Amethyst Review

Living On

Maybe the dead hear every thought,
see every memory we have of them
when they flutter up to the surface

of our minds the way a gentle dream
glimmers like passing headlights
on bedroom walls. When we say
their names, enunciated carefully

into the night of their swims, it’s like
someone sitting on the edge of a sleeper’s
bed. When we’re driving through

the gravel spackle of rainwater
to some nowhere place and we squint
against the gray light and see instead
them, in the routine of their living,

their crooked drawls, the chigger cling
of their repeated phrases, the stilt
in their gait, the coin clatter of their cracking knuckles,

is it like the wingsong drive-in projector
painting movement on the canvas screen,
the sound so muffled and distant
like department store radio? Tonight,

through the clouded midnight of her rest
like a silent blinking plane, the short film
of herself, standing on that emerald carpet

in her living room, me at her knee,
looking out of the big front windows
and reading the storm clouds like sheet music
and singing them to me, glass slits

in her glasses, country music videos
on her TV. Then it’s gone into shadows
like a voice diffusing into a cave.

Devon Neal (he/him) is a Kentucky-based poet whose work has appeared in many publications, including HAD, Stanchion, Stone Circle Review, Livina Press, and The Storms, and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He currently lives in Bardstown, KY with his wife and three children.

Theophany

Like—
Ceiling fans set to high,
Stirring spectral streamers
Or
Searchlights on aluminum trees,
Calling to a round-headed kid….
Or
Charged Earth-pelting particles,
Delighting science teachers.

No.

I can hear Coleridge laugh,
As he did for the man who hurled loose adjectives
At the magnificent, beautiful, sublime waterfall.
I, too, am a spectator made small by the wonder
Trying to domesticate its vastness.
Prone always to say moon is like lantern
Rather than lantern is like moon.

This field, dark and open,
Seems a perfect dome,
So like a planetarium.

I curse these images and myself
For not having a mind fit
To welcome this magnificence,
Aurora, rare visitor to our southern night,

Closest streetlight ten cedared acres away,
But I find, I am the city.
City piled upon city,
Ever increasing weight,
Crushing down to a singularity
So powerful it can pull any cosmic vision
Down to earth.

Perhaps some Keetoowah wanderer,
Finding himself far from the river,
Happened upon this place
On another night of storms in heaven.
The curling shape of Uktena
Warning him that he had strayed
Too far from a world meant for people.
But he would have seen the alien,
Truly seen it.
Turning away in body—yes,
But spirit reaching up to meet the serpent,
A moment to shade and shape all his days.
I envy the gift given to that warrior:
To see a sky he did not believe he owned.

McGregor Cook is a speech coach and voice actor living in Fountain Inn, SC.

Visitation

“I’m not a religious person. I don’t believe in things like that. But there is no other explanation than that my mother was with me.”

--Nick Chirls

We lived in the same town
but I didn’t know Catherine Chirls.
I knew what she looked like
because of her missing-person photo
taped to the door
of our local supermarket,
its backlit transparency haunting
me because I recognized
I’d seen her there
in more solid form many times.
Fast-forward to her memorial service
from which any sign
of her body’s missing
because it was vaporized
when the North Tower went down.
Her sixteen-year-old son
is giving the eulogy
before family and friends 
who hold their breath
when a sparrow lands
like a tiny jet
on the top of Nick’s head
as he says the word mother.
He stops speaking to take it
in his hand and free it.

Richard Thomas Murray’s poems have appeared in The Dark Horse, The Seventh Quarry, The Moth, The Main Street Rag, Poetry East, Slipstream, The Bitter Oleander, Rattle, Santa Fe Literary Review, and additional journals. His first book of poems, Edisonia, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2022. He has taught creative writing to high school students at the United Nations International School in New York City and currently teaches undergraduates at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He promoted awareness of New Jersey’s Native American nations as a director of the New Jersey Folk Festival. For more information: richardthomasmurray.com.

Memento Mori (The Abbey Cemetery)

Some cemeteries advertise a view:
The dead “look out” upon a trim expanse
Of hedgerows and, appropriately, yews,
Morbidity thus tempered by romance.

But poorer dead (or dead with common sense)
Suffice with rest eternal here and there
(My grandmother: right near the cyclone fence
Along a busy city thoroughfare).

These monks though poor are rich with wooded hills
And skies so broad and blue as to recall
The soul to something infinitely still
And beautiful: the Holy All in All.

And as I grave by grave the tombstone math
Place side by side with my biography,
I pray I might walk my remaining path
With greater faith, with grace, with ardency.

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, Amethyst Review, America Magazine, 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.

Sparrow On Lilac Branch

Way
transcendental-immanence
pleasure-of-moment
sacred-sight
living-universe-breath
mountain landscape
rivers flow
stones tumble
shining as the creatures
everything-in-touch 
existing-as-one
like the hands
that shovel winter snow                                                                             
that turn spring compost                                                                           
that plant garden seeds
that hold the silent teacup
pleasantly attached
to the easy breath
   -- sparrow on lilac branch

Robert Daniel Smith: Former Soup Kitchen Cook / Poet. Now just a Poet in Wisconsin cultivating Tao.

