Amethyst Review

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.

Lighthouse

When I die I will walk from the old house of my body 
to the lighthouse. Each moment will light up 

like a flared match: here where the old apple  
arches over the path, ducked under 

a thousand times, here where the cliff’s flank 
bedlams thrift’s pink, here where a knot of seals 

bask in last sun, dark heads breaking glitter open, 
here in November dark where a sick lamb

collapsed on an edge and I knew what would happen 
that wild night, here where an adder erupted, 

coiled the oil of itself into earth	 – each memory flashes –
when I reach the lighthouse I’ll be transparent, 

every one of them released from the skull’s dark round, 
imprinted on the beloved ground layer upon layer

into stone, sand, sea-campion. A last look back 
at the old house, suddenly lit.

Sue Proffitt lives in Hallsands, South Devon, is a Hawthornden Fellow and has been published in a number of magazines, anthologies and poetry competitions. She has two poetry collections: Open After Dark (Oversteps, 2017) and The Lock-Picker (Palewell Press, 2021), and is currently looking for a home for her third collection.

Small Flame Applying for Heaven
      	🔥
 
little faith
 
in a rented body
 
 
      	🔥
 
little hunger
 
dressed as purpose
 
 
      	🔥
 
little voice
 
saying chosen
 
chosen
 
chosen
 
 
the body says:
 
        pain
 
 
the prayer says:
 
        proof
 
 
the mirror says:
 
        girl
 
 
god says:
 
        static
 
 
      	🔥
 
she kneels
 
until the floor
 
starts believing
 
it has been blessed
 
 
      	🔥
 
she mistakes
 
burning
 
for being
 
answered
 
 
      	🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
 
 
for one second
 
everyone sees
 
what she sees
 
 
then
 
only
 
smoke

Sushanth Shyamsundar is an Indian writer and poet based in Chennai. He performs spoken word as Rakshasan and writes across poetry, fiction, horror, comedy, queerness, family, memory, and the strange machinery of everyday life. His work often explores bodies, masks, refusal, tenderness, absurdity, survival, and the private rituals people build to keep going. He is the author of one poetry collection, with two more manuscripts in progress.

Sanctuary

i.m. Meher Baba 1894-1969


I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve knelt at your feet, 
wanting to be delivered of myself. 

This is what I’m coming for – my head on that slab of surrender, 
the same thick Carrera marble Michelangelo used for his Pietà. 

There’s no dusk, there, no planning where to hide. 
The sun rises and falls with different speed and purpose. 

Yesterday, I spoke with someone who had never heard of you. 
He taught me the meaning of a qualisign: something that embodies 

the qualities it stands for. Christ, he said, is a qualisign: 
he is what he represents. I no longer try to convince anyone 

you are the silence you kept. I have too much to learn: 
how to press my skull against the side of your tomb 

without asking you for things, without beseeching 
that this separation end.

Rosie Jackson, from Devon, England, is widely published and has won many poetry awards, including 1st prizes Indigo Dreams 2026, Watchet 2026, Red Shed 2025, Teignmouth 2021, Hedgehog 2020, Poetry Space 2019, Wells 2018, Stanley Spencer Competition 2017, short-listed in Mslexia 2025. She has taught at universities, including East Anglia, her spiritual life has taken her to India and the United States. Collections include Love Leans over the Table (Two Rivers Press, 2023), Light Makes it Easy (2022), Two Girls and a Beehive: Poems about Stanley Spencer (2020). ‘a rare poet of transcendence’ Bel Mooney. ‘gorgeously original’ Jane Hirshfield. www.rosiejackson.org.uk