Amethyst Review

An Old Story

The gaffed salmon you’ve hauled up
and over the bloody transom, luminous 
as a Byzantine mosaic in the sun,
has delivered the light of here and now 
to flash in your eyes no matter how old 
the saga is you two are enacting.

Mike Dillon lives in Indianola, Washington, a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle, U.S.A., from where he writes poetry and essays. His most recent book is Nocturne: New and Selected Poems, from Unsolicited Press (2024).

The Waters Ritual 

They told me to
walk blind until you feel 
water on your toes. 
Then they said, plunge, infuse yourself,
trust the correct keel.

I found the long swim through four waters
so unfathomably deep 
a conversion process, 
an idea in motion, the ebb and flow
of a poem, held fast to steep. 

So here I am, what can you tell me about
that which I wonder to be real, true? 
When you pass through the waters, 
I will be with you 

Richard Skinner is Director of the Fiction Programme at Faber Academy. He studied at Sarum Theological College, 2024-26. These two poems are from a forthcoming collection called ‘Amends’, which is the result of his study at Sarum College.

Fountain

In the night I see your shining 
eyes, and beyond their beauty 

a promise of Sabbath fit for the 
soul, an inexhaustible fountain 

tapping lightly on my shoulder 
until it soaks through every cell, 

an endless sea curling east as we 
converge upon the whitecaps, 

a happiness poured back 
and forth between friends.

Aisling Cruz is a Midwest-based poet and artist. Her work has recently appeared in Vessels of Light, Gotham Literature, and Oyster River Pages.

When a soundbath stresses you out

because it reminds you of being on hold for DWP.
When you cocoon yourself in the duvet 
to make it feel like a retreat but it’s more 
Kafka’s Metamorphosis than you expected. 
When you play a healing soundscape on 
Youtube, in imitation of posh spas, 
with jungle drum and bird song. How it mixes 
with the sound of your own back garden birds, 
sparrow and wood pigeon. Reliable even 
if not exotic. Until you can’t
decipher between the real birds and the 
recorded real birds. A captured birdsong 
no one can copyright that is carried into
future ears years later when the nest is rolled 
away and the hedge is cut to its bones. Might
the bird song come later when you 
get your one and only lie in that week.
Might one day wellness well up in us
without being contrived; that we take up 
our place and hear our body sing in an
accompanied chorus. Might we bathe 
in the pool of our humanity and
let acceptance seep in and hug us
as tightly as the big toe fits the tap. 

Ryan Service is a full-time priest and sometime poet based in the Midlands (UK), finding his vocation somewhere in between the world and the word. His work has been published in Theology, The Sociological Review and other journals. He received a prize for his entry in the Jack Clemo poetry competition. Before training for the priesthood in Rome he read English at the University of Warwick, where he found the sheer variety of worlds created by authors opened up a way into faith.

Warrior Child

	I want to be a warrior…--St. Thérèse of Lisieux
 
I have trusted with a young trust
that closes eyes and leans hard into hostile space 

and the plummet takes on monstrous shapes
of hurt and burn and brittle faith

offset by fierce love for you, spear of iris, 
your perfect bloom—

this is the bluff, the bitter lip 
where I ask about Joan and Thérèse, all your precious loves 

who leak life and lean 
cantilevering the cliff of your absence until they slip

the bounds of armor and crag, coughing blood, combusting,
trussed yet trusting—

you open the last door, and you wait inside—what is it to rush 
in, though the cathedral collapses— 

What is it to hush
my foreboding when like Joan like Thérèse there is a death 

you are asking, a slashing 
away of the woman, unmasking 

the warrior hidden under delicate skin, now pricking alive 
and feverish, rising unsteady as 

you train my arms for battle, prepare my hands for war, what is it to 
touch your face

Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Butterfly Nebula (Backwaters, University of Nebraska Press, 2023), winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press, 2020), winner of the Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press), and the nonfiction book I Live, No Longer I (Wipf & Stock). She is one of ten poets featured in the anthology In a Strange Land (Cascade Books). Her poems have appeared in America, Scientific American, Sugar House Review, RHINO, The Christian Century, Verse Daily and elsewhere.

The Mysteries

of a river
at dusk—

the way
its waters

sound
like a song

someone
else

has told
you about—

remain
strangely

consuming,
yet connected. 

Alex Missall studied creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. His poetry collection A Harvest of Days is available through Finishing Line Press. His collection Morning Grift is forthcoming through FLP (September 2026). He resides in Ohio. You can find him on X @missall_Poet, or on Instagram @alexmissall.

Resting Cymbals

From the faucet’s drip
in the silent house comes 
contemplation’s arrow.
I fold into the couch
when the kids have given up
the animal racket of slight bodies.
A small white plate 
in the center of the kitchen
holds the unpeeled orange,
so many wispy ventricles.
The fallen petals, its
amphibian skin shed 
beneath it. No one dares
to eat its sweet pulse.

Love is also a streak of terror
that makes you aware 
of its duties before rest.
That children love so much—
the small kernel in their chests
glowing while they sleep,
I can hardly believe it. 
What more is there to see,
Lord, help my unbelief. 

Jesse Breite’s recent poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Tinderbox, Poetry Northwest, Terrain, and Rhino. His first full-length poetry collection is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. Jesse teaches high school in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with his wife and two kids. More at jessebreite.com.

Turning Seventy


one month before seventy
moving through a landscape of thanks
for Octobers and Puccini
halves of horse chestnut cases
open and yawning on the sidewalk in autumn sun

delighting in
green mossy paquettes
pantomimes of pufferfish
balloon fish and offspring
locusts and honey

one month before seventy
bearing my witnesses:
the hope of letting go of my stories
each story as common as grass
and reframe regrets as pokerfaced masterpieces to ignore

at seventy I will pull back the curtain
revealing islands of weeping mixed with marionettes of joy
pirouettes of astonishment
trembling, pendulous and grateful 
rejoicing in worship everywhere

Liz Nakazawa is the editor of Deer Drink the Moon:Poems of Oregon. This is an anthology of 33 Oregon poets writing nature poems. Her own poetry has appeared in Willawa, Timberline Review, Amethyst Review, ahundredgourds and other publications.

La nostra certezza l’amore di Dio
 
My eyes wander this small sanctuary
where you are crucified at least
three times. We kill you so often—
 
I find a bank of electric candles,
light one each day. I miss matches,
but I leave some flickering
 
contrition, my confessions, before
the statues of saints I don’t know,
to whom I don’t pray. The flawed
 
can comfort, but can they save?
A carillon rings heavy in the stone walls,
marble holds percussion interwoven
 
with Bohemian Rhapsody from a passing
car. A woman enters, drops coin after coin
in the offering box, I never see her face.  
 
I relight a candle that stuttered off,
wonder if she left this prayer, if
it caught artificial flame, if it will
 
burn anyway. I can no longer tell
where burning starts or stops,
which loss is mine or hers.

Nadine Ellsworth-Moran lives in Georgia where she works in full-time ministry while pursuing her love of writing. She hopes to continue listening closely and writing about the shared experience of life in these times, with particular interest in the joys and struggles of coming to understand the history, identity, faith, and culture of the modern South. Her poems have appeared in Valiant Scribe, Structo, Theophron, Rust + Moth, Thimble, Sonic Boom, Emrys, Kakalak, and The Wild Word, among others. She shares her home with her husband and five unrepentant cats.

I Travel


I travel through centuries,
my roots scattered to the winds,
my tomorrows soaring above
canopied forests,
Their splendid carpets of green,
their rising tubular arteries
reaching toward extended hearts
transporting love’s
coming and going.

Yvonne Jayne lives and writes in Hawaii. Her poetry is published in The San Francisco Journal of Hope and Peace, The Harbinger Asylum Literary Journal, Best Poetry, The The Twisted Vine, Western New Mexico University, The Tipton Poetry Journal, and The Aleola Journal of Poetry and Art.