Amethyst Review

Perhaps the hedgerows have it after all. 

When I was nine, I was jealous
that my friends knew God and I didn’t. 
I told them I would find him in a hedgerow. 
They laughed, but I persisted. Some nights, I prayed
to my bedroom ceiling by the apocalypse orange
of a suburban streetlight. Nothing. 

But summer days spent flat on grass, tracing
the arc of the sky with my hand, feeling the entire
rock of the earth bracing my spine, or afternoons
following root to stem to leaf and flower, watching
my shadow dance on every open page, 
warm evenings spent staring at stars 
millennia of light dappling my retina. . .
Those were the days of knowing.

Daniel Mountain (@danmtn) is a writer and teacher based in Cheltenham Spa. 

The Postulant

Mary Ellen Shaughan is a native Iowan who now lives in Western Massachusetts with her beagle, Zeke. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines and in her first collection of poetry, Home Grown, which is available on Amazon.

A Vice is a Virtue Occluded
 
 
A dam in the river where the blood won’t flow.
Debris piled up like misery at the narrow neck.
Boatman on the shore with shadowed face
doesn’t give a damn if you think you want to cross.
He extends a boney hand for your fare, asks
if you’ve considered it’s a one-way trip.
 
In Kundalini yoga, a snake coiled at the base
of the spine tenses with unreleased power.
The day we make accommodations for darkness—
offer her a warm meal and a bed,
look into her eyes over after-dinner wine—
is the day the snake will rise.
 
I’ve carried my desire in bucket-shaped words,
in a hardened knot of muscle braced against the past.
I have to hold it up in my hands
as my ribs hold up my heart,
let it fly with open wings,
innocent as a dove,
 
stretch my body until the dam breaks,
snake rising through a shower of grief,
rising like Egyptian sun—third eye,
flickering tongue tasting
mountains and sky.
White wings disappearing into night.
 
 
 
Based on a lecture by Joseph Campbell, incorporating a line by W.S. Merwin

 

Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer from Phoenix, Arizona. He coordinates poetry workshops for Connect and Heal, a local non-profit organization. His poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Third Wednesday, American Journal of Poetry, The Indianapolis Review, The Main Street Rag and elsewhere. On Twitter: @AlfredFournier4.

Time change


The clocks have been turned ahead
but I
haven’t caught up – my body’s not sure
when day begins; I wake before dawn
and can’t recall
if I’m early or late.

Some clocks got changed,
some didn’t. This one
on my shelf still tells me
the real time – as real
as time can be;
aren’t all clocks
an illusion, made to say to the sun
that we’re the ones in charge?

I know someone
whose watch is always wrong, and yet
he can tell what time it is.

I’d like to have that knowledge.
I’d like to never be confused
by worldly signs and symbols,
always aligning
my personal timepiece
with the big one in the sky.

Lory Widmer Hess is an American currently living with her family in Switzerland. She works with adults with developmental disabilities and is in training as spiritual director. Her writing has been published in Parabola, Red Letter Christians, Kosmos Quarterly, Ruminate: The Waking, Christian Community Perspectives, and other print and online publications. She blogs at enterenchanted.com.

Lola Returns


With this miracle ended, I miss most the nectar
that saturated me. Long I’ve raged against
all that isn’t nectar
and all that I’ve mistaken for nectar.
My world is now a ghost of honey
that falls like a shadow from the nectar
that shines though me, the nectar
whose golden halo makes me disappear
without dying, lets me disappear
into the flow and folds of this nectar
that bathes me until I emerge
cleaned and perfumed with honey. I emerge

from the world I knew and watch a new world emerge
from the burden of miraculous nectar
I’ve somehow placed on it. I emerge
as a woman I don’t know, and I will emerge
through veils and baffles my spirit will tangle against
because my world is unkind to all who emerge
into it. If I succeed, I will emerge
as a tinge of honey
in the daylight, then a strange glow of darker honey
in the night, and then a memory will emerge 
of someone who had to disappear
to make the old world disappear.

How complicated. How easily this nectar will disappear
and old urges and bitterness emerge
if the new me can’t remember, when I disappear,
the work it took to make my old life disappear
forever in the nectar.
I pray this moment to disappear
so the new me won’t disappear.
I try to sort out this challenge against
the mirror logic of miracles, pit my new self against
my old fears and weaknesses. I want to disappear
into the sacramental honey
that surrounds me here, to drown in this honey

and leave no indentation in the face of the honey.
I pray my reflection will disappear
and light be wasted no more on me. This honey
is its own light, this honey
is a lantern from which golden lights emerge.
This honey
is a perfect food, a healing, this honey
already replaces my memories with nectar,
with new memories of a nectar
that drowned a body, a room, in a world of honey.
And the gates of death will collapse against
the tide of this light, my history will fail against

its flow. I cry out against
my old life, curse it, but a pool of honey
fills my mouth, drowns my tongue against
its sweet pressure. I waver and lean against
my bed, feel my will drain and disappear.
I begin to lose my struggle against
my weariness, the undertow flows against
my heart’s desires. Helpless, I emerge
into a light that isn’t honey. My senses emerge
from the wonders they drank and they flutter against
the sight of this room drained of its nectar.
I am suddenly blind to the honey and nectar.

Later, I’ll be surprised at times by the taste of nectar
but can’t live in constant bliss against
the buzzing in my mind. I’ll often sneak a spoon of honey
and briefly let myself disappear
and try to hide from myself until it’s time to again emerge.

This poem is from an unpublished collection titled The Ecstasy of St. Lola. They consider a young nun named Sister Lola who experiences a profound religious experience. 

A poet, professor, and editor, Richard Ryal has worked in marketing and higher education. He stops for every poem he hasn’t read before, and no one can talk him out of doing that. His recent publications include Notre Dame Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, The South Florida Poetry Journal, and Survision.

Resurrection

Summer—
Duranta erecta is a shower
of violet blossoms, buzzing 
with bees and hummingbirds,
mirroring the purple dragonfly
wind chimes that sway nearby.

Autumn—
Duranta erecta is a bouquet 
of golden orange berries,
glowing in unison with the fallen
leaves—each golden dewdrop
a gem in a cluster of sunlit jewels.

Winter—
Duranta erecta, too massive
to be covered, turns brown
and plays dead, while it waits
for the blade to remove 
its branches, restore its roots.

Spring—
Duranta erecta emerges
from the ground, slowly at first,
then, picking up green momentum,
begins its virescent evolution,
a promise of future violet and gold.

To be beautiful is to die, frozen,
then be cut down to the ground,
so that essence, which thrives
in the dark, can manifest true colors.

Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You, (Finishing Line Press) and The Wild Parrots of Marigny. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

Numen

Everywhere has it. A gleam. A slant. An answer
to a question no one has thought to ask. Look

into the sheer-faced eye of any cliff. A monument
to observance. Any city street is a template of behavior.

Human to human, I must admit my hesitance. Firm 
progress and constant growth went out the window

and we never caught the memo. We never paused 
to stare out the glass and catch the light as it bends

and circles and refracts through the cirrus clouds
into an infinitude of sublimation. Prismatic. Cutting.
 
Like straight through the heart mind-blowing. Pity,
how we screen-timed the journey. How our passage 

was a blip in time like a small microchip in a smart 
watch we learned how to take in, ingest, forgetting 

how to feel the spirit of this place, the way it travels 
laser focused, pinpointed through us, like a surgeon

with his scalpel or a capitalist with his wealth. I hope 
soon we can stop what we are doing and see this for 

what it really is—this incredulous expansiveness. This 
awe and sum an equation multiplying with every yes.

Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman now lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. She is the author of three collections, most recently ANIMAL (Futurecycle Press). Her poems can be found in a variety of publications, including The Atticus Review, The Rise Up Review, The Night Heron Barks, SWWIM, The Penn Review, Typishly, and elsewhere. Find her at: www.aliciamariehoffman.com

praying with icons

an icon 
waits 
it waits as a door or window waits 
 
heaven has a face 
and patient hands blessing 
extended in welcome 
then 
the silence opens 
for our waiting in return 
                        

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S. 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. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020.   

E.J. Batiste (she/her/they) is a writer, screenwriter, and artist originally from Raeford, North Carolina. E.J. holds an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. Her creative work has appeared in various literary publications in North America and Europe. Find more of her work at ericajasmin.com or on Twitter and Instagram: @TheEricaJasmin.

Linley Valley on the First Warm Day in April

Someone playing duduk, slowly, 
the heavy notes filling me up, sealing me tight,
like the mourning sea pouring in through my ribs. 

I remember strings and peaks, glacial sopranos once,
looking as long as the light held. The world filled
with blackness before my eyes could be filled
with distance and time. Here, there is
only woodwinds and marsh. Turning upwards, paper-skinned birches
against the watery sky. The denuded earth pale, fading.
I search, among the low quaver of the blow, for something
you could call the sublime, that thing we are trained
to seek out and devour. Brown grass,

brown water, grown geese. Mud
on my boots. The desire that has been gnawing me
all week, suddenly silenced, died, cooked off. A blackbird
darts across the bars of the metal dam, his epaulettes
flashing scarlet, like a Prussian soldier. 

Mountains left me raw and wanting, empty,
weeping, snowblind. The marsh has not wits or edges enough
to be at all cruel. I should be crying, but wonder
at wonderlessness distracts me. There is nothing here
that I haven’t seen every lunch-hour walk this winter.
The only difference is that I can stop, now, and look at
the nothing, and for the first time, hear, unfrozen. 

Trees fallen in the last windstorm, a week downed
and already become muted, washed out; skinless, cored by
ravenous ants. See how the storm has reshaped the trail
like a river moves to spare a stubborn hill. I trip,
and, rather than wait for a steadying hand full of contempt
and sharp fingernails, I spring up, walk faster. You
are not here. I have no reason not to bruise my knee,
no one to preserve it for, no reason not to cry out, wipe dirt
on my cheek. You are not here. It is only pain. It doesn’t 
mean anything, unlike this salal growing directly
from a douglas root, which means, of course, everything.

Kaye Nash is a teacher, poet and closet novelist living on Vancouver Island. She can be best reached on Twitter @knashingmyteeth.