Amethyst Review

Aama’s Healing Room

I arrive early in the morning, the mist still hovering like a ghost on the gritty street. The metal grate that protects the house is already raised, and the pungent scent of incense wafts from the open doorway. The short walkway is swept clear of debris, an odd juxtaposition given the litter strewn around the city of Kathmandu.

Sliding my shoes off, I give a low bow at the altar with a brass statue of Shiva surrounded by white carnations and smeared with red tika. I enter the room where Amma is sitting on a cushioned chair, already doing a healing with a young man. He glances up when I slip in, his dark hair flopping to his forehead as he gives me a nod.

I sit on a pillow and scan the small room. Paintings of Hindu and Buddhist saints line the barely pink walls and a large cabinet with a glass front holds her spiritual tools: offering bowls filled with water, mustard oil and rice, incense, peacock feathers, a conch shell. A young mom sits in the corner with two children under the age of three. One of them fusses and she bounces him on her lap, singing softly, to keep him occupied. But this is not like church where quiet is equated with reverence and obedience with devotion. The small crowd of fifteen laughs when he sticks his fingers in her mouth and giggles. Another woman leans against the wall and shakes, mumbling something unintelligible as her eyes roll back in her head. Others look at her with sympathy and I learn later that her behavior is the culturally accepted symptom of possession.

Aama watches it all but stays focused on the young man seated in front of her, his head bowed as she sprinkles a few grains of rice as an offering to the Spirits called to heal him. Her sing-song prayer reverberates through space, pulls our heads closer to the floor by an invisible thread of reverence and devotion. She dips her forged iron knife into a tin of sacred ash made by a sadhu and stirs it into a small tumbler of water. Aama chuckles at something only she can hear before pouring some of the water into his mouth and the rest over his head. “La,” she says, indicating the healing is complete. “La.” He leaves for work.

Aama is my teacher and I’ve come to Nepal to be in her company, to learn and absorb her wisdom and knowledge of spiritual healing. I observe with rapt attention and listen carefully as the translator explains the maladies described by her patients: a failing business, a cheating husband, a lost pregnancy, a sadness that shreds the heart. Aama invokes the Spirits for assistance, sometimes embodying the Goddess for a direct and divine intervention, and sometimes urging her patient to see a physician because the problem is not of a spiritual nature. But always they leave with a blessing and the understanding that they are seen by the Deities, that they are not alone in their suffering. They are uplifted and held.

I’ve come to immerse myself in all of it: Aama and her healing room, the closeness of life and death, just a breath apart, this place where Spirit meets grime. But these filthy streets are not what they seem. They are avenues gilded with daily devotion, carved from the million steps that lead from temple to temple, and adorned with marigolds mixed with bits of prayer and hope. I listen to the murmur of mantras on a bus, the clicking of mala beads louder than summer cicadas, and the spin of a prayer wheel wiping away eons of karma. I push beyond the grit and poverty, beyond the stink of diesel fumes and the endless wall of need. Peer behind the veil to find the Divine Mother, limitless, vast and patient, waiting to whisper in my ear exactly what my heart needs to hear. “La,” She breathes. “La.” I board the plane for home.

Sixteen years later I can still smell the sweet incense and feel the heat from the fires at the burning ghats, where families bring their deceased loved ones wrapped in saffron shrouds to be cremated on the banks of the river. Shiva welcomes all, comforts their hearts and bears the sorrows of their souls.

I still long for the places where my forehead bent to touch the ground of holy sites and temples, where my heart filled with love and expanded into the cosmos, merging with a million other hearts on pilgrimage to themselves, which is to say, the Divine. Cradled in my hands, my lapis mala holds the energy of mantra, the intention of union with what is seen and unseen by these human eyes, and reverberates with the touch of Aama’s fingers as she raps me on the head, transmitting more than power and knowledge, transmitting responsibility, love and connection to all.

What began in Aama’s healing room spilled into the streets and corner shrines and followed me home to Minnesota, a mind as far from Kathmandu as the moon. I thought it was place that mattered but I’ve learned that devotion is devotion, and my heart became the temple housing more than these ephemeral memories, creating a home for the Deities themselves to reside. This is the unexpected gift that unfolded after my return, the visceral, embodied experience that is beyond words and can only, inadequately, be described as Love.

The water in the pond behind my house sparkles with the sun, breathing it’s rays, creating ripples of light that sound like laughter. “La,” it whispers. “La.” I smile in gratitude.

