Amethyst Review

Vanishing Point

Last night the creatures in my dreams were kind
and cordial. Men with jaws of wolf and hound
and gliding owl-winged women eased my mind,
my ushers to a slumber more profound.
I got the sense that they were dreaming too,
their round eyes, which at first looked so awake,
trained inward toward some feral privileged view
the demons who weave sleep craft for their sake.
The point that vanishes is still a point,
although there’s nothing there, or just a dot
of paint or wax a clay lamp might anoint
with unguent light, both of this world and not.
The world abides by time. Time stops for light.
Light winds itself inside itself at night. 

Dan Campion‘s poems have appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). A selection of his poems was issued by the Ice Cube Press in July 2022: https://icecubepress.com/2021/10/01/a-playbill-for-sunset/

Turning Succulent


I share with friends my self-improvement fantasy of morphing 
Into a rather pithy succulent this summer. I tell them I want to 
Exchange my fleshy, thickened limbs for leaves & stems.

They laugh, of course, & order the appetizer without giving it
Another thought. I pull them back with my lasso of ingenuity until
Yes they finally see that I am serious & looking into it somehow.

You are wonderful in your human form, they abjure. It’s never been 
Done, the hummus-laden server catches on pretty quickly 
& concurs. But this is insane, they say, to which I agree:

Come June 21st, I sit on my back step hydrated, naked, face
To the sun, feeling rather ornamental. I have silently said good-bye
To my family & hello to my genera where now I am true.

Candice Kelsey [she/her] is a poet, educator, and activist currently living in Augusta, Georgia. She serves as a creative writing mentor with PEN America’s Prison & Justice Writing Program; her work appears in Grub Street, Poet Lore, Lumiere Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and Slant among other journals. Recently, Candice was chosen as a finalist in Iowa Review’s Poetry Contest and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Her third book titled A Poet just released with Alien Buddha Press. Find her @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.

It’s summer solstice


hottest longest day in June
and the coldest whitest snowdrop flowers
in the empty garden bed
under Olivia’s window
next the coal shed
where the puppies lightly snore
dreaming of flying bones and
kittens unravelling wool.

There’s a nip in the skittish air,
a distinct rip in the skin of light
and shadows are chasing silhouettes into the darkest bedroom corner.

Today’s postcard has just fallen on the mat.

Up on the island 
beside the cottage -
remember where harebells once carpeted our field -
the rowan will soon send out the reddest berries
prescient of her winter runes.

 

Julie Sampson’s poetry is widely published. She edited Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems, 2009 (Shearsman Books); her collectionsare Tessitura(Shearsman Books, 2014) and It Was When It Was When It Was