Amethyst Review

Lighthouse

When I die I will walk from the old house of my body 
to the lighthouse. Each moment will light up 

like a flared match: here where the old apple  
arches over the path, ducked under 

a thousand times, here where the cliff’s flank 
bedlams thrift’s pink, here where a knot of seals 

bask in last sun, dark heads breaking glitter open, 
here in November dark where a sick lamb

collapsed on an edge and I knew what would happen 
that wild night, here where an adder erupted, 

coiled the oil of itself into earth	 – each memory flashes –
when I reach the lighthouse I’ll be transparent, 

every one of them released from the skull’s dark round, 
imprinted on the beloved ground layer upon layer

into stone, sand, sea-campion. A last look back 
at the old house, suddenly lit.

Sue Proffitt lives in Hallsands, South Devon, is a Hawthornden Fellow and has been published in a number of magazines, anthologies and poetry competitions. She has two poetry collections: Open After Dark (Oversteps, 2017) and The Lock-Picker (Palewell Press, 2021), and is currently looking for a home for her third collection.

Small Flame Applying for Heaven
      	🔥
 
little faith
 
in a rented body
 
 
      	🔥
 
little hunger
 
dressed as purpose
 
 
      	🔥
 
little voice
 
saying chosen
 
chosen
 
chosen
 
 
the body says:
 
        pain
 
 
the prayer says:
 
        proof
 
 
the mirror says:
 
        girl
 
 
god says:
 
        static
 
 
      	🔥
 
she kneels
 
until the floor
 
starts believing
 
it has been blessed
 
 
      	🔥
 
she mistakes
 
burning
 
for being
 
answered
 
 
      	🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
 
 
for one second
 
everyone sees
 
what she sees
 
 
then
 
only
 
smoke

Sushanth Shyamsundar is an Indian writer and poet based in Chennai. He performs spoken word as Rakshasan and writes across poetry, fiction, horror, comedy, queerness, family, memory, and the strange machinery of everyday life. His work often explores bodies, masks, refusal, tenderness, absurdity, survival, and the private rituals people build to keep going. He is the author of one poetry collection, with two more manuscripts in progress.

Sanctuary

i.m. Meher Baba 1894-1969


I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve knelt at your feet, 
wanting to be delivered of myself. 

This is what I’m coming for – my head on that slab of surrender, 
the same thick Carrera marble Michelangelo used for his Pietà. 

There’s no dusk, there, no planning where to hide. 
The sun rises and falls with different speed and purpose. 

Yesterday, I spoke with someone who had never heard of you. 
He taught me the meaning of a qualisign: something that embodies 

the qualities it stands for. Christ, he said, is a qualisign: 
he is what he represents. I no longer try to convince anyone 

you are the silence you kept. I have too much to learn: 
how to press my skull against the side of your tomb 

without asking you for things, without beseeching 
that this separation end.

Rosie Jackson, from Devon, England, is widely published and has won many poetry awards, including 1st prizes Indigo Dreams 2026, Watchet 2026, Red Shed 2025, Teignmouth 2021, Hedgehog 2020, Poetry Space 2019, Wells 2018, Stanley Spencer Competition 2017, short-listed in Mslexia 2025. She has taught at universities, including East Anglia, her spiritual life has taken her to India and the United States. Collections include Love Leans over the Table (Two Rivers Press, 2023), Light Makes it Easy (2022), Two Girls and a Beehive: Poems about Stanley Spencer (2020). ‘a rare poet of transcendence’ Bel Mooney. ‘gorgeously original’ Jane Hirshfield. www.rosiejackson.org.uk

Time Made Whole

A tree is a being who turns light
and dark into time made whole. 

Rooted in the earth and connected
below ground. 

Centuries of tree messages 
vibrate throughout darkness.

Time is a ring deep within the tree’s heart. 
Time is a tree’s vibration deep within the earth.

In our next lives, may we all return
as earthworms to bathe in

the unheard voices of trees throughout time.
And if we should return 

as anything else but tree or worm,
let it be as a being

for whom every tree
is a beacon of wonder. 

Lana Hechtman Ayers shepherded over 150 poetry collections into print as managing editor for three small presses. She lives in Oregon on unceded lands of the Yaqo’n people with her beloved husband and fur babies, where on clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon. Visit her online at LanaAyers.com.

a flake from a leaf in the Book of Kells

it is all that is
left behind
a life lived without ornament

the details hidden
the black hours
implicit in design.

it is the secret world
of the page we create
the ornate foliage and flourishes
	embellished with ink
	the color of blood.

it is what makes us
most alive

this catalog of imagined beasts
made real with freehand stroke
and sweeping line.

they are the faded icons
of lost desire, tendrils
of ivy leaf
	and burnished gold.

they are fictions of innocence 
betrayed
parables of faith

a child’s crude drawing
of paradise
	remembered

Ken Cathers has just published his eighth book of poetry entitled Home Town with Impspired Press in England. He has also recently published two chapbooks, one entitled Kiefer by broke press and the other entitled Legoland Noir by Block Party Press. His work has appeared in publications from Canada, the United States, Australia, Ireland, England, India, Hong Kong and Africa. His current work continues to explore the boundaries of poetic form and subject matter.