Susan Langston is a writer, performance artist, playwright, and traditional healer. Her mini-musical, I Am Cate Blanchett, was produced three times to sold out audiences in the Twin Cities. She is a member of the Loft Literary Center and AWP, and was selected for AWP’s Writer to Agent Program in Summer, 2025. Susan lives with her wife and three deranged cats in Minneapolis, America’s peaceful superpower for protecting community and saving democracy.

Sillage

The French have a word for it—sillage,
or you can say it as see-yage. 
It’s the word for a fragrance trailing
the passing-by of a sweet perfume.
So like that or like the wake of a boat 
leaving white water lace behind,
any act of truth, love, purity, or beauty 
exudes an atmosphere of such joy 
that it needs a new term.

Like alpenglow, the lingering sunlight 
that paints gold on the highest peaks,
such an act paints sweetness 
in a sense memory—We can live in a way 
that the sillage of kindness lingers
through darkest nights. In this new time 
of destruction love yet flows, 
a soul-perfume made tangible
on road sides and city blocks. 
We can breathe it while dusting a shelf 
or lighting a candle, and in that moment 
God’s fragrance becomes everywhere.

Rachel Dacus is the author of seven novels and four poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Boulevard, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Eclectica and Image: Art, Faith, and Mystery. Her poems are in anthologies Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Radiant DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where on its mountain trails she can encounter the sacred as she walks her Silky Terrier.

Hildegard Talks Back to Purity Culture

The Living Light says to you...never gravitate towards the shadow.
~ Hildegard of Bingen (trans. Carmen Acevedo Johnson)

Of course, I’ve read what St Paul said on modesty.
Have you? To the rich wives who were flaunting 
about in their finery, diminishing every humbly-
born sister and fueling the gossip at
The Corinthian Arms,

he said, “Be modest. Be adorned in virtue.”
But have you seen the garments the Virtues wear? 
No heaven-clothed Lily’s more splendid. And
the Virgins? The ones whose hemlines and 
necklines you measure?

To them, he said nothing. So I give them my 
brightest robes. I let them dance with all 
the jubilation their God-imaging flesh can muster. 
Why cloak the ecstatic stars with the dark 
clouds of your lust?

Throw off your clouds. Look to the Sun and be 
caught up in His dazzle like a planet in orbit,
then read St Paul again.

Matthew Pullar is a Melbourne-based poet. He has had poems published in Ekstasis, Poems for Ephesians, Amethyst Review, Heart of Flesh and Reformed Journal. His latest collection, This Teeming Mess of Glory (Wipf & Stock, 2025) was shortlisted for Australian Christian Book of the Year.

Peek Beneath

New York sidewalk packed with all 
the doomed I potholed

into savvy: not
mere hype for a certain

savior, the dude
on Sixth whose picket

sign read Ruin
is yours wasn't just whistlin'

past the graveyard. Picket 
Prophet's country

cousin runs bootleg fire 
water and porch

picks his banjo: didn't he tear 
the space

time fabric when he wove 
added beats where

they don't, by rights, 
belong? Though Cosmic

Tailor-patched, was cousinly 
innocence used to plait

me for my peek beneath 
the feathers of that

rainbow-riding-clay
pigeon messenger on her way 

to my beloved’s address unknown?

Ford Weisberg, @FordWeisberg, is a musician, photographer, digital painter, and poet from New York City. He holds a Poetry Certificate from The Writers’ Studio at Simon Fraser University. His work has appeared in Poetry Pause (League of Canadian Poets), Neologism, the Exit Hell Organisation, Emerge 23, and elsewhere. He is a two-time winner of the RCLAS Write-On contest.

Provision Per Diem

Jem Golson resides near Tbilisi, Sakartvelo, where she and her husband assist refugees and asylum-seekers to start their own businesses and contribute positively in their new communities. Follow Jem’s Substack, WORLDS AWAY, or visit jemgolson.com to see more of her work.

Green-Gloved Fingers


Pale green-gloved fingers
push through the forest floor.
Soon, fingers will rip out
their gloves’ seams and stretch into leaves.
Budded stems will stick their heads out,
and lady’s slipper flowers will bloom.
But today, I admire hundreds
of graceful green-gloved fingers
gently waving at me—
along pine-needled trails,
near fallen trees,
beneath unfurling ferns.
For decades, I’ve searched
for lady’s slipper flowers each spring,
but failed to notice the wonder
of their becoming.

Sheila Wellehan’s poetry is featured in On the Seawall, ONE ART, Maine Public Radio’s Poems From Here, Rust & Moth, Thimble Literary Magazine, and many other publications. She served as an assistant poetry editor for The Night Heron Barks and as an associate editor for Ran Off With the Star Bassoon. Sheila lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. You can read her work at www.sheilawellehan.com.

How Shall We Find This Praise

to Praise
is to practice –
how to greet the day
with fresh eyes.
how to mask the doubt that creeps upon us, 
to lift the head and heart, 
embrace the light …
is to Praise.

to Praise
is to relearn how to see, hear and revel
in every detail nature has graced us with.
to laugh, sing and dance is to praise.

	and when we fail,
	we must be gentle
	and remind ourselves,
	to Praise is
	to practice – a lifelong art. 

Mary L. Serantoni is a poet based in Arizona, originally from Chicago, Illinois. Her work appeared in ‘Farraday Newsome: Memento Vitae, My Body Is Your Nest,’ Museum of Northern Arizona’s ‘Poetry Maps’ exhibitions (2024, 2025), and soon to be published in Syncopation Literary Journal (Volume 5, Issue 2). She holds a BA from Chicago’s DePaul University, is a writer member of BMI, and a member of a Poetry Workshop through a local nonprofit.

While I’m Gone

Now, lilac blossom.
Now the blossom so filled
with the wine dark sea,
takes the weight of so little rainfall
to droop towards such sacred things
as what remains—

small wash down of river pebbles
that tire of being just above
last year’s mulch,
only half decayed,
one dandelion pushed through,
just the one that grows larger
at the speed of the memory of sunlight
day in, day out—

resisting separation,
the wine dark blossom droops,
its edges remain but lose meaning,
bows into the worship
of this, the moment of.

Don’t lift the spray wand
secured to a hose made
of old, such very old tires.
Ignore my previous
and passing supplications
dear and dearest neighbor,
do nothing,
nothing whatsoever
to allow it to be risen
once again—
all things are lifting
even if and as they fall.

Originally from Western Massachusetts, after stints in software and education, Don Pomerantz lives and writes in New York City and the Hudson Valley. His poems have appeared in NY Quarterly, Washington Square, Chautauqua, Consequence, Tar River, Eclectica, Conium Review, Kestrel, SAND, Adirondack Review as well as many other American and international journals. More information at donpomerantz.com.

Arborial Tutelage
 
You message each other
through networks of mycelium,
and I, mere admirer,
breathe in your gifted air,
cycle it through my cells,
exhale thoughtlessly.   

Oh, sturdy uprights—
you who shade
and give shelter
for creatures seen—
squirrels, raccoons, 
all the winged ones
and the crawlies
 
and unseen—
microbes, bacterium, 
buzzing verdant particles,

you who are thick and thin,
Pine and Oak,
modeling forbearance 
through all seasons,

collectively you take my breath away
and return it 
fresh and new. 

Papery Birch teaches 
the wisdom of peel and expose—
Don’t be afraid to be real.

Willow whispers
See here, I can show you 
the wisdom in letting go.

May I, too, become
anchor for vital layers,
holding well
the dark, teeming earth
cupped in my open
calloused hands, 
whose veins, raised and vivid,
mimic root systems. 

May my face become trunk,
corrugate with 
the sapience of years.

May I hold space
for all the daughters 
rising up, rooting down,
leafing towards the light. 

And, when I am worn thin 
by use and age,
when my sack is empty
and Hereafter is calling my name,

may I be nourishment,
ash for the growth of seedlings,
saplings, their young
leaves or needles
shimmering in the sun.




Melinda Coppola writes from a messy desk in Massachusetts, where her 3 cats often monitor her progress. Her poems and essays have found homes in many fine books and magazines. Her first full-length poetry book, Little Pockets of Glow, centers on her journey parenting her daughter who has special needs. For more info visit www.melindacoppola.com.

Psalm 1

The mouth of the Amazon river swallowed
A whole island and never spit it out.
There is a strange man like a tree in the shallows
Who tells stories to a breakout
Pod of pink river dolphins, and they listen.
He says cradle the sun, spread its jam
On your beaks of praise, and he means sin
Is only for the dying and for the men
Who scatter the air like flies. They are breeze
He says, rooting into the rich Terra Preta
And hanging green cashews, pregnant with ease
From the wingspan of his canopy of leaves.

He is always at that great gate of water
Birthing the old tales like an otter’s hungry mother.

David Pitcher is a poet and shelter worker living and writing in the United States. He has been featured on NPR’s The Poets Weave and has poetry forthcoming in The Wheel and Anti-Heroin Chic. His writing has been published in LETTERS, The Pedestal Magazine, Confluence and elsewhere.