Amethyst Review

It Has Always Been Yours

There are women across those hills,
desert women, a mess of shining.
Flesh hotter than coals, the 
scent of bodies most earthly.
I hear they make fire when they
dance.

Good men do not travel beyond those hills,
the edge of this, the land of my father, 
the end of the world.
We don’t dance.
Certainly, no one ever danced for me.

Each morning, the same dream.
Foggy valleys full of wine, a face like a door, 
giving itself to my probing, speaking a foreign tongue
saying, “I see you, good son, keeper of crops, bringer of gold”

I drape the carpet of duty
once more across the cave of my body. 
Today, we will count the sheep.  I will tend
my father’s barley. I will make the meager
gifts suffice. 

I will present it all. And then, perhaps, a 
fatted calf for me, a moment to salve the bruise
of being.  It is only fair. 
What is love that is not fair?

I stretch blameless limbs to earning
in the long shadows of every morning.
Every morning, I fear a familiar stranger 
bearing in his guilty arms injustice, running toward home,
crying “father”.

Dean Abbott is a writer, poet and pastoral counselor living in Kentucky. He can be contacted through http://www.deanabbott.com or on X @deanabbott.

   House of Heaven
                             “My favorite house is my mother”
					   Haya Alyan

Sometimes, when caught in the jaws 
of fear or trouble, I talk with my mother 
in a quiet room in my heart. We are in a house 
where I have never lived but which I know well—
chintz armchairs, a fireplace, a four-poster bed, 
and large, mullioned windows cranked open 
on woods and fields. And my last cat, alive 
in his plush tuxedo, there on the window 
seat overlooking all that green. I understand 
that this is heaven, though I do not know 
why I am allowed to see it now, no distance 
here between dead and living hearts. My mother 
is in the room, and I am, too, though I am also 
in my world, so far away from hers. I ask 
her questions, seeking reassurance, and she tells 
me exactly what I need to know. Our voices blur 
inside my body until I cannot tell if what I understand 
is my own wisdom or what she has become in me, 
these sixty years since her death. But that doesn’t 
really matter. What matters is that she is here 
and I am, too. My heart is in my body. 
And my body knows what it knows. 
Night comes and goes, dawn pinks the sky, 
the cat sleeps, wakes, purrs his bass rumble. 
And still we talk. I am always rested in this place 
where everything is holy and everything is safe, 
the rise and fall of our voices like quiet music 
reminding me that all shall be well, no matter 
what happens. I trace the stitches in her patchwork 
quilt the way I did as a girl, everything so real 
I can feel my pulse beating in one finger. 
When I rise to leave, she cradles my face 
in her hands for a moment before they drop 
into the wild, blue floral of her skirt, hushed 
as sleeping doves. And then I am alone again, 
my heart my own house, in a different room, 
this other place, where I must live without her.

Alison Townsend’s books include the PEN/America shortlisted memoir, The Green Hour, Persephone in America, and The Blue Dress. Recognized in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Essays, she is professor emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Must be a sign


the gardener had said 
when he unearthed my sister’s ring
twenty years buried in mulch.

Now lost again
I stare at the bare flesh of a pinkie
in a washroom in Trafalgar Square.

Panic is electric,
it fizzes capillaries, chest to throat –
I rummage through basin and bin.

Rewind – I remember the rub,
my thumb twiddling silver
in a gallery, a Turner sunrise.

Later, the restaurant slumps,
the trinket slips into our minds,
consumes all conversation.

The train slow motions.
I sit silent,
the Celtic design soft-swirling.

Back home, I exhale,
a chink of silver rolls over laminate,
mystery circling my feet.

Kate Young’s poetry has been published in journals including Stand, Fly on the Wall, Alchemy Spoon and Poetry Scotland. It can be heard on the Podcast Poetry Worth Hearing. Fear was placed 2nd in The Canterbury Poet of the Year Competition, 2022. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published by Hedgehog Press. 
Find her on X @Kateyoung12poet or her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk

Parousia

Yet it was you who took me from the womb; 
you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.
—Psalm 22:9

You formed me then pushed me 
out of darkness through a narrow gate
between temple pillars—into life. 

Nuzzled between mountains,
I heard prophets beyond the peaks 
speak of you, label you distant 
and unseen, theirs alone 
to deliver. Come, they called—
We will show you the way. 

But you, with a still, small silence
spoke inside my bones 
and marrow: find yourself—and me—
in the desert, not the prophets.

So, I descended the crag,
stone by stone, into hush of darkness, 
where I wandered and slept 
twenty-seven years.

You shook me awake 
with a mighty earthquake. 
Crazed with thirst, I wandered 
and searched until fatigue 
sat me in a shittah’s thin mercy.

Sparrows arrived—tiny witnesses—
and perched above me. 
You whispered through their wings:
Stop searching—I never lost you. 

Howard S. Carman, Jr., Ph.D., is a retired physical chemist in Blountville, TN, USA. He published his first poetry collection, But Now I See: Rhymes and Reflections in 2017. Recent poetry appears in Tennessee Voices Anthology, Black Moon Magazine, Abyss & Apex, Braided Way Magazine, and Troublesome Rising Digital Anthology. He serves on the Board of Directors of Poetry Society of Tennessee and is an editor of Tennessee Voices Anthology.