Ecology of Majesty

I think I will find my way back into silence
into the slant of dark that knew me
before the names of things were born
before the tongues of societies curled into madness
separation division of this from that of one from another
desecration of the flower of the wholeness of the song
a harmony arising from the voices in the field
in the woods and from the richness of the soil
where the seed believes in light all life a singular
intention the expression of one truth the way
the mountain laurel blooms where bunting sweetly trills
from depths of sea to reach of sky oh spinning Earth
in sea of stars on one great easy breath of love
I close my eyes and find my way through slant of dark
where all is One and I remember why I came.

Alfred Fournier is a writer and community volunteer in Phoenix, Arizona. His poems and creative nonfiction have appeared in The Indianapolis Review, Gyroscope Review, The Sunlight Press, Delmarva Review, New Flash Fiction Review and elsewhere. Poetry publications include A Summons on the Wind (2023, Kelsay Books) and King of Beers (2025, Rinky Dink Press). He lives in the foothills of South Mountain with his wife and daughter and two birdwatching cats.

The Church Hidden Inside a Seed

No one hears the seed confess itself
before the rain unlocks its silence.
It carries no bell, no stained-glass light,
only a darkness patient with roots.

Buried things are often mistaken
for forgotten things.
The earth knows the difference.
It keeps every small promise alive.

A sparrow lands where nothing is growing,
certain there is more beneath the soil
than the eye has learned to see.

The seed does not argue with winter.
It kneels beneath it,
learning the slow grammar of patience.

One morning the ground opens
like a mouth remembering a hymn,
and a green prayer rises
without asking permission.

Perhaps every heart is planted first
before it is taught to bloom.
Perhaps faith is not a ladder to heaven
but is God descending with love.

If there is a church hidden in the world,
it begins wherever something small
chooses life again.
The trees know this.
The birds have always known.
Now the wind is trying to teach us.

Khayelihle Benghu is a poet whose work has appeared in Person of Interest, Suburban Witchcraft, and AKE Review. Her writing often engages with transformation, myth, and the quiet strangeness of the everyday, exploring how inherited stories continue to shape contemporary lives.

Night Lights

Again we line our little lights 
up against the darkness;

not even candles, just safety
nightlights with such tiny flames.

I raise mine high to pierce 
a few dark inches of the night

but know it's far too small 
and insignificant to conquer 

forces of darkness, war and hate,
armies ranged against each other, 

aircraft and drones releasing powers 
of destruction on the land below.

Still it flickers, encouraging me to keep 
my hold on hope, to see and celebrate

the point of this our weekly vigil,
our small but stubborn prayer for peace.

Alwyn Marriage‘s eighteen books include poetry, fiction and non-fiction. She gives frequent readings and lectures all over Britain and Europe and occasionally in Australia/New Zealand. She won the Hedgehog Poetry Prize for her collection, Travelling Light, which recounts her adventures travelling around the world on work. Her most recent commission was to write poems responding to 25 artworks in an exhibition. An experienced workshop leader, mentor and lecturer, she particularly enjoys giving poetry readings from her many collections. Formerly a philosophy lecturer, magazine editor, environmental consultant, CEO of two international NGOs and Managing Editor of Oversteps Books.
http://www.marriages.me.uk/alwyn

The Air Before Tea

Before the kettle

finds its small voice,

before steam
s
oftens the window,

before the first bitterness
loosens into warmth,

there is the air—

already inside me

before I have remembered

to be grateful.

I never think to welcome it.

It arrives

without knocking,

wearing no season

I can name.

It has crossed

fields where tea bushes

held out their dark leaves

to a patient sun.

It has leaned
through forests

older than any map,

slipped between

the ribs of antelope,

lifted the wings

of birds that never knew

they were carrying

the same morning

toward me.

Perhaps it paused

beside my grandmother

while she waited

for water to boil,

her hands smelling

of ginger
and soap,

the day's work

already gathering

behind her eyes.

Perhaps she returned it,

changed in some small way

by laughter,

by worry,

by a hymn

she did not know

she was humming.

Nothing keeps it.

Not mountains.

Not mouths.

Not the trees

that borrow it

only to give it back

green with light.

I drink my tea.

The cup grows lighter.

The window clears.

And with my first quiet breath

I send something onward—

not mine,

never mine—

only passing through,

as every blessing

has always done.

Carol Mbugua is a Kenyan writer. Her work has appeared in Inner Worlds, The Suburban Review, Banshee, and Flame Tree Press publications. She is interested in stories that explore memory, myth, identity, and the hidden lives people carry within them. When not writing, she enjoys watching the Indian Ocean and filling journals with observations and unfinished ideas.

Mango

It's easy to forget the
little everyday miracles
that makes life so meaningful,
because I can feel the
dirty grit of humanity
trapped under my fingernails--
until I bite into one
perfectly ripe mango
on a hot summer night,
juice running across
the folds of my chin,
and I think I might know
what God tastes like
and I am grateful for
all the mess and dirt
because it brought 
this mango, this gift
into my hands.

Juanita Cox is an emerging Black mother poet who loves to play with words to create new ideas, and elicit emotions–or at least have you stop and think for a moment. She has been published by NonBinary Review, Tendrils Lit mag, Poetica, Sheila Na Gig, and Better Than Starbucks among others. She helps run an amateur storytellng group out of a locally owned bookstore, is a working mom for one adorable son, and generally is grateful to be in Boston, MA.