Amethyst Review

The Herald

Cloistered in the rafters,
a pigeon breaks 
the silence of a few parishioners kneeling before a weekday mass

              Coo–coo–
Rolls out 
through water-damaged holes
from winter rains

              Coo–coo–whoo–
Reverberates around the white, flaked ceiling,
the paint worn thin,  
revealing patches of sky blue

              Coo–coo–whoo–
                            whooo–
Bounces off plaster angels holding plaster trumpets

              Coo–coo–whoo–
              whooo—
                            who–
my hands want to reach up to cover my ears. Instead 
I hold them tighter against the back of the empty pew in front of me
as the rafters spin

              Coo–coo–whoo–
              whooo—
              who are you?
breathes into my white skull
              who am i

echoes around clay eyes

                                          who?

Trevor Foulstone is a poet from Melbourne, Australia. His poems begin in the ordinary—where a fingerprint, a bowl of ice cream, a priest, or a magpie might reveal the sacred. Through precise, embodied imagery, he explores how physical sensation, moral attention, and grace converge, inviting readers to look again at what is easily overlooked. His poetry has appeared in Wayfare, The Bleeding Margin, and Words of the Lamb Magazine, with work forthcoming in The Christian Century.

Born Again

That feeling when God shows up to your baptism,
the ecstatic terror --
He could whistle up a tornado
right there in the lake
this brilliant Sunday morning
suck all the water up,
leave you as nude as Adam
your toes curling around the mussels in the dry lakebed,
squelching them into the mud,
hands on your crotch,
grinning at the pastor,
you sorry fool.

Instead He is just electricity
ducking behind sunbeams
sparkling on the stained glass surface,
the hair rising, davening,
on the east-facing nape of your neck --
now a fresh cathedral.

Blank and bloody as a baby
on the midwife's fists:
Later you will forget all of this.

Margit Berman is a writer, psychologist, artistic director of Jackson Street Arts in St. Paul, MN, and faculty at the University of Saint Thomas and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Her poetry has been published in The New Verse News, If Poetry Magazine, The Quarry at Split This Rock, on the Mississippi Valley Poetry Walk, and in several anthologies, among others. She has won poetry contests including at the Poetry Free for All, Garrison Keillor’s Green Light at the End of the Dock Poetry Festival, and from the League of Minnesota Poets.

Thirst in the Thick of It

Thirst in the thick of it.
Ruby red rhubarb boils in the pot. 
Sweet and sorrow of forget-me-nots
in blue clusters of wildhood.
White laced lilacs in jars 
for remembrance 
on linen-lined altars misted 
with the twin fragrance
of Mary Chess on my mother’s 
breast, re-gifted from my aunt, 
allergic to the thick scent 
of generous. Thirst in the thick of it, 
in the thicket of thorns
adorning the edge of the barn, 
a necklace of raspberries ripened 
for the pricking of hands.
Fruit stolen by children, 
feral and longing for fun 
in the sun of late Sundays 
when plums dropped to the ground 
after the cloy of incense, 
dense in the apse of
mysterious reverence.
Thirst for the thick of it 
and for days spent in the glorious 
godsend of thriving. 

Cynthia Dorfman writes from Maryland and Wisconsin, depending on the season. She is a frequent contributor to Moss Piglet Journal, and her recent work appears in the Journal of Expressive Writing and Bramble, the journal of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.

Even Between the Lines

Before sunrise I walk our drive’s way 
toward a lane of lines which unwind 

their electric wend between high 
wooden poles flanking either side

of our road. From the ground, steel 
wires entwine, luring me from a scape 

of navy twilight, its last dance 
with the dimming moon

to the long loom of black thread 
that as I near, shifts and drifts 

up and down in rhythm with my step,
a charged weave stealing my gaze 

from the sky’s stillness, 
where it rests on sunset’s 

pillowed illusion 
that evenings are forever 

and stars still shine above 
the uncrossed lines of a lit horizon. 

Yet this morning, my step halts 
before the rife cords, and I find 

power’s taut lines loosed 
and realigned as musical staff— 

the glint of stars fixed as chords
of a dawning refrain—a holy stave

of space and line that sounds
the heavens at break of day. 