With Emily

My thing with feathers is black and white, 
a speckled hen, like something out of a picture book,
or a nursery rhyme but real, limping then hopping
and finally, lying quietly until I realize that her only hope
is me, a makeshift scalpel and a chicken-keeping forum.
And so I transform into a surgeon—who knew 
so much blood could flow from a chicken’s foot?
For weeks, I force open the wound open 
for another round of treatment 
every morning and every evening, 
until one day she flaps her wings in my face 
telling me that yes, hope holds so much power 
that saving the life of a single chicken 
can feel like saving an entire world.

Janet Madden is a writer, reader, teacher, ritualist, gardener herbalist and handquilter who resides on the West Coast.

The Expansion

And like a trillium seed
waiting for nine years
to reach up,
to tear the earthen mask from its face,
like the violent dancing of pines 
before a storm—
it begins again. 
That force from behind time,
from all those bodies
feeding me from their breasts 
until I become their sharper form,
green lines against the distance,
my eye focused in the 
mirror of the Crow’s.

I have the power to tear down 
towering constructions, 
the ones reinforced daily 
by those who are alive like a shrug. 
I have torn limbs from oaks 
and planted willow seeds
by the drying-up streams. 
I have said,
“I know you,
I know you,
I know you.”

And then—
I know you. 

And I am a mycelium tendril 
carrying messages through life,
in service to the mystery
of dancing,
the mystery of the joy of moving
to feel Earth’s tongue upon my ear,
whispering incoherent melodies. 

Like the rest of us,
I have grown used to living
as a casual endeavor. 
If it is nothing, 
then it is nothing to look away
from the cardinals 
watching me through the window
with Her eyes. 
If it is nothing,
it is nothing to say the mind
is just a hindrance 
to the railway of existence. 

I turn my face upward
and I laugh.

Filled with the strength of this moment,
outside of lines,
I almost tear my wet finger from its socket. 
I lay back, 
watching colors on my skin,
more real than the concrete
I accidentally stamped my foot into. 
The circle of history and songs
curls through me,
around, 
back out—

I watch the boundless 
veins of my hand. 

Moriah Brown is a poet and novelist living in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her poetry has been published in Creation Magazine, The Passionfruit Review, and The Woolf, among others, and has also been featured in various anthologies. When she is not working as a medical assistant and bartender, she is writing or walking in the forest.

With Every Whim of Waves
 
A bottle washed up on the shore,
sand greeting it with a hug.
 
Message inside says,
I’ll love you forever
 
I wonder if it’s meant
for the ocean.
 
Surely, if for a human, the message 
would be delivered directly
 
by a soft whisper-like voice,
slipping up next to the ear
 
of the beloved, but if meant
for the water what better way
 
than enclosed in a bottle
that will tumble & float.
 

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in Amethyst Review, 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.

thinking of cold mountain

han shan (a chinese hermit-poet)
took to the hills to lead a life
in the clouds — nothing to do
but dance to singing cicadas…

in some of the scribbles, he writes
of wife and son… in others, a brook —
laughing joy. laughing sorrow.
nothing steals his thunder!

that old ghost haunts poets
when it rains in small-town, anywhere:
was that you in the flash of the cardinal?
the empty trash bins that line the street?

in that lavender flower i don’t yet
know the name of? or just in the
verse… which helped ease me
through this evening’s worries?

Adream Marquis (he/they) is a poet working in the Affrilachian foothills of Muscogee and Cherokee North Georgia. Their transdisciplinary work is deeply rooted in the haunted naturalism of their environment, and they seek to sing its mysteries. Adream hopes to inspire in each an itch for that magic hiding in all of our unique ecologies.

Once Upon a Shadow


Whether light is breaking 
trough a cloud, 
or oranges and bananas
create depth in a basket, 
silk and taffeta
rumpled in folds,
or sea, particles in the ocean, 
dolphins splashing green, 
rising up against the jets,
images that some will understand,
others blink in puzzlement,
who comprehends truth?

What absolute power 
watches with interest,
measuring sins 
like you would measure coffee,
one tablespoon at a time,
each grimace on your face—
a mirror of lust in your heart, 
pours blood over your soul 
like falling rain, and some of you 
believe this is an act of mercy.

Late in the afternoon,
sun begins to play
behind clouds, houses 
or simply sinks below the horizon, 
you think back to those 
ripples, folds, light and shadow, 
a painting by Rembrandt or Rubens
or some other artist 
who knows salvation’s name.

Linda Meg Frith is retired Social Worker and long time member of Green River Writers. She has published poetry in Amethyst Review, eMerge, River and South Review, Rainy Weather Days, Eclectica, Tipton Poetry Journal. She received a 2025 Pushcart Nomination for her poem, ‘Home is Where the Hurt Is’. Linda Meg lives in Louisville, KY.