Amethyst Review

To What is Divine

I lie on a beach in Malibu,
sand pressing asterisks into my back,
the long-dead foam, receding.

Ahead, ginger-root sun buries
behind the horizon,
cinnabar unspooling behind.

My mouth snagged:
chew or praise?
Above, stars scatter

from the ruptured bodies
of their mothers and fathers.
An owl glazed in silver

clamps a crab,
rises above the cliff.
You, spirit who webs my lungs,

are the nucleus that never sees
its own surface. Your tides
wash over the dead

whose breath baptizes me,
my skin opening into mouths
that howl apart the mist.

You rush in, my body
erased from the sand,
forehead breaking open

under your flood.

Nathan Hassall is the 2023–2025 Poet Laureate of Malibu, California, and founder of The Poetry Vessel, a poetry education platform and podcast. His poems have appeared in Luna Luna, Moria, Ghost City Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. Find more of his work and join his mailing list at www.nathanhassall.com

Smallwhite
 
 
settle on to me. There is no one here.
I will keep my arm in the sun for you.
 
They are all in town or at the Credit Union
at the end of the street.
 
I would feel the touch of you sat on me 
and would not move or blink.
 
We could open everything and the river 
would rise, clear completely and She   
 
would come down swimming for us
while the others are all away.

And the mirrored gulls would fly along with Her. 
Around Her. In silence.

Martin Towers lives in the seaside town of Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Mid Wales. He is a support worker for people who have a learning disability.
Videos of his poetry are on the YouTube channel of Professor J J Badger. Go to @Profjjb

Wendy Westley was a successful nurse, midwife and therapist for many years in the UK. She now writes short stories and poetry, and has been published in several poetry journals.

Thursday (no. 1). 

On Thursday, in Christ Chapel, I knelt down,
and gazing upwards, begged my God for help:
“not for myself,” I said into the space,
“but for my friends, and family, and…”
					                        soon
I realized that my list was far too long;
and my community was far too large
for my remembrance. Still, I thanked the Lord,
the Father from whom every gift descends.
Calling for intercession from the saints, 
I signed the cross: up-down-left-right, “amen,”
and finished praying in the silence.
				                             Then,
still gazing upwards, I noticed the lights
in rows of chandeliers floating beneath
the arches of the lofty ceiling— 
				                     how
the light around the lights, in rainbow-lines
shifting at infinite speed seemed to move
both out, and down to me, and up and in.

Joseph Teti is an MA/PhD student in English Literature at the Catholic University of America, researching Augustine’s impact on George Herbert’s nature poetry. His poems have appeared in The Borough, Vermillion, Rialto Books Review, Clayjar Review, As Surely as the Sun, Foreshadow, and several other small Christian poetry magazines.

Breaking, Not Broken

Because no cuckoos call from the downs’ blue woods,
my heart breaks, aches with sorrow
and waiting, waiting for that cool voice
in the dusk of early day.

Not now: there is no call,
as if spring cannot return again.

But dawn also breaks, light streaming & soaking all.
Still half-shadowed, a pool glitters—glass shatters:
a frog’s greedy leap, ripples
as from pebbles.

Beyond these gardens, an early ploughman
breaks the sod for sowing bright spring barley.

Leafless fledglings splinter shells
with toothpick beaks;
wings flutter feebly,
flightless. 

Suspended or reaching, 
sycamore leaf-buds, too, break 
silver-to-green on the sky’s new blue.
And in the hedge, more wings: wet, 

tissue-fine, drying in the wind:
an orange butterfly has split its chrysalis.

Waves surge & flow, billow, cave in,
crash on rock & shoreline
yet heave whole again, to hurl again—
to break again.

Day breaks but has not come apart:
is healing me with blackbirds’ somnolent song
murmuring from hidden nests,
at ease even among cracked shells.

Long promises of prophecy hold:
all things do break but are not broken.

Fresh bread may be torn, yes, but first was risen;
red wine spilled, yet still is sipped—

and a rock-stopped tomb is cloven wide
with no one left inside.

Fallen all to pieces, this ruined world
I know too well is mended—utterly.