Lee Kiblinger is a Texas teacher and poet who loves to travel with her husband, laugh with three adulting children, and play mahjong. Her first collection, All the Untils, was published by Wipf and Stock in 2025. More of her work can be found in The Windhover, Clayjar Review, Penwood Review, Ekstasis, Solum Journal, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, Calla Press, and others. Read her poetry at www.ripplesoflaughter.com.

In This Place

God was in this place and I did not know it.
What I felt did not matter
what I said, I said to no one
and anyway, it was nonsense
and anyway, it was a whisper
and anyway, I didn’t mean it.

God was a name I heard once
in a story someone told me.
A story when I was so young that 
everything around me was huge
and I was small.
Was God small like me? Or big like them?
I didn’t know.
I wasn’t sure.

I asked questions:
Is God beautiful?
Does God sleep?
Where does God go when I sleep? 
And what about food?
And does God wear clothes?
And what about tooth brushing—does God have to do that?  

Now I am older.
Now I am old. My knees make 
cracking noises and sound
like they’re breaking apart
but it’s just me, walking around.

Is God hearing this?

Who said this was okay?

Last night, in a dream
I looked for you.
I thought you would know if God was still around—
how to see  
him? it? her?
What to call, how to name.
I thought you had wisdom.
I thought you were smart.

When we were young you loved to talk.
We talked about whatever our brains landed on,
one stone to the next—
light-footed, sure, easy.
You never tired.
We were twenty-two.
Nothing seemed true
until we could discuss it together.

Did we talk about God?

Your blue eyes made sparks— 
what was that?

Or did your eyes open wider than anyone else’s?
Or did your eyes warm the room?
Or did I fall into them?

Your eyes are beautiful.
God is supposed to be beautiful.
Your eyes were beautiful.

When I pray now, I struggle to name God.
Beautiful One, Divine One, 
One-ness, Wholeness,
Hey You Out There.  

Is God in me, my home, my mezuzah on the doorframe?
If I kiss the mezuzah before I walk inside, will God see me?
If I pray, if I say the words
is God in my mouth? In my breath when I exhale?
I wonder if God saw you.

Did God see you 
trying as hard as you could 
to live?
As chemicals were pumped into your body
as your hair fell out
as you were held
as you breathed
as you moved from one place to the next?

I see you on the inside of my eyelids,
in my dreams.
See you in old, curling photographs,
in the red notebook I always carried with me,
in faded ink on paper.

I guess God is here now.
I guess I want that.
I want to glimpse the truth 
and un-truth of it all, the way you saw it.
The way your blue eyes sparked—
held the whole world and its promises.

Amy Steingart’s poetry collection Her Belly Made of Wings was published in 2025, and her first collection I Am Where You Have Put Your Eggs was published in 2019, both from Small White Cat Press. She is a co-founder, editor, and contributor to “Writers’ Bloc” and is published in Lame Duck, Kind Writers, Poetica, Pandemic and RitualWell among others. Amy writes her own versions of standard Jewish prayers reflecting today’s challenging world. She is inspired to write by listening to John Coltrane, harvesting dreams, and practicing Judaism. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Readiness 
 
Be ready every moment, but don’t make
a fetish of it. Readiness is all
about us, placed there, ready, for our sake,
to set a good example. There’s the fall
of apples, here’s the ripening of grain,
of grapes, of olives for the oil press,
the readiness of burrs, a hunter’s bane,
to cling, the instant grasp of holiness.
As readiness itself is sacred, show
some care embracing it. You may not feel
much in return. Perhaps a modest glow.
Or burn. The turning of an inner wheel.
It’s hard to say. You may feel nothing. Still,
though few face calmly their surprise, you will.

Dan Campion is the author of Calypso (1981), A Playbill for Sunset (2022), The Mirror Test (2024), Star Anchors (2026) and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (1995) and is a co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981, 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2019). Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Able Muse, Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, THINK, and many other magazines.

Jesus Said Shut Up
(Mark 1:25)

I knelt before Him, scattering my prayer
About, some here, some there,
Petition rabid, praise a bit abrupt;
In vague despair
Suggested I was vicious and corrupt,
Till Jesus said, “Shut up!”

And as my words fell listless to the floor
A safety heretofore
Protecting me had now been overthrown.
No words, no metaphors
Could save me now. He’d called me to His Throne
To face Him all alone.

Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, Amethyst Review, America Magazine, Pensive Journal, Forma Journal, and The Society of Classical Poets. He is a certified catechist with the Archdiocese of New York, a Benedictine oblate of St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, NJ, and editor of The Catholic Poetry Room.

Willow

Out walking one autumn blue sky day,
I stopped at a willow tree, 
bell of breathing light. 

The long wands moved in the wind
and the leaves sifted light and shade. 
Bright and dark, enthreaded, 
fell like sunlit rain,
like twill across my loom,
warp of joy, weft of pain— 
beauty in full sight 
and yet, as if bereft, I craved it.

North, the tree was dull, 
dishevelled like a nest of bramble. 
South, it swayed and drifted, 
spilling light—a fountain in the wind. 
It wove, 
wove and unwove 
its fall of shimmering quills.

Parting the weave, I entered 
and drew around me quilted light—  
angelic substance visible in our domain,
not kept or lost. 
A blueish sun collected in the skein, 
the sky rained down
and all was still.
Deep and deeper in I went, 
stood worldless in the billowing light.

Jane Galin writes poetry and essays. Her work has appeared in Spiritus, Image Journal, JAMA, As You Were, Northampton Poetry Review, Thrive; An Anthology, and elsewhere.
She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Family Business? My question for Aebbe

‘a mother of the handmaidens of Christ, called Aebbe, who ruled over the monastery situated in a place called Coldingham, a woman honoured among all as well for her piety as for her noble birth, for she was [the] sister of King Oswiu.’ Bede, Life of St Cuthbert

When did you realise – if ever - that each gifted remote spot
the Nook, old fort on river Derwent, and last Urbs Coludi
all three, even Oswald's, were lookout stations, outposts
of a military regime? Was it like sun burst into a cloudy day,

or slow trickle of light through shimmering trees,
or an ever-shaded place where the sun took fright,
not permitted to shine? Filled with plants, mosses
growth of various kinds, but without clear light.

Did gentle rain come after? The kind that cleanses,
softens the ground for growth.
Or was there a waterfall, as on the Derwent Water
noisy, driving out all other reflection?

Or was the sun proud in the sky, everlasting shafts
of light. No rain clouds. Just basking.   

 

Endnote: Aebbe’s brothers were Northumbrian Kings Oswald, Oswiu and Oswine, who made her gifts of land to found religious communities. 

Barbara Usher cares for retired ewes who bring their lambs at foot, and ex-commercial hens on her animal sanctuary, Noah’s Arcs (barbaraushernoahsarcs.com). Her poetry has been published in various journals including Amethyst Review, Last Stanza (Editor’s pick) and in anthologies including Thin Places & Sacred Spaces. She is the representative for the Fife Stanza of the Poetry Society, and led a workshop at the St Andrews International Literary Festival in 2026. She is co-editing an anthology Crossings: writings from Fife and Edinburgh, which will be published in November 2026.

Epiphany

We knelt; and that’s the part that always gets told
or gets painted, or the painting’s lines are read
for comment on the metaphor - and while each
figure figures for something before, like Greek
from Phoenician - no one thinks of who we were,
we three, and what it took for us to return.

And who doesn’t like to anoint and give gold;
who’d not give his most stunning cabochon and
bring forth the holy censer to swing those scents
swirling eternal ward, click….ca-click, ca-click;
while holding carefully his sleeve of gold silk
or carefully woven Kente or purple
dyed in the wool; while all of the lesser folk
look on in awe of us three looking on, awed
by this changeling who has now resolved the Way.

That’s the easy part; point of metaphor,
gist of the story. Or, the vanishing point?
As Magus, I would want you to know at which
Caravansary we three broke fast and asked
if our Court Seers meant to keep from us something
they knew would bring danger, could well lose us our
lives, our lands? Or worse, our Eunuchs conspiring
with snarky subalterns to denigrate, to
execute us as heathen emissaries?

How will it fare, for us each, when we arrive?
Him with his piles, the other, his cough, and me?
Still, we three repack and say nary a word
about the star which now seems to have vanished. 
How long since we sat, safe and strong on our throne?
I worry about what I know I must tell.

Gerard Furey taught high school English courses for forty years. He lived through grade school Atom bomb drills, high school expulsion, steel mill labor, learning his Draft numbers on TV, and thankfully having children and grandchildren. Having survived the 60’s he will aver that, yes, History does repeat itself.