Amethyst Review

The Tao to You
 
Early morning, the Tao on a leaf
outside your tongue,
daylight flies cold heart-razors
to vowels on sand, speck, stone—
rivulets and dew can hold
a fortune of trauma.  
 
These days we forage
indoors, for the pulse of blood,
some special peace
that does not depend
on the shape of another’s mouth
--the baby guzzles milk, feels ease--
we gallivant in bedrooms, the living room,
scouring for the still point,
the way to live is the way to live
we slip through the eye of a giggle
and bask in the Tao.
 
I will always sing the words of
the Tao to you
while the wind splits insects outside,
I will meet you
without metaphor,
peace is in the word
and the Tao is the word,
the hum of your babble,
the word the thing,
the thing no thing,
baby, this morning’s childhood
will take you through
the generations, your daydream
at 40, when you feel a leaf
tickle the insides of your chest,
and the little bird
on the sill begins to tell you
of the time you heard your mother’s
words on the air floating at one
with sky, earth, heartbeat, self.
 

Shivani Sivagurunathan is a Malaysian author. Her first novel, Yalpanam, was published by Penguin Southeast Asia in September 2021. 
Her poetry collection, Being Born (Maya Press) and her book of fiction, What Has Happened to Harry Pillai?: Two Novellas (Clarity Publishing) came out in 2022.

After Tea

My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, 
and I intend to end up there. - Rumi


After our tea is cool enough to drink
but not before it is gone
we discuss my problem:
My words, they are like snakes
that are hard to pin down.
My ideas slide away from people’s
ears when I try to get them in.
In short: no one is having a good time.

Later, in my bed,
I feel the situation inside me
like chickens loud in a barn.
I see myself now as you described:
a mostly tolerable clown.
The hair on my neck stands up.
I am tempted to believe you.
I am tempted to take your eyes into my eyes
And just agree this time.
I am tempted to let the feeling live:
let the isolation eat me,
this tight throated sensation that I am 
trapped in a long hallway with no doors.

Somewhere inside my body
a friend opens the first thing she can find.
She lets me into the cool, dark place with the stars.
I try to find the border in here
where the universe is expanding all the time.

What if I am right, I say to the dark.
What if there is very little difference between anyone?
What if I am just one shape in an 8 billion piece puzzle?
So what if it takes thousands
and thousands of years to find where I belong?
I am still whole.
I am still in the river that runs.

What if I am right, I want to say to you
What if it is beautiful to feel the same as everyone?
To not just notice difference all the time?
What if, on this occasion,
my inner eyes are not blind?

The tea, however, has already been drunk 
and you are gone. In your own home,
I am not a thought in your mind.
You don’t know that I will talk to you all night
or that I have been speaking to the cosmic you
since we met the first time.
I shake in your direction.
A rosebush quivers 
when the wind comes by.

Can you hear me?
I’m not giving up on my own body.
We are not giving up on our own minds.

Liz Bruno is a public servant in Oregon. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, ISLE, The Coachella Review, the Cape Rock, Euphony Journal, Roast Magazine, Montana Magazine, and more.

Hineini

Imagine what it is to be a native plant,
to grow in soil that surrounds like skin,
skin that stretches to fit the rooting, 
rooting that touches gold and humus, nourished by that rich sponge.

And there is also a plant that is impossible, 
it envies tumbleweed that once had roots 
epiphytes are miracles that feed on clouds,
this plant moves from pot to pot by strange hands,
blooms on the shortest day of the year,
drops leaves overnight. 

Was there a place in God’s garden
for this stranger and exile
who seeks her home through fire 
in that burning bush where nothing else was required?

note: הִנֵּנִיis “Hineini” in Hebrew for “Here I am,” and it expresses a total surrender and willingness to serve.  It was said by Abraham, Moses, and other prophets when called by God.

Vivien Drabkin‘s poetry and fiction have been published in Ekstasis, Washington Square Review, and Guernica–A Magazine of Global Arts and Politics. Her poems seek to explore the sacred through an earthly or quotidian lens with a gaze on objects such as a garden, family home, or baseball. She is inspired by poets such as Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Sexton while also drawing on the beauty of God’s language from Scripture. She currently lives in Austin, Texas, where she teaches high school.

