Amethyst Review

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.

No Evidence

He stands at the Gate.

Perfect life behind him.
Perfect eternity ahead.

No scars.
No scratches.
Not even a blemish.

Skin smooth 
as polished stone.

His hands bear no witness to sacrifice.
His knees bear no witness to struggle.
His heart bears no witness to pain.

The Gate opens 
just a crack.

The eyes that fashioned him
search 
his hands, 
his knees, 
his heart.

Smooth, 
unmarked…

Empty.

Was there nothing 
worth fighting for?

Vickie R. Shannon, MD is a retired Professor of Pulmonary Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she practiced academic medicine for more than three decades. Her poetry explores faith, identity, suffering, compassion, and hope through the lens of ordinary human experience. She is also the author of a middle-grade novel and writes from the conviction that stories and poems can illuminate both the visible and the unseen. She lives in Texas.

Splits  

Some days the world fractures
and opens up a gash,
yet countryside remains as
new grass softens slashes
after cataclysm; tourists wonder
if anything happened at all.

Some days my vision splits;
half heads one way, the other
in reverse. It doesn’t hurt. I sit down,
sight dispersed for a purloined purpose
by someone from another time;
my vision returns in minutes.

Sometimes an entity comes along,
picks up a cord lying there, plugs it in
a socket and connects two souls. No one
noticed before the two dissolved together,
like the richest chocolate river runs
when a fork undams a lava cake.

Locked in a roller coaster car, all is lost.
At the top of cobra rolls one has
no choice; not so in life. We dig
in the wrong spot, mix muddy colors,
mismeasure space for the new sofa,
and hope for the best.

Things release in a hair’s breath.
Mostly answers come that we seek
without knowing the questions.
Our task—to feel the change, sense the split,
let slide the halves, this one right,
the other left, and not ever feel bereft.

Ann Grogan is a joyful octogenarian, pianophile, and retired lawyer who lives in San Francisco, CA. Her writing promotes the unequivocal permission to pursue one’s passions at any age. Her poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Querencia, Shot Glass Journal, Little Old Lady, The Prairie Review, Whims of the Wilderness, New Verse News, Writers Resist, and Bloomin’ Onion, among others. She was named semifinalist for The Writing Salon’s 2025 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize and for Leftie Blondie’s chapbook competition. Her poem “Used Envelopes” was nominated by Bloomin’ Onion for Best of the Net Anthology 2026. Find her at rhapsodydmb.com.

the heart of the earth

the heart of the earth
a furnace pulses
yet in its spinning
how like a seed in its own pit
surrounded by layers that pearl
within the fruit of our slightly tilted planet
within us      too
somewhere in a rooted core   
a restless 
spinning
heart
with its own sacred fire

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS is a former teacher and librarian whose writings have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Press 53 published her first book of poetry in 2015 entitled she: robed and wordless and her second, Writing the Stars, 2024. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. James Lee III composed “Chavah’s Daughters Speak” for a concert held on May 11, 2021, at 92Y in New York City for five poems from her book. Another concert was held in Cleveland, Ohio on March 28, 2023, sponsored by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society.

Through a Child’s Handheld Microscope

If a fairy skated a figure of eight 
she would carve a deeper groove 
than lacework on a fly’s wing 
drowned in a pool on the garden table.

We elbow for a turn to see 
a curled fragment of a dead leaf, 
moist from days of winter rain, 
reveal radiant labyrinths.

Voices float and ring
our breath steams the slide that holds 
worlds within worlds
within one blade of grass.

Each bead of a dew drop,
is a multi-faceted diamond 
in our scrappy old backyard.

Margaret Davis lives in the South of England with her husband and son. She enjoys writing poetry and fiction and has been published in Cranked Anvil.

The breath of her words ignites flame and luminous wind


“She believes in the ga haramata, the wind which blows here hot, here cold [...] though only some will breathe out in bloody chaos. [...] This is, of course, a metaphor. But she lives by it.” 
					             —Zadie Smith: “Two Men Arrive in a Village”

She stares through the pallor 
smells infiltrating wildfire smoke.
Gusts of wind surge, recede
each leaf shows its underside 
and holds, all but the one 
splayed dark maple descending.

She knows there is a coal 
in the ash of her belly 
that needs her breath 
to flame, the breath 
of her words.

She knows there is fear in the fire.
Now, she senses the fire in the fear. 
She reaches into the gray ash 
and finds liquid phrases lit from within.
She discovers there is no pain 
in her burning.

Trees bend in hollering gusts and birds 
lose their balance on the phone wires 
walls of flame in northern forests send
smoke afar, casting sunlight to rose.

She could not have guessed the stillness
of being a flame, how keen her gaze
how her burning attentions focus.

She calls up her metaphor, the ga haramata
and says 
	We all breathe this cruel wind	
	but the tyrants breathe out chaos. 
	
	Be a living leaf ablaze from within
        adhere where you can
	fly where you must
        on the breath of luminous wind.

Susan Mary Freiss writes poetry to clothe vibrant silence and hear what she might discover. She is a mother, grandmother, gardener, teacher, and community activist in Madison, Wisconsin. Her poetry can be found with Madison Vets for Peace, in Amethyst Review, in A Catalog of Small Machines, and in Lost Blonde’s 2026 Anthology of Poetry. 

Safety First

My year of flame starts with water
at hand ready to prevent burns, 
to douse the cushions or tables or chairs
if the candle goes awry, if flames shoot up
to the ceiling that already has a crack in it.

I am cautious and fearful and have never played
with fire before. I was quite old before I could 
light a match. The smell of smoke does not evoke
the peace of grandfathers to me
but a problem to solve. 

So before flames, water, and soon
my hands are in the soapy water with
every day pots and pans, with the 
iridescent bubbles playing chase 
with my fingers.

Rachel Ann Russell has recently earned a Master of Arts at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and has taken a number of classes at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Her special place is where art turns into joy and church. She has been published, among other places, in Christian Century, the Maryland Literary Review, Time of Singing, Christian Courier, Hearts of Flesh Literary Journal, and others.

Wyoming Prayer

Evening settles gold
over the prairie.

Tall grasses
lean into the wind.

A blue heron lifts
from the riverbank,
following a line
only it can see.

As a teenager, I prayed
for the Holy Ghost
to set my tongue aflame,

listening
as others sang in languages
I couldn’t understand.

I wanted to belong.

Now I hear coyotes
calling through the dusk,
one voice,

then another answering.

I don’t know
what they’re saying.

Only that something
keeps calling,
and something
keeps answering.

Sam Aureli is an Italian-born poet living in the Boston area. A first-generation college graduate, he spent decades working with concrete, steel, and the built environment before turning to poetry as a way of exploring memory, inheritance, and the complicated legacies we carry. He is the author of On the Edge of Knowing (Kelsay Books, 2026). His chapbook, That’s Not My Shadow, won the 2026 Poetry Box Chapbook Prize and is forthcoming in 2027. His poems have appeared in The Berlin Review, Chestnut Review, The Bournemouth Journal, and other literary journals.

A Bodhisattva

She knew nothing of the Buddha
or of buddhahood, held no distinctions
sacred, thought no condition permanent,
no truths or laws transcendent, no glory 
but the glorious aftermath of chance 
and change, no consolation but the gift 
and precious grief of losing, no compassion 
to extend or be withheld, nothing certain 
but the unrelenting weight of ignorance, 
no presence but her sense that being here 
is always coming after, no thought 
but what arrives as joy, no voice 
but what wells up in laughter.

DB Jonas is the author of four collections of poetry: Tarantula Season and Other Poems (2023), Flight Risk, Poems and Translations (2025), In Dubious Terrain (2026) and Ut pictura (forthcoming in 2026). His work has appeared in over 70 journals internationally, examples of which can be accessed at jonaspoetry.com.