Amethyst Review

Tevah

What is the heart but a vessel that
contains devotion in the belief you
will not drown.  The tide comes
and goes to carry you out to depths
so blue as to forget how many days
since you were set adrift.  What is
the word that held you afloat after
the weather turned, the endless 
days and nights under a vacant sky
with the pitch wearing thin and 
dissolving?  Not faith, but hope.
Hope like the grey-white of a dove’s
belly flying above you.  Hope
like the baby in the reeds.

Mary Anne Griffiths (she/her) is a poet and fiction writer living in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. She shares space with a spouse, a tortie and tuxie and is presently working towards her debut collection of poetry and microfiction. Forthcoming work can be found in Queen’s Quarterly and West Trestle Review along with Anti-Heroin Chic, Slipstream Magazine, Kelp Journal and others.

Pillow Talk

You, Divine Spark, come sit next to me. Better yet, sit here on my lap and let me stroke your hair. I have a story to share with you, Beloved. A wild, wicked, wonderful story that blossoms from my heart and wishes to be told.

Come, will you please be the open ears that receive this melody, the vessel that glories in the telling and the chalice that holds space for this unfolding? I feel the tale wishes to be told, but it will not rise without your willing presence to catch the chronicle.

Yes, Beloved! Yes, of course. I bring my ears, guided from the center of my Heart, eager to be nourished by the messages of your song. Sing your praises, your harmonies, your divinity into the empty bowl of my body, ripe for receiving. I lie, rest across the basin of your lap, and now I am ready to listen, take in, imbibe your gifts.

Beloved, Angel of the day and Goddess of the night, without you I am but ideas on the wind. You anchor me. Sustenance to my reverie, substance to my formlessness.

Once, and once again, before time began to tick the rhythms of nature, everything was soft, spacious, like cotton warmed by summer’s rays into a vessel of touch. The breadth of Being filled space with breath, quintessence, expanse. Here, in the land before the metered measure of time, I know myself as everything. Here, in this land, I feel myself as everything. Your sultry lips, a shadow in the future, hold a quiet space: the wavering of trees, a wisp of possibility, fills a vastness. I know how trees and lips will dance one day through the exchange of life. I feel this the way you feel wind on your bare skin receiving my divine kiss even now, a lingering brush.

In this untangled moment, measured before time, only the audible hum of my love for you fills the void. I know this sinuous vibration across the field-of-Being, lingering in this sonorous cadence the way you lie in the grass to be licked by light and caressed by green stalks of life. From this surrender to my own luminous light, from this luxuriating window into the magic of being, from here comes the sultry wind. From here comes the blanketing sky. From here comes the music of the birds, a serenade tuned just for you—for you as me, tuned to the resonance of my Being-sound across the expanse, a drape of glory creating from the emptiness whatever arises from this tickled place where my pulsating emergence reveals you. I am you.

Come, my love, make this story anew with me. Let me twirl you onto the mountain tops and dance samba with your warm body. Let me unfold eternity from the ripeness of your ever-giving hips. Let us create anew.

Beloved, Angel of the heavens creating here on Earth, I am your playground. Paint me pretty pictures, paint me in colors that have no names as they spill forth from your endless well. I hear your story of love and raise my skirt to chassé with your colorful creations. The world is our stage. With each pirouette through my body, I send the harmonies of your love into the air. She shutters and stills. She bucks and quiets. She unfolds. Through me, you have unleashed yourself as me, tornadoes of vibrancy enveloping the magic of Being, revealing the wonder of existence. I am your pawn, you are my master. And I am your master, you are my pawn. Together we are. Apart we are not. There is no dance of separation, only the wild cacophony of our unified, orgasmic delight revealing the heavens everywhere.

I take each step alight in the beauty of the tempo of this breath, this heartbeat. You tap the rhythm of soul into the ethers, and I must move, must sway, must lose myself in the thunderous outpouring of this decadence. Call me anytime, Beloved, to dance your Heart into being. Play me like a violin, crafted by wind and sea to resonate the perfection of life from the curves of my wooden bones in harmony with your song. Pluck my chords, amplify my beauty, unhinge our glory into the cadence of being. I dignify your longing and birth your reverie.

Cit Ananda’s poetry is inspired by direct experience, captured in moments between perception when the mind falls quiet and deep silence shares an offering that touches the mystery of life. She will tell you she catches poetry on the winds of the universe. She has had work published or forthcoming in The Mountain Path, Tiferet Journal, Offerings: A Spiritual Poetry Anthology, El Portal, Medicine and Meaning, and Tiny Seed Journal. She is also the author of When Silence Speaks: Messages from the Heart, a full-length poetry book. Explore more at https://www.beingcitananda.com/publications.

Full Moon in Ljubljana
 
How perfect a night
when the moon is included
when you can see stars
 
	    add an old church dome,
 
		         and the next day, Beethoven
	    played on church bells,
	    the first notes of Ode to joy.
 
		         It soars above the animated streets,
	    the terrace-to-terrace restaurant scene, 
	    past the sad-eyed accordion player,
 
		         and the memory of the moon starts to sing
			
			               Yes, I see all of this 		
			               and you see me, in borrowed light
			               in my phases 
 

Kitty Jospé is a retired French Teacher, art docent, but continues to moderate weekly poetry appreciation sessions since 2008 after receiving her MFA. Known for her teaching enthusiasm, joyful presentations demonstrating the uplifting power of art and word, her work delights the ear with the sound of sense. She loves to walk, capturing unusual angles of light in nature and to explore the world, preferably by bicycle and train. Her poems appear in numerous journals, local anthologies and five books published by FootHills Publishing. semi-finalist in 2013 in Finishing Line Press chapbook contest.

Stepping Through the Canyon


Stepping slowly up 
the creek in Rattlesnake Canyon,
I balanced on boulder, then rock,
each perch skirted
by the water’s effluence,
its restless flow, each
step a movement into
the hidden hills of morning.
Like everything that matters
in this life we’re said to lead,
what happened next did not
come from me, but came over me—
like a crossing into 
the oak’s long shadow—
this ache, this dark song,
this pleasure in the breeze,
the water’s chime, the endless
time borne within 
the moment.  I moved, 
but did not move, breathed, 
but did not breathe, my lightened 
heart was certain it would never 
cease its knocking at the door, 
and even the birds
whistled a keening melody,
that would not pass, but draped
the air like silken pennants.

Daniel Thomas’s third poetry collection, River of Light, was published by Shanti Arts Publishing in 2025. His previous books are Leaving the Base Camp at Dawn and Deep Pockets. He has published poems in many journals, including Southern Poetry Review, Nimrod, Poetry Ireland Review, Vita Poetica, Radix, Atlanta Review, and others. More info at danielthomaspoetry.com

Grace Massey is a poet, classical ballet and Baroque dancer, gardener, and socializer of feral cats. Grace was an editor in educational publishing for many years and has degrees in English from Smith College and Boston University. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and have been published in numerous journals, including Quartet, Thimble, Lily Poetry Review, and One Art. Her chapbook, A Future with Bromeliads, is available from River Glass Books, Grace lives in Newton, Massachusetts. She can be reached at gracemasseypoet.com/

No-Man's-Land 

The waitress with warning eyes 
her smile a purring cat, serves coffee.

An old man strokes his komboloi 
the sun is a blood orange.

Banana leaves mouth the name:
Ledra Street where in the palm of Nicosia

my steps crush the copper bracts
of bougainvilleas, I notice the white of a taper 

then cross into no-man’s-land.
Years have fled leaving the dead 

in streets spooked with martyrdom.
Shuttered windows; shattered roofs

the cats skinny and stressed
in a silence of neglect.

My mind fixes a broken bouzouki 
remembers a sunken cord of rebetiko.

I hold on to it, a little bit of Aunt Katina’s kitchen
whose great iced cookies

have crumbled into the mouth of conciliation,
and with it her icon’s miraculous healing.

The Virgin’s tears dried in the heat of the firing,
I near the sandbags and barbed wire that trail 

stations of a cross, that banishes laughter: 
a crown of rusty thorns at the frontier.

Kate Hill-Charalambides is an English teacher of dual nationality who lives in Alsace. She has worked for an association against human trafficking which is recognized as being of public utility. Her poetry focuses on human rights, spirituality and feminism. Her poetry has appeared in DREICH 3 SEASON 9 (No.99), SNAKESKIN, Cerasus Poetry ; Piker Press and The Dawn Treader.

Prayer One

Divine 
Hymnia,
by whose 
grace go I:
Grace me,
undeserving,
elderly man,
no better, no 
worse than 
most, help 
me to sing 
songs to
to the wind 
by whose 
grace go I. 




Prayer Two

Divine 
Hymnia,
by whose 
grace go I:
Teach me 
songs of 
the wind.
Teach me 
to breathe,
to whisper
in tall grass,
to rattle the
ripe barley.




Prayer Three

Divine Hymnia, 
by whose 
grace go I:
Teach me
the songs of
thanks giving
that I may be
thankful for
the wheeling 
years I wailed
my way into,
and by whose 
grace go I,
this old man.

Gerald Wagoner‘s childhood was divided between Eastern Oregon and Montana where he was raised under the doctrine of benign neglect. With a BA in Creative Writing, Gerald pursued the art of sculpture, and eventually left the Northwest to study. He earned an MFA in sculpture from SUNY Albany, and moved to Brooklyn, NY in 1982. Gerald exhibited regularly and taught Art and English for the NYC Department of Education. He currently concentrates on writing poems.

Strange Flowers 

somehow the summer 
still grows strange flowers 
that we collect in blue vases
like the prayers we forget to say

all the rose beads scattering
like raindrops in a lazy sun shower 
and the half-forgotten trinity we 
never really did believe in anyway

but years ago, we were barefooted 
singing to an audience of angels
all dining on our tiny voices 

as we swayed like the summer flowers
we keep now in blue vases
like the prayers we no longer 
remember how to sing

Kay Ann Kestner’s screenplays have placed in a variety of competitions. She is the founder and editor of the literary journal Poetry Breakfast, which she established in 2011. Her poems and short stories have been published internationally. You can read more of her work and find her latest projects on her website at www.KayKestner.com.

The Windshield’s Reminded of America the Beautiful

—inspired by a photograph of a desolate highway in the Mojave Desert


Along this desert highway
where notes of amber wave
beneath Mojave skies
I reveal the blues of cobalt
mirror the melody
of mountains
their steely gleam.

Undimmed
as teal intones
beside scarps of sapphire
my glass reflects the music
of this deserted road.

Along this desert highway
where burnt sienna thrives
in sweeps of sepia
the front seat holds the harmony
of my passengers
their love for one another
this united landscape.

We praise this drive
its majesty
from dune to shining peak.
God shed His grace on thee.
 

Jeannie E. Roberts is the daughter of a Swedish immigrant mother and the author of nine books, including her latest full-length poetry collection On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing (Kelsay Books, 2025). An award-winning artist and poet with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs and is an Eric Hoffer and a multiple Best of the Net award nominee. She finds joy spending time outdoors and with loved ones.