After the Electricity Stops                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Clad in black plastic with gold-
tone accents, you, my late mid-
century AM-FM radio, have three
capsule-size sliding buttons
and two round knobs on top,
as well as a loose coiled wire
for your antenna. I love you, 
AM-FM radio, for your modest
size, like a Kleenex box, your easy
volume control, and how I can move
a red bar in a slender window
from low numbers to high.
I’ve set you, AM-FM radio,
on a dresser in a small bedroom
and keep you tuned to classical 
music. Your tone is really quite 
decent, like when I sing in the shower.

My little AM-FM radio, I turn 
you on and off by your vintage 
two-prong plug. When I pull
it from the outlet, you have the curious 
idiosyncrasy of a moment’s delay 
before the electricity stops, i.e.
a fraction of a second in which 
the music still plays … 

I wonder, AM-FM radio: is this 
how dying will be? In eternity, 
how long is a fraction of a second? 
Will we continue to hear music? 

Dear AM-FM radio, this is what I know
for certain: I saw my Grandma Thomassian
in the middle of the night a few days 
after she died. She was in her wool
outfit of rose herringbone, the one
she always wore for something special.

Andrea E. Johnson is retired from a long career in public health. She participates now in several writers groups, both poetry and memoir. Her love of the natural world, music, cultural heritage and history makes its way onto the page. She lives on the edge of the Twin Cities in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

Seed Pods
		In memory of my brother

As I walk the seawall—
now a desert of barnacles—
seed pods collect in the tidal pool
and last year’s leaves lodge
in the rocks below.

My thoughts turn to leaping
we did as children—
	you on the pilings of some wharf,
	me on the high tide of bedrock.

The tide consumes the leftovers
of mussel beds, the sea gulping 
between the rocks, and I remember
what you said to me that day—

High tide, waves lapping across
the jetty’s end and my feet as I reached
for your hand across the bay 
and jumped.

Ellen Jane Powers lives on the North Shore of Boston. Her life and career have taken many twists and turns, and now she’s happily retired from corporate life. She spent 12 years on the editorial review board of a small literary journal from Maine. Her poems have appeared in a variety of journals over the years. She has a collection of poetry, Celestial Navigation (Cherry Grove) and a chapbook, Toward the Beloved (Finishing Line).

The Field That Remembers Names

There is a field that remembers names
long after the mouths that made them close.

Grass bends at the sound of recognition,
not wind—something slower, more deliberate.

I walk through it carefully,
trying not to say anything that might stay.

The soil is dense with unfinished language,
vowels pressed into root systems,
consonants waiting for rain.

Beneath me, a sentence refuses to end.

I kneel.
Press my ear to the ground.

It hums—low, patient, almost human—
and I realize it already knows mine.

Isabella Aleksander is too often confused with pop culture’s most topical red heads. She used to make the claim that her hair is orange not red. She isn’t creative but sometimes her poems are. Her favorite word is circumlocution.

A Blessing on the Readers

who wrangle with words 
	like a meteorologist
	deciphering the skies
	and wind

who contemplate 
	the page, like a blue heron 
	peering into the lake’s 
	luminous mirage

who, like eaters of watermelon, 
	spit out the bitter seed 
	and let the sweet flesh 
	sink in

who trim the page
	and fill it with breath 
	like a sail
	catching wind

who repurpose
	the cadence of a verse
	like a jazz pianist 
	at the keys

with a heart that beats
	under the breath of a line
	and startles a life
	to song

Tammy Iralu lives in New Mexico with her husband and daughter. She enjoys backpacking, hiking, and breaking bread with family and friends. Her poetry draws on the light-infused landscapes of New Mexico and southwest Colorado. Each year she anticipates the summer monsoons, the changing colors of autumn, and the year-round beautiful skies. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Friends Journal, The Journal of Radical Wonder, Amethyst Review, Mukoli: The Magazine for Peace, The Ekphrastic Review, Cowley Magazine, The Other Side, and elsewhere.

Here I am

Precious ointment, good name. 

Day of death is true north. Day of birth is first step. 
Feast when possible, mourn always, knowing the future. 

