Amethyst Review

Of Knowledge

When young, I played in an attic,
musty, shadow-laced, where spiders spun in rafters 
and dust bunnies bred. 
Single window, single shaft of
burning, clearing light.
It taught me of dust, of the world I haunted.
As I grew, my grey hand groped a curtain,
and another, and more.
I pulled each cord.
Light destroyed my old world, and I saw.
Some of my toys, junk, and some, diamonds.
The more windows blink, the more I understand
my poverty and wealth. 

Prudence T.K. Vasquez is a poet living and writing amidst the misty mountains of southern Appalachia.

Bird’s Baptism
2025

In a sanctuary
that seats 600 for mass,
fourteen people gather
for my Buddhist son
as the priest’s dog
Tucker, wanders

A simple table in front 
of the altar—white cloth, 
hand-thrown bowl
of holy water
Three times Father Simon 
dips his hand,
blesses my son’s bowed head     

After, I ask Bird 
who understands
nothing is separate 
how he reconciles the doctrine 
of God the Father
He replies with light-filled eyes
meditating
and a little twist of mind

Amrita Skye Blaine develops themes of impermanence, disability, and awakening. In 2003, she received an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, and in 2024, a PocketMFA in poetry. Two collections came out last spring, every riven thing from Finishing Line Press, and strange grace–the ending season from Berkana Publications. She has been published in fourteen poetry anthologies, numerous literary magazines, and is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee.

Cloudy Sunday

Under a dimming disk of sun
this winter day accumulates
a sense of unease
as it drifts, a floating bridge
of white noise between
the vanished image of yesterday
and the occluded vision of tomorrow.
What do they make of it, the raven pair
perched together at the top of the bare oak?
They are telling us something, but
we always fail to understand their language.

Ruth Holzer is the author of ten chapbooks, most recently, On the Way to Man in Moon Passage (dancing girl press) and Float (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Earth’s Daughters, Connecticut River Review and Plainsongs, among other journals and anthologies. She has received several Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations.

Travel with Them

Angels follow the sun someone said.
Travel with them, they are careful,
their wings never melt
like Icarus's, No plummeting
into despair, but they can lament
death wringing their hands in the air.
Keep a steady pace
so the breeze will stay cool--
ablutions of well-being.
Pass with them over thresholds
sparing children's lives,
watch them carry armfuls of souls
to bliss, and hear Horatio wave
them on as they accompany
Hamlet to his rest. Hold on
to the stream of their song.

Janet Krauss enjoyed teaching English at St. Basil Seminary for 29 years and Fairfield University for 39 years. She continues to mentor students. lead a poetry discussion at the Wilton Library, participate in the CT. Poetry Society Workshop and other poetry groups. She is the Poetry Program Director of the Black Rock Guild. She has 2 books of poetry: Borrowed Scenery (Yuganta Press) and Through the Trees of Autumn (Spartina Press). She is a widely published poet and many of her poems have been published in Amethyst Review and her haiku in Cold Moon Journal.

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/