God’s word to his creation (a Cento)	

I give you every seed-bearing plant on earth

every tree that has fruit 

to everything that has the breath of life in it

I give every green plant for food.

sing a new song

you who go down to the sea

Leviathan, formed to frolic in it

wild animals and all cattle



creeping things and flying birds

not one of these shall fail



not one shall lack her mate

for My mouth has commanded it

let everything that breathes
    
     offer praise 

ask the beasts
if they keep silent, the stones will cry out

the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons


turtledoves, swallows, and cranes
    
     observe the time of their migration

I will make a covenant on that day

with the beasts, the birds, and the creeping things of the ground

and all flesh will see salvation

who let the wild donkey go free?
I untied his ropes

Genesis 1:29-30 NIV Isaiah 42: 10 NCB

Psalm 148: 10 NCB Psalm 104: 26 NIV

Psalm 150: 6 NCB Isaiah 34: 16 NKJV

Job 12: 7 KJV L uke 19: 40 NCB

Jeremiah 8: 7 NIV Ecclesiastes 18: 22

Hosea 2: 18 NLT Luke 3: 6 KJV

Job 39: 5 ICB

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.

Olive Branch


I would have reached
through the hatch in the ark
for the bird to take him
in with me, so tired
from his fruitless flight

I would have held
him in the hold of that dark
coupling place a little
longer, so tired
of the anxious nights

adrift. I would have kissed
his head as he departed
once again in search
of a sign, so hopeful
was I. He escaped sight.

I would have grasped
the tender peace from his sharp
beak, cried to the animals
We are saved, so sure
my dove would steer us right

home. I wouldn’t have
had a clue how to chart
my own course to dry land
and build again, completely new,
but he flew, and I had to, and it’s alright.

Gina Pribaz, MFA, lives and writes in Rome, Italy, where she studies theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas and serves as editor for the student magazine, La Parola. She is the founder of the With All Your Heart Catholic Writing Workshop. Her poetry has appeared in Presence and is forthcoming at the Catholic Poetry Room, and her published essays have won awards (National AWP award, Best of the Net, Pushcart nomination).

Sea Roses and Bendy Old Tree Roots

We walked along a wiggly path
to nowhere in particular:
to the pristine town, maybe,
or to the red-capped lighthouse, certainly,
while out in the Atlantic, sparks of light 
glinted at us, most definitely -
a full sky reminder

That we once played on those jumbles of rocks --
algaed fairy pools between them,
filling up and emptying out in a rush --
as if we would not wrinkle or gray,
as if immortal,
part of the infinite ocean
salting our bodies
in a hearty brine.

Emily Alston-Follansbee (she/her) wrote her first poem, entitled “Love,” on a tiny piece of paper in 1972; poetry has always felt like a form of music for her. She was a teacher for many years and she raised two children who became lovely adults. In 2020 Emily developed a neurological illness and she has been disabled since then. She lives in Maynard, Massachusetts with her cheery husband and two goofy dogs. Emily’s writing can be found – or is forthcoming in – Grand Journal, Avalon Literary Review, Freshwater Literary Review, The Words Faire and NOVUS Literary Arts Journal.

Bread
     (Inspired by the movie, Miracle of Marcelino)


Each ascent returned me to the attic where the household had abandoned the crucified figure among dust and broken furniture, as though neglect could diminish the sacred. I never questioned His silence. It resembled waiting. I spoke to Him as one speaks to a friend whose presence requires no reply, and somehow knew I had been heard.

I climbed the stairs carrying a slice of bread. The offering required no faith, only recognition. It seemed impossible that one who had listened so patiently should remain unfed. I held the bread toward Him without hesitation, not as an act of devotion, but as the simplest expression of friendship.

Light entered the carved body. The hand withdrew from nail and timber and reached toward mine. He accepted the bread without surprise, as though we had always known this moment would arrive. Only afterward did I understand that the miracle had begun long before the light. 

Michal Mahgerefteh is an ESL poet and visual artist living in Norfolk, Virginia. Her work explores memory, family, faith, grief, and the quiet revelations of ordinary life. She is the author of six poetry chapbooks and the founder of Poetica Magazine. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies.

Transfigurations 


	HAND 

you know it like the back of your proverbial 
its practical dimensions 
how the veins bulge blue over bones and tendons 
and the skin     faintly-lined     fragile     rain-resistant 
how mottled it becomes in the gardening months 
how it flows and moulds to muscle 
holds everything together 
there     catch 


	APPLE 

not just glossy reds and greens tracing the longitudes 
pale flesh crisp and sweet as the morning star 
or pips spawning myths of paths not taken 
just this     transparently 
the Cox’s Orange Pippin on the table 


	LEAF 

take     hold this leaf in your miraculous hand 
its inner workings in your mind’s eye 
count the pulsing chlorophyll 
follow the sap through its veins 
let it fall into your stunned heart 

Clare Bryden is a writer and web developer based in Exeter, UK. Her interests are wide-ranging, but primarily the place of humanity within the natural world of which we are part, and the related theology and psychology of connectedness. Her poetry has recently been published in The Merton Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears and Pulsebeat.
Website: clarebryden.co.uk
Bluesky: @clarebryden.bsky.social
Instagram: @ClareBrydenArtist

Witness

Into the abyss, a man
cast stone after stone,
each with the name of life’s
hurtful, hard moments.

We watched You and I, I and Thou,
as the stones burst into dust -
The dust reflecting his life,
his life reflecting Your light.

When there were no more, he sat.

Then, we watched 
I and Thou, You and I,
as the depth of the mountain
 captured him__

the scent of sweet grass,
the hum of bees,
and the playful antelope
who led him home.

Beth Ramos is a retried religious educator whose works reflect both her rural family roots and her curiosity about the universe. Her work has been published in Of Poets and Poetry, Sunflowers Rising: Poems for Peace Anthology, and InScribe Literary Journal.