© Lizzie Ballagher

One of the winners in Ireland’s 2024 Fingal Poetry Festival Competition and in 2022’s Poetry on the Lake, Lizzie Ballagher focuses on landscapes, both psychological and natural. She was a Pushcart nominee in 2018. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poems have appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/

Our World

The trees are the divine assembly,
            our sentinels, our mothers, too,
            their leaves our life and heartbeat,

the juncos, grey and creamy white, 
            with their perky hops and flits 
            bring us each year the chilly North, 

and the robins who remain 
            despite the autumn frost 
            are summertime and spring,

the ground beneath our feet,
            the earth, our deep connection,
            reminds us we stand upon one Earth,

and the rocks, 
            rocks we thought so solid,
            but that can so surely crumble,

            are the world,
            the world around us,

            the world in which we live.

Katy Z Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world, poet, retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, former healthcare chaplain, co-founder of a Jewish climate organization, and eco-chaplain. She has been writing in one context or another all her life. Her poetry has appeared in online publications and in the 2025 Art on the Trails: Number 9 poetry and art book. Her book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing. Her work can be found online at www.katyzallen.com.

Carolyn Chilton Casas is a practicing Reiki Master and teacher who explores ways of healing in the articles she writes for energy and wellness magazines in several countries. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Braided Way, Grateful Living, and One Earth Sangha and in anthologies including The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal, Thin Spaces & Sacred Spaces, and Women in a Golden State. More of Carolyn’s work can be found on Instagram and Facebook, at www.carolynchiltoncasas.com, and in her newest collection of poetry Under the Same Sky.

Scripture, or Ant Anatomy for Beginners 

In early March, an infestation of odorous ants. They must come
from somewhere in the walls. Ground too frozen for survival.

My husband brushes them off, could care less about the nuisance,
while I wonder why I rage at their arrival, their black trail 

thick as a noose as they march toward the Borax I baited in the corner. 

*

I watch myself as I poison them and their food source. 
Whatever it is, this is a darker me. This stomp and squash.

*

Higher self. Angel in the ghost-light.  Why do I waft and drift?

Why was flesh made so easy to tackle? Wounds in me, 

why have you never healed? 

*

Maybe I’ll turn into an ant. Accept the funiculus and mandible. Acidapore,
tarsus, head. I’ve a lot to learn. How not to drown in a spring downpour.

How not to cave too deep. I have to learn ant-speak. 

Like an undertone
with antennae. A low roll, a thin glaze, a wish. 

*

I follow what’s ahead of me into the kitchen. My husband is gone 
for the weekend. He forgot there was extra baklava near the coffee. 

I desire now a turn to it like honey. I guzzle and maw. Amen, I say, as I drink 
and feast. Amen, to the dark and light that compete in me. Amen, ants. Let’s eat. 

Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman now lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. Her poems have appeared in a variety of publications, including Thrush, Radar Poetry, The Penn Review, Glass: A Poetry Journal, The Night Heron Barks, SWWIM, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. Her book _Browsing as a Guest_ is forthcoming from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. Find her at: www.aliciamariehoffman.com.

La Catarata de La Paz


Awash in uncertainty, I wander 
to this waterfall on the road 
to San Miguel, not expecting it 

to strike out like an archangel, thrust 
its sword against my fear, brush
its bright blade against my face.

And yet, I find peace in watching
this army of water advance with such
conviction. It does not argue 

with the cliff, or worry with the weight 
of all that moving. It does not ask
for anything but belief in the way it goes.

All day, all night, La Paz flows with a certainty
I cannot find in myself. It pours out its power
like a soldier of God. From the mouth 

of the rocks, it prays for me until I can 
do no less for myself, begging for that same
surge of cool resolve, that sense of going right.

Linda Culp Holmes holds a degree in English literature. She has won several poetry awards from organizations in East Tennessee and has had work published in the Red Branch Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Monterey Poetry Review, and the Ekphrastic Review, among others. Her non-fiction book, If I Am So Lucky: A Portrait of a Man in Perilous Times, 1862-1865, was published by Heritage Books, Inc. in 2023. She lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.