The soul-sofa franchise of John of Lent advertises: 
Rest your weary spirit-bones, calm the joints and sinews 
of your ghosts. Calling all souls, flesh below flesh.

Here I am.

At the gate, Lucy sits in wisdom, watches the coming 
and going. Her eyes are lines to life, blind to foolish
offerings.

A start is hope. An end is knowledge. Patience is 
better than pride. Anger, a sweet trap.

One-Cent carries the bones of Uncle Eddie into the new 
covenant land, fresh designated as real estate, no 
longer wilderness, now profitable.

Find the straight inside the crooked. Ponder adversity 
like a sacred book. Consider the comfort of the rich and 
study closely the balance of weights.

The house of many angles — the cop crowd in the park, 
a wall of helmet threat. GirlJane is surrounded by a great 
cloud of witnesses, saints and angels, chanting: 
Persevere in the race to be run.

The breaking of dry leaves, the crackling of human breath.

House of fools is next door to the wise house.  Listen to 
the words of Wisdom, deep and full. Hear the foolish song 
for what it is. Laugh and go your way. 

Here I am.

In the mirror, Long John Oremus sees his six eyes, six ears, 
an idol’s visage. Flame fires from his mouth. He sees 
every thing, hears every thing until he turns away from 
the silver. His unrepentant serpent mother, alive in death, 
still rules the side ways of his low brain. The high flies 
only as far as the chain.

Hambone steals the unwatched minute from the mother 
to write this, guilty beyond the walled siege-proof shtetl. 
Beyond here lies every thing.

Skin and sorrow discolor and dry like desert.

They say Denmark Jones should be thrown out into the 
darkness. They throw him down a deep well with no 
water and only mud. He sinks in the mud. At 26th and 
California, his case is pleaded.

Embrace no curse. Good or bad, breathe until not. Good 
or bad, face what is. Child of the Century walks in a sea of  
myth; he sings a tuneless song about the artist of history.
Take hold. Listen to the death bed visitor about to journey. 
Hug hospice angels. Keep quiet.

Here I am.

Lincoln Scarlet avoids the one with heart of nettles.

Patrick T. Reardon, a Chicago Tribune reporter from 1976 to 2009, is the author of seven poetry collections. His latest is Every Marred Thing: A Time in America, the winner of the 2024 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society of New Orleans (Lavender Ink). He is a six-time nominee in poetry for a Pushcart Prize. His poetry has appeared in America, RHINO, Commonweal, Blue Unicorn, After Hours, Autumn Sky, Burningword Literary Journal and other journals.

Five foolish virgins 
Notre Dame Cathedral, Strasbourg 


Five foolish virgins teetering 
on Tequila

Solomon doing his best 
with another hopeless case   

prophets making banners 
for Green Peace and Amnesty

apostles writing letters 
for the protection of bees 

Church and Synagogue staring over 
the long space between them 

suave Lucifer doing a deal 
that he’ll never keep

young knights riding out 
with a saddlebag of bitcoins

gargoyles gawping greedily 
at tourists with ice-creams 

And then I saw her 

the great goddess 
the girl with the hazel eyes

the child in her arms 
and a cape to cover all sorrow

running over the cobbles  
to the Resto du Coeur. 


Note: Les Restos du Cœur are soup kitchens, set up by the French comedian Michel Colucci 

Jill Husser-Munro grew up in the north of Scotland and has lived and worked in Strasbourg, France, for over thirty years. Her work has been published in Poetry Scotland, Amethyst Review, The Alchemy Spoon, Wildfire Words, Dreich Magazine and Causeway Magazine.

Rocky Mountain


No possibility of reaching the top
that day—or ever.  I was nothing 
to it.  

I sat in the car, but it was too soft
a shield against the unbearable, in-
human god-thing.

I sat looking up, up the mountain, 
longing for blindness.  A climber’s
sterner stuff.

A climber would have yearned 
to ascend, conquer. I yearned 
to flee, or free-

fall to the base of the true God,
to whom I was, oddly, something 
worth dying for.

Johanna Caton, O.S.B, is a Benedictine nun of Minster Abbey, in Kent, England. Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, St Austin Review, Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, One Art, Today’s American Catholic, Fathom, Fare Forward, Windhover, The Catholic Poetry Room, and other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.