, part-time Religious Studies instructor, volunteer wildlife rehabilitator and writer from New Jersey. Her poetry is published in Merion West, San Antonio Review, Amethyst Review, The Orchard Poetry Journal, One Art among others.

Glastonbury Thorn


Scions of scions.
Cuttings of cuttings.
Grafts of grafts.
So it proliferates
Hydra-intelligent.

Joseph’s thorn tree defies
desecration, bursts anew
in another patch of holy
erthe. Even Kew has a
clipping become a tree,
which has been returned
to Glastonbury. Where
myth is abiding energy,
there my Lover & I 
knew mystic marriage 
beneath thorny boughs.

Scions of scions.
Cuttings of cuttings.
Grafts of grafts.

Her icons, my sacred texts
hung tribute on its branches.
Propagating the thorn’s
phyllotaxis, to lacerate
the quotidian, to ensure
holy erthe fecundates.


Mark Wilson has published five poetry collections: Quartet For the End of Time (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), Passio (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), The Angel of History (Leaky Boot Press, 2013), Illuminations (Leaky Boot Press, 2016) & Paolo & Francesca in a Colder Climate (Black Herald Press, 2025). He is the author of a verse-drama, One Eucalyptus Seed, about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two, as well as a tragi-comedy, Arden. His poems and articles have appeared in a wide range of international magazines.

Lineage

What realm is this, 
where the palace steps are made 
of polished jade? 

I still smell 
the agarwood incense
of Li Ch'ing Chao, the plum blossoms 
and thick green wine
dissolving the mind 
into a fog 
of puerh and perfume.

Here I bow again 
to the old masters—
the fellow seekers 
and teachers 
I will never meet.

Ryokan, Basho, Tu Fu!

I walk these mountains 
in search of you.

Corbin Buff is a writer living in western Montana. Recent work has appeared in Misfit Magazine, The River, Cajun Mutt Press, and elsewhere. His chapbook Original Face was published in 2025. Find him on instagram: @buffcorbin or his website: www.corbinbuff.com

Epistle to a Concrete Room

They count you four times a day.
They count the spoons, the steps, the minutes.
But in this envelope, you are unnumbered.

My pen scratches against the thin paper,
a sound like a key turning in a lock.
I write about the hawk I saw on the telephone wire,
the taste of coffee, the way the fog lifts.
Small, holy trivialities.

When I lick the stamp, I am sealing a prayer.
This letter will pass through metal detectors,
through sliding gates and heavy hands,
to find you in the dark.

It is a paper wall we lean against,
whispering to each other from opposite sides,
proving that the spirit can travel
where the body cannot go.

Jenny Hart is an innovative writer exploring complex ideas through poems, essays, and stories. Her unique voice inspires reflection, fosters empathy, and sparks meaningful conversations. A lifelong learner, she draws on diverse interests—social justice, environmental issues, and human connection—to challenge assumptions and celebrate the world’s beauty. Continuously evolving her craft, Jenny invites readers to think deeply and feel profoundly.

McDowell Sonoran Preserve, Tom’s Thumb

You feel the breath of mountain spirits
as you ascend endless switchbacks 
to a granite monolith high above 
the desert floor. Do not question 
the Yavapai belief in these spirits. 
It offers comfort, elicits respect 
on this morning blessed with cloud, 
cold and wind, brisk air.
Stones of many sizes and shapes,
both foreboding and protective
surround until you reach a false summit 
and the switchbacks end. 
You descend into the heart 
of these ancient formations,
the terrain rocky with narrow passages 
more ascents and a final short
jagged incline before the iconic spire 
stands before you as if it were a god
a temple, a nirvana,
a revered mountain spirit
so close to stillness 
and a silent nameless faith.

Roxanne Lynn Doty is a poet and fiction writer. She published her first novel in 2022, Out Stealing Water, a chapbook in 2024, Hours of the Desert and has a forthcoming poetry collection to be published in 2026, What Surrounds You. She lives in the Phoenix, Arizona area.

in translation

To translate pila or pilón
the internet suggests 
everything from trough to cistern
Something      in between


Hiking through Portugal
I stop by one of them      heatstruck
Overhead      a rock-niched Virgin perches
pietá from her seam in the stone
above the pila’s stream

Summer noon
Empty town

		Watermusic 
		salts the silence

I dunk my arms elbow deep 
into this inland sea
found as a poem
sweat-desperate
uncareful 

		Lord     here
		my prayer 

plunged 
untranslated 
manger-deep
spit-blue syllables
unsanitized

Christianna Soumakis, MFA, is an artist, writer, art instructor, and pilgrim. She is an introvert who loves people, is a two-time Pushcart Nominee, and has walked the Camino de Santiago three times, for a total of 1,380 miles on foot. She lives in New York.

A Cardinal Caught My Eye

A flutter of wing in the corner, 
at the edge. 
You caught my eye, 
Cardinal. 

At first, I marvelled at your color: 
royal, regal, rageful red.
A crisp and sunny crimson, 
aside the bloody sunset–

But your black eye stared, teasing me. 
It said you had a message meant for only me. 
Are you a messenger, Cardinal, sent from above? 
Or elsewhere? Is that why you caught my eye today?

You caught my eye this morning, you did! 
You caught my eye, and I caught my breath… 
Your vermillion coat shimmered with a thousand diamonds of tender, white snow,
and I felt the cold that blankets my heart begin 
            to melt 
                        for grateful, graceful 
                                     Beauty.

Cardinal: 
I think you are here to sing 
a new love to me!
Is that the substance of your song? 
            New love?
                       New love for me?

Are you here to catch my eye
 	and my breath 
                       and my heart
                                      in my throat?

For they are there now, Cardinal,
standing at the ready.
Soldiers, chanting their surrender 
into the howling 
                       winter 	
                                      wind.

Cardinal, please sing to me of new love!
Sing a song for someone 
who desires to know of my too-large heart.
What flutters inside this swelling cage but hope? 

What swells in time, dwells in mine…
Is that a lyric spilled from new love’s lips, Cardinal?
I did not know how sorely my ear ached for this melody 
Until you sang it into my eye 
and my breath 
and my heart 
in my throat.

Cardinal: 
Who is this new love? 
By what name 
will I know him?

Sing to me, Cardinal!
Pour your song into this chalice, Cardinal, 
filling its far too-largeness with 
love’s light at long last.

Cardinal stops.
And sings to me, 
and I laugh
             at the familiar sound 
                           of 	
                                       my 
                                                    own 
                                                                  name.

Lara E. Lehman is a former teacher and performer, now in her West Coast writing era. She enjoys writing about writing, creativity, nature, consciousness, and faith. Currently, she is at work on a novel that reconsiders the Salem witch trials. Essays on craft are forthcoming in The Artisanal Writer and The Writer’s Chronicle while other work has appeared in The English Journal and Text and Performance Quarterly, among others. She is a reader for The Broad Ripple Review Literary Journal. Find her on Medium @thestorydoctorisin.

Dear Mr. Pope,

I am writing to you from my kitchen table,
where the clouds of summer have resumed,
and in this factitious time, the chill sets in.

Here there are fewer disasters
than in other homes. We are sitting
in wait of the next sign 
or wonder, and I wanted to ask if 
you know what it could be. There are 
better questions like: 
Who shaped the round body of the bird?
Who set forth the silver flicking of the fish tail? Who 
measures the brilliance of the air on
the days it drips cleanly into the lunged world? 

And, there is one more thing. In my
many years of mourning god, I seem
to have found god once again – perched
and in flight. In these years I have learned
god does not wish to be forced on anyone,
in fact, god does not even want to be
conveniently suggested. So, Mr. Pope, What fresh 
faces of god will surprise you today?
And if they were to pass by, what shape would 
your own face take? And what is eternal life,
but the stretching and joining of each moment
to the next - which is happening here, now, today.
So then if eternal life is here and now (surely it is!)
Then how can we pick up and begin to live? 

Sincerely.

Danielle Isbell is a writer, dialogue facilitator, and poetry reader for Vita Poetica. She has a background in theological studies and conflict transformation, and keeps coming back writing that breaks open new possibilities of language and imagination. Her writings center on the spirituality of nature, the sacredness of the unknown, and the window she loved in her childhood home. You can find other writings of hers on danielleisbell.org.

Priddy in the Mendips

At Priddy in the Mendips, Just-in-Roseland, 
Talland, or wherever a Chiltern sunray 
each new day shoots through the Vale, 
birdsong's sinewy cheer runs long and 
young down Swithun's firgrove. 
Eyefulls of king fern seed invisibility, 
grant a centre to embrace the lean 
and gaunt redeemer's summer rain 
St. Swithin weeps, christens apples. 

I prest unblest content to my lips 
awaiting an orchard in sequence of quincunx 
on this road. Up ahead, 
early April infant light: 
new warmth and flower, 
black foal in blossom, 
shadow of kestrel circling haze; 
the cooling down in daffodil shadows, 
a chill having travelled from water somewhere. 

Somewhere Sin was merely the Truth cloaked in a context of Matter, 
the falsely occulted in a crevice of gorse 
shadow made blacker by the force of the sun, 
yellows of ling a calm arbiter – 
for angel shadow, edge of halo, 
trace of weightless mountain, 
hint of limitless sentient volume – 
the promises, the days to come, 
the nights as one out the corners of our eyes 
was a vast white bedsheet frozen 
mid-billow, the thrill of space suspended 
before, upon our faces, 
the gentle kiss of the fall. 

Adam Flint was born in North London and is currently based in Berlin. Previous poems have appeared in/been published by Shearsman magazine, Blackbox Manifold, Pamenar Press, and Corbel Stone Press, among others