Amethyst Review

Pilgrim
    
Once I leave the territory of youth, and it’s not a gentle 
leaving, I walk, no seeker of free land or mere hiker 
slogging away her allotted timespan, but a pilgrim

sojourning to a holy place, desiring the cachet of holiness 
for herself, though knowing no more of holiness 
than the next traveler meeting silence on the pebbled pathway, 

brushwood, blackberry, sunflower faces on track 
to the Alto de Perdon, turbines spinning in gale-force winds, 
towering over a city where men seek to outrun bulls

as I seek to outrun regrets that occasioned the walk 
in the first place. I reach the high place of pardon, 
park my spine against a concrete spire, evade voices 

from another time spinning their complaints: 
You knew his first breath, his first steps, how could you 
not help him? How could you not know what he required? 

I know only sweat, the telltale bead of a blister starting, 
some breathless yearning to cease striving, lie down 
in darkness, and return to the old morning of my birth 

before regrets could take hold. But the pilgrim 
I’m becoming plays host to a different voice, 
unsullied by animus or time, potent, entreating me: 

Sink into mercy. I push myself from the concrete post 
and step out, knowing only the pilgrim’s mantra: 
Have mercy on me. So I move on, leave off the voices 

brandishing blame, branding my heart. I press on 
toward a place I cannot know, yet awaiting my arrival, 
already speaking my name. 

  

Ruth Whitney lived two years in Zaire, a time that informs her novel, Mimosa Road, forthcoming from Adelaide Books and her novel, Slim (SMU Press), about HIV/AIDS coming to sub-Saharan Africa. Slim received First Book Award from Writer’s Guild/ PCUSA. Other work: in Threepenny Review, Natural Bridge, Assisi, and elsewhere.

Fugue

Notes’ linear arrangement first makes sense
When comprehended fully as one work: 
	Completed composition. In what tense
	Is fugue a fugue? Consider scale. Rework
Each subject’s episodes and counterpoint
In four dimensions: open, middle, end,
	The whole experienced. Each note a point
	That tunes the score, the re-composing blend
Of tones fulfills your mind. Is just-performed
Less real than still-in-progress? In the end,
	We hear the fugue entire as being formed
	Re-membered. Art, like space-time’s curve, must bend
Back to its origin to be, first cause
Accomplished per appreciative applause.

Beth Houston has taught writing at ten universities and colleges in California and Florida. She has published a couple hundred poems in dozens of literary journals. She edits the Extreme formal poetry anthologies (Rhizome Press). www.bethhouston.com

Forest Edge

Woodpecker tap from the dark in
the dark. Blue birdsong in the old growth.
There’s a landscape underneath
that Earth couldn’t dream into life, and a layer
of moonlight trapped between  history
and future. The deer have evergreen
hearts, the foxes
fire for tails, and there’s a slender path raccoons
follow to drink water 
that drips from the stars.

Those mornings the mist wakes up before the sun
there comes an ancient asking
of questions relevant to how
a forest is to be addressed when doubt
hangs from the needles in the pines.
Crows break the silence,
black voices on grey
and when they move on they leave
their calls on the high boughs,
hanging to dry.

Lost thoughts and sunlight, yesterday’s lightning
lying down in the forest
and lizards slip out of their scales
as they run, stop, run and whip
any moment that dares chase them
back where time doesn’t count. Centuries lean
against moments, and moments
stand firmly grounded
come dry years and wet and the memories
groundwater has of the once
when it was rain.

Morning on the forest floor, already
evening in a hawk’s eye
where he floats above a clearing
between pines. He sees the world turn from where
he is, while time is still; or time
turning around in a world so still
he grabs light with a claw and can
hear the trees talk.

Give a shadow a chance
it will fly, be a nuthatch, a grosbeak, a flake
of the moon. Forest present, forest past, forest
mysterious. It’s beautiful
to be lost here, to find a way so deep inside
that north is south, blue is green, the sky
the earth, ancient new, and wild
has no tame to be
compared with.

A splash of sky between
the pines , day’s end, ground on the run,
summer’s dark breath
soaking into the earth as an owl
claims the moon for her own.

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix. Over the decades his writing has helped him adjust to the desert and its wildlife to the point that he now considers the desert to be the best teacher of making use of limited resources, whether natural or artistic.

Redemption

Everything has changed for them. 
They can no longer eat 
a mango, an orange, or a slice 
of cantaloupe. They only have 
their memories of taste and 
smell. They were happy. 
The sun was always very bright.

They can remember the warm 
blood flowing through their 
bodies. They are these monarch 
butterflies in the reds, oranges 
of the Pride of Barbados flowers 
in Texas in October. They keep 
their distance from the bees, 
watch for bad spirits that we do 
not know about. Their next 
destination will be the marigolds 
and the Mexican sunflowers 
on their way into the setting 
sun, the redemption, the second
chance, the new life they have. 

They can remember eating
pumpkin pie and peaches in
their ice cream. They already
miss their families, the
children. Some will return 
to watch over, protect them. 
They will come back and you 
will feel good inside. You won’t 
know why you feel better. 
Their souls are intense blue and 
orange flame. They burn new 
and light up this cold dark place 
with their love, their smiles, 
and their warmth. The demons 
are afraid of them. We need 
them to come back to us 
from the dead, share their 
goodness, but they are on their way home.

Benjamin Nash has Sun available at Finishing Line Press. He has had poems published in Louisiana Literature, 2River, Tar River Poetry, Denver Quarterly, and other publications.

An Unlikely Pair

And Noah released a raven

Genesis: 8:6

I

Before he released the dove, he dispatched me: thick-billed, large-bodied, of the genus corvus, a ground feeder, unclean.

Raven

I flew for days over a punished world of water, cawing out to God, searching for that land where once bloomed the lilies. No rainbow yet. Just acres of ocean. I did not return.

II

He could wait no longer, and so he sent me, the clean one, the pure one, the holy one, the soon to be symbolic one,  the dumb one with the small nib and tiny eyes.

Dove

I flew for seven days, came back; I flew for seven days, came back, an olive branch in my beak. Soon a rainbow. Then a promise. 

III

I did not return because I had found ground, seeded it, finally felt the sun. The olive tree grew   and when she arrived, we perched on its limbs.   

Peace

She wanted to stay. Go back I said, and our feathers touched, a promise made, an unlikely pair.

Love

John Hopkins is a retired English teacher and active Benedictine Oblate out of Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham, Massachusetts. He has written three books of poetry: Celtic Nan, Make My Heart a Pomegranate, and With Caught Rain.

Matins

Rose early to view the sky turn
dark ash to peacock blue
paler by degrees to powder blue
then powder turned to lead
          a cold heavy metal sky

and I retreated back to bed where
Ovid padded bedding properly
settled down to snuggle and
turning on his motor of attunement
          commenced to purr

Oh the rumble of the inbreath in
the tuning pour of outbreath out
he played his instrument
maestro that he is
          and plugged me into the day

so up and to the window now
the breath the ins & outs
the gentle reach gather pour
pulling Qi and from that muddy pool
          summon up the sun

Gregory Bell writes because. He’s authored hybrid poetry book, Looking for Will: My Bardic Quest with Shakespeare and two award-winning plays. Honors include the 2019 Kowit Poetry Prize & 2023 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Prize. He facilitates Green Poets Workshop at Beyond Baroque, Venice, CA, is recently published in Scientific American, Gaia Lit and ‘In the Black / In the Red’ Anthology, Helicon Nine. Oh, and–whoa!–he has a poem on the moon with NASA’s Lunar Codex Project.

On the Edge of Osceola Forest 

Invasive jasmine vine,
fragrant as the nard
that anoints Your feet,
white as the garment 
of light that robes You—
climbs the scaled bark 
of a grooved trunk
and strangles a longleaf pine.

Priscilla Bettis is an avid reader and a joyful writer. Priscilla lives in small-town Texas with her two-legged and four-legged family members. She enjoys writing short stories and poems inspired by her awe of the Divine and love for fellow human beings. She is the author of Whispers of a Southern Moon, a short-story and poetry collection, and she’s currently working on a novella set in Alaska. Priscilla is a book reviewer at The Well Read Fish: https://thewellreadfish.com.

The Stonemason
 
The base must pack level, or
be rock, or for naught. The materials chosen
with precision—pebble as well as marble. Each notion
I cut with granite patience, for
or against the grain.
 
Grasp me that I may grasp the higher calling.
You sculpt the words that, together, tamp & pillar
the monument. Let my hand dip mud & putty, rotate,
chip, carve the line.
 
The arcades & arches point,
the vault must wink to heaven, stone must criss-
cross with sky. I am the notch of a hidden geometry.
The cornerstone is the starting point
 
and the end, pivots on the perspective—
cathedral wall or crypt.
 
Each must be etched
& cradled into mortar, scored with gypsum’s
embrace, gemstone prayers for each
to hold & be held—it’s a body
we build, enduring
layer by mineral
layer.
 
Let this limestone be sanctuary,
these starstones not broken by barrage of bomb
or bombast—let this home shelter
the demolished. Let these stones sing
 
to the sorrowing & may the song
be you.

Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Butterfly Nebula (Backwaters, University of Nebraska Press, 2023), winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press, 2020), winner of the Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press), and the nonfiction book I Live, No Longer I (Wipf & Stock). She is one of ten poets featured in the anthology In a Strange Land (Cascade Books). Her poems have appeared in America, Scientific American, Sugar House Review, RHINO, The Christian Century, Verse Daily and elsewhere.

Shape of the Wind


Now, I take up the task I was born to find,
here, where the light says nothing about tomorrow.
How happily I lose myself in a sea of higher being
until the rivers become my hands
and the mountain of my body lifts itself to pierce the clouds.

I have fallen in love with a secret even the mouse knows,
and the slow tortoise munching the grass:
this world wasn’t born to sorrow.
It is a song made real in the rising of a thousand voices.
We are kites that in our dancing reveal the shape of the wind.

Doubt drops easily from my shoulders now,
a ragged cloak I was taught to wear that no longer fits me.
Naked as pure light, I whisper my smile to the stars.
May everyone who sees me
recognize their soul.

Alfred Fournier is a writer and community volunteer in Phoenix, Arizona. His poems and creative nonfiction have appeared in The Indianapolis Review, Hole in the Head 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.

A Sermon on Jellyfish 

King’s Cross, upper gallery 
we sip watery cofffee.
Waves of arrivals and departures 
bob psychedelic bonnets below.  

I said the wrong thing; it flared him
into a parachute of contempt 
with a cascade of pellucid curls,
ringing bells of animus, 
ribbons of savage stings.


I floundered on the abyss, paralysed
while he pulsated at distance.
The poison which circulated left me
in the midst
of a mass of Pacific sea nettles.
Those dark mushrooms that narcotise
with feelings of inadequacy.
Even when torpid, 
their cells resuscitate
to wound the aura again.
How to subjugate the smack 
of jellyfish;
their umbrellas of orange gold 
pain lined with a love 
that feels dead?
One day instead 
of protecting my skin
I agreed to let the toxic feelers in,
explore the origin of the sting.
and began to understand
That his intense distress   
had produced an umbrella 
of uprootedness
which could not suck the marrow 
from my vertebrae. 
The shame 
eating away at me
needed to stop 
taking things personally.


I read Matthew 5/38-48 NIV.
Jelly no longer threatened. 
The other cheek beckoned.

Kate Hill-Charalambides is an English teacher of dual nationality who lives in Alsace. She has worked for an association against human trafficking which is recognized as being of public utility. Her poetry focuses on human rights, spirituality and feminism. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in DREICH 3 SEASON 9 (No.99), SNAKESKIN, Cerasus Poetry #4 and #5 ; Piker Press; The Dawn Treader, The Hyacinth Review and Outposts.