Amethyst Review

Amen
 
He is his own patron saint,
martyr to the cause, victim
of well-meaning ignorance.
His halo is a dinner plate,
his piety affectation.
 
He is his own saviour,
interlocutor between life
and death, will do anything
to avoid humiliation,
even crucify himself.
 
He is his own prayer
but does not know
how to talk to absence
or persuade the world
to find its own salvation.
 
He is his own proclamation
about what is to come;
his own declamation,
his own exclamation mark,
own unfulfilled prophecy.
 
He is his own creation,
trying hard to become
who he has decided to be,
yet often seeing himself
walking the other way.
 
He is his own undoing,
will betray and desert
all he knows and loves,
will lay down and die
just like everybody else.
 
He is his own resurrection,
stepping in footsteps
left in the desert,
endlessly circling,
out of his thirsty mind.
 

Rupert M Loydell is a writer, editor and abstract artist. His many books of poetry include Dear Mary (Shearsman, 2017) and The Return of the Man Who Has Everything (Shearsman 2015); and he has edited anthologies such as Yesterday’s Music Today (co-edited with Mike Ferguson, Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2014), and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: manifestos and unmanifestos (Salt, 2010)

Evening Prayer


Not wanting it said that only desperation
drives me to prayer, I’m trying giving thanks
this time. Thanks for the whole creation,
especially my patch on Bayou Teche.
Thanks that the bayou overflows its banks
in heavy rain, bringing the herons in.
Thanks for the sunset flinging golden mesh
on the stone streets of an Italian town
seen long ago. Thanks that I’ve reached old age
with not so many burdens of the flesh
as I expected. Thanks that I’m at the stage
of contemplating death with open eyes
and without bitterness or dread or rage.
Thanks for my readiness to meet surprise.

Gail White is a contributing editor of Light Poetry Magazine and a frequent contributor to formalist poetry journals and anthologies. She is a 2-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Prize. Her most recent books, Asperity Street and Catechism, may be found on Amazon. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana with her husband and cats.

Exaltation


On the other side
of the glass separating me 
from wind and wilderness,
I see the quick black arc
of a crow’s descent.

I’m half-convinced
they only do this 
for the rapture of wings.

The next time we travel
the mournful grey sidewalk,
no matter how busy
we must all stop to bear witness–

see the delicate tips of a tree
reaching for the sun,
how the crows alight on them, 
this new growth
just strong enough 
to bear the weight.

Faith Allington is a writer, gardener and lover of mystery parties who resides in Seattle. Her work is forthcoming or has previously appeared in various literary journals, including Bowery Gothic, FERAL, Cosmic Daffodil, Gold Man Review and Crab Creek Review.  

From an Attic Window in Tuscany

Earth in all directions. Little roof tiles of sun-baked clay, 
lumpy individuals in peachy skin tones, 
trooping, bumpy, down from the top of the house -
like the back of a big armadillo.
The corrugated arc stutters softly to the ground:
reaching for the rocks, searching for the soil,
remembering where home is, and sliding there again.

Katherine Spadaro was born in Scotland but has spent most of her life in Australia. She is married with two adult children. Her poems are typically short and focus on some everyday event or feeling; sometimes they have narrowly survived having all the life edited out of them. She is interested in the symbolism and impact of regular experience and how it is connected with spiritual truth. 

We Need to Talk

To be inside this conversation
is to step through a threshold

of wilderness, no horizon in sight, 
across a boundary so antiquated,

its rusty barbs break off across our shins. 
The thickets and thorny patches 

along the path entice us 
with their bright, ripe berries,

inviting our bare hands into 
the clutches of teeth and grief and reason. 

We try to sneak in, are stung, and
retract. But the laws of foraging 

dictate that the choice of any crop 
lurks beneath its leaves. 

Listen, my love: Lacerations heal, 
but left unharvested, fruit rots on the vine.

Lynn Glicklich Cohen has been published in Amelia, Brushfire Literature 
and Arts Journal, Cantos, El Portal, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Peregrine, 
The Phoenix, SLAB, Spotlong Review, St. Katherine’s Review, Swamp Ape 
Review, Thin Air Magazine, and Trampoline. Her novel, A Terrible Case of 
Beauty, was published by Trebol Press in 2013.

Starfall


When I look up,
Fog veils the mountain
Outside the cafe
Window, an ethereal 
Blanket enfolding trust.

Mint tea and guitar 
And the galaxy of mist
Assures me that the 
Light is coming, though
Hidden from view.

Below, rain falls like stars
Onto the puddle’s surface. 
Planets bubble and
Burst, echoing circles
In their wake.

Lauren H. White teaches, writes and gives her daughter piggy-back rides in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She has been published in the The Mighty, Fathom magazine, The Fallow House, and ELLA library’s Reflections on Generosity and Thanks. You can connect with her on Instagram @healbipolarandbeyond and at laurenhwhite.com.

Reflections on Dad’s 100th Birthday
	flying into Alaska


Last night the sun tried to set for seven hours
but could only balance on the lip of the world
restraining the darkness of space.

The plane gazed down on a blanket of clouds
poked through with jagged snow-covered peaks
belonging no more to earth than sky

and I remembered how Jack climbed the bean stalk
hand over hand until field and village acquiesced
to a world of riches ripe for the taking.

Your granite eyes held their own kinds of riches.
Sometimes love disguises itself as a challenge
poised on the rim of trivial conversations.

It’s alright if a thousand things were left unsaid
between us. Sometimes God folds the blanket back
just enough for us to wriggle inside.
 

Alfred Fournier is a writer and community volunteer in Phoenix, Arizona. His poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Third Wednesday, Gyroscope Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Indianapolis Review and elsewhere. His chapbook A Summons on the Wind is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Twitter: @AlfredFournier4.

The Leper and St. Francis 



When St. Francis heard you 
ring a bell to stay away, 

he came near
and got off his horse, 

kissed your hand
and gave you money. 

When he turned to leave, 
he saw you had vanished.

What happened to you, 
dear man?

Did you transform into a vine 
of blue morning glories

that stayed open 
all day?

William Palmer’s poetry has appeared recently in JAMA, J Journal, One Art, On the Seawall, Talking River Review, and The Westchester Review. He lives in Traverse City, Michigan.   

Fogburst

This morning we awoke to fogbound winter – 
leafless trees of onyx encased in hoarfrost, 
having formed overnight from our natural world –  
visibility a dreamy residue of sleep. An hour

later the burn-off commences: Soundless
symphony of mist and steam hovering
round the melting branches; the clear ice,
now become water, clean and pure, dripping 

onto the snow below; blue sky and sun 
appearing here, and there, I stand, drinking 
a mug of honey-infused tea, an accidental witness 
to the unseen longing of this bespoke universe.

M F Drummy is the author of numerous articles, essays, reviews, haiku, poetry, and a monograph (Being and Earth). His work has appeared or will appear in 3 Sisters, Mayfly, The Mainichi Daily Express, Worldviews, Connecticut Review, Shamrock, Sciences Religieuses, Eunoia Review, Sacred Heart University Review, Frogpond, and Allium. He and his wife of nearly 20 years enjoy splitting their time between the Colorado Rockies and the rest of the planet. 

Prayers at Sunrise

The world is too beautiful
for someone like me,
who, after so many 
days in this world, still 
doesn’t know the name
of the bird that rouses me
each morning with
a loopy coil of sound or
what the morning means
in the trilling songs, 
that sound like joy,
which is maybe
the natural state
for wild things waking,
who greet the dawn 
with praise, and are not
cluttered with tangles 
of irrelevant fretting.
My ingratitude shames me
and I mourn all the sunrises
I have missed,
and will miss.
in this all too short life
I am blessed with.

Dorothy Cantwell has worked as an educator, actress, and playwright, Her work has been published in the Long Island Literary Journal, Brownstone Poets Anthology, Constellate Literary Journal, Flash Boulevard, Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters, River and South Review, Poetrybay, and Angel City Review, among other print and online journals. She has been featured at various venues in NYC where she lives and works. She studies poetry with Sister Fran McManus in the St Francis of Assisi Poetry Workshop.