Amethyst Review

Memos To the Great Attractor  
#7
Touchstone

Here I go again, picking up pebbles for my pocket
until I become too heavy to swim. Nostalgia.

What was a comfort, maybe still is,
turns cumbrance, possibly lethal;

but finally, just comes down to mementos of skin, of bone,
down to composing notions, the face in the glass.

Time to box some more china for Angel's Treasures
at the village church, to pitch out more old traces,

the irrelevance now of genealogies. Broken-limbed trees.
I’ve pared down the piece of precious found wood to a nub

that might yet become a pencil or be fitted with a blade
like the ones the architect fingers for models and designs,

nub round as the crown a mother shoves through into its separate possibility.
You know about all this, lover and schemer. Building up and taking down.

This touch-stone in my palm's jasperite like the Makapansgat Cobble 
the collector Eitzman found in a South African cave, seeing in it a face

that seemed to be carved — by an ancient Australiopithican,
so he thought — cradled nubbly in his palm like the touch of the ancient hand

of a sculptor reaching out to him. But no. 
A natural simulacrum, experts said, made by pressure and heat

and the pummeling of ages. Nothing more. But then they noticed
it lay nine miles from any geologic source,

so it was carried by a prehistoric collector into that cave
of human remains, someone who saw that same face

looking back, another explorer seeking connection
from a deeper antiquity, a sacred emblem

left behind, to carry on speaking the holy
into a future loneliness, a shared wonder.

A much-published bi-national immigrant, gardener, Bonsai-grower, painter, Jennifer M Phillips has lived in five states, two countries, and now, with gratitude, in Wampanoag ancestral land on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Phillips’ chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (iblurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022). Phillips has two poems nominated for this year’s Pushcart Prize. and is a finalist in the current Eyelands Book Competition, and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry contest.

Gruene, Texas Gift


The presents jut jauntily beneath
the Gallerie’s storefront Christmas tree,
wrapped in red or shiny foil with terrific
bows, terrific beckoning bows. An invitation

to her eye. Like a summons calling
her to dismiss the unshakeable
emptiness inside, empty as the dried up
carcass of the cicada who once sang; empty

as the wren’s nest after the hawk;
empty as the other side of the bed. And find
the presents filled, even if only with
the stale re-circulated air of shoppers

shopping, their inhalations swelling the balloon
of their chests as they canvas shelves, their pockets
weighted with wishlists, the longed for and unreconciled.
Hoping still to find the right something.

Or anything. Like the way it was that December
evening with a whiff of the Guadalupe
River in the air, running solo through a hanger
of pecan trees, crunchy carpet of shells

cracked open and already scratched clean
by squirrels. Lungs huffing like a forced laborer,
but anyone could see her heart only half
present, just trying to keep a rhythmic beat.

Then a footstrike away, weeks after the tree
gave the last of its fruit, a whole nut draws
her eye. The slight slit in its brown overcoat 
an invitation to kneel down,

unwrap it and feast on the saving sweetness
of the last pecan. Even now you dig in again
and again, reaching across the emptiness
for the unbroken goodness inside.
 

Patricia Watts is a former Language Program Coordinator and ESL teacher now nurturing her love of creative writing. She is a member of the Transformative Language Arts Network and various craft-oriented writing groups. Two of her poems were published in The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative, and she has numerous professional articles in academic journals and edited books.

Barn Owl at Midday


He remembered  
her.

He remembered her joy
at the silent flight of this night hawk
through the leafless apple trees.
Its confident gaze meeting hers.

He remembered the ladder
she made him climb
to place a roost
built for ‘her’ bird.

A gentle man.
Standing alone 
focus driving into the ground beneath a plain stone.
His shadow pooling dark round his feet,
while the sun trumpeted midday heat.

The owl made no sound
as it cut through
the force of his concentration. 
Shattering the shades that surrounded him.

His eyes lifted 
to meet, just inches away,
the dished face of the day time owl,
calm and still.

Reassuring.



Viv Longley has been writing for her own pleasure since she was a child.  Later in life she undertook an MA in Creative Writing at The Open University, specialising in poetry. As well as having one collection (Tally Sheet, Currock Press, 2021) she is undertaking a number of collaborative publications, notably, the anthology Daughters of Thyme. She is also preparing a second collection of her own and a number of essays – the latter to be called I am in a Hurry. 

Yudel Huberman is from Vancouver, BC. He grew up within Hasidic Judaism and has since pursued studies in forest conservation and ecology. He is currently a graduate student in forest conservation at the University of Northern British Columbia. His writing combines a love for the natural world, forest ecology, and Jewish spirituality.

A Prayer to Endure


Whatever calls me by name
may I answer
filling purposes I may never understand
each dream unremembered
flowing through my blood
each assassination
rinsed from my eyes
circling down the drain.

Whatever I gather from the gutter
may I make of it a kite,
a song, a shadowbox of flower buds.
For each ending I endure
may I walk forth
my every heavy step 
pushing new seeds into earth.
Arms outstretched, palms open.
Ready to lend a hand where I can.

Alfred Fournier is the author of A Summons on the Wind (2023, Kelsay Books) and King of Beers (March 2025, Rinky Dink Press). His poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Indianapolis Review, Cagibi, The Sunlight Press and elsewhere. He lives in the foothills of South Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona, with his remarkable wife and daughter and two birdwatching cats.

The Eaten Years

"I will restore to you the years 
That the swarming locust has eaten"
Joel 2:25a

Name the swarm Bitterness,
blown in by the eastern wind.
Bile-bloated abdomens,
bladed mandibles click grim.
Hear their crepitation thicken,
crescendos of distortion crash.
Mourn the sweetness of peace
as good harvests turn to ash.
Who can answer sound and fury?
Who can meet Hate's appetite? 
Who can bear to sow good deeds
on the land condemned to blight? 
Humbly were the prophets clothed,
wild honeyed-meekness fed,
waiting for the years restored,
for Love to conquer, as He said. 

Ryan Helvoigt is a poet based near Denver, Colorado where she lives with her husband and three children. Her poetry has been published in Ekstasis, Clayjar Review, Fathom magazine, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and Amethyst Review.

Cloud Chamber

The sky of superposed clouds teases thought
to come out of its locked room and rejoin
the elements. And thought is swiftly caught
up by the heels and shaken free of coin,
of every stitch of decent clothes, of blood,
of murky tokens of itself. Thought, bare
of all the weight it bore, soars up, a flood
of emptiness, that mingles with the air.
There obviously is no more to say,
but saying goes on of its own accord.
Look here, it says, from lowest, ragged gray,
to highest, paper white, the clouds afford
a view incomparable to those below.
For saying can’t resist a windy show.

Dan Campion is the author of Calypso (1981), The Mirror Test (2024), A Playbill for Sunset (2022), and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (1995) and is a co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981, 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2019). Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Able Muse, Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, THINK, and many other magazines.

Sunday in the Smokehouse

So this is what it is to cure salmon
in a salt-stained cabin that French mothers 
built on the shore of an inlet between 
two mountains, three generations before
that small white house was raised on a cliff's edge
to face any terror the Atlantic 
might bring. The curing woman stokes the fire.
She says that a certain honor comes from 
enduring the violence of a force
with no intention to punish, and that 
the brine in our bodies sings the same song
as the ocean, moment after moment,
wave after wave – every breath is a prayer,
and what comes after is a prayer answered.

Nathaniel Cairney is an American poet who lives in Belgium. His chapbook Leaving the Oldest House was selected as a highly commended finalist for the 2025 International Book & Pamphlet Competition, one of the UK’s oldest poetry contests. His poems have been published in New Writing Scotland, Cardiff Review, Midwest Review, Moria and many other literary journals.

In the Garden Beyond the Wake

in the garden
beyond the wake,
I reminisce.

somewhere
between forgetting
and expecting,

somewhere
between the whispers
of dry grasses

and the croaks
of pond frogs

are me and memory
and you and possibility.

Casey Flynn is a writer, artist, and father. He’s drawn toward the speculative, spiritual and experimental, and has had visual poetry/artwork published in Vallum: Contemporary Poetry. He is working on a PhD in religion and likes to play with his kids, play outside, and play banjo.

The Commission

The Christ of our heart’s altar says
Go away from me and come toward me.

Go away from what you have heard of me
Come toward what you know of me.
Discard musty, crumbling containers.
Hold the truth naked in your hands.

Never be afraid; always love.
Beware of words; embrace music.
Don’t speak of me; breathe me, live me.
Whatever I have is yours.

I offer you the shining chalice
In your dark hour. Let your hand
Go out to meet it, and feel
The confusion fall from you
Like a discarded garment.  

The goodness in everything comes out
To meet you, wherever you turn.
Nothing evil can bear your presence.

The light that once blinded you
Now clarifies your vision.
The darkness that once swallowed you
Now liberates you.

Go out both softly and boldly
To this world I have given you to love.  

			

Laura Vines is from Birmingham, Alabama but spent 11 years in Alaska, which affected her music, her poetry, and her writings tremendously. She is a teacher, performer, singer-songwriter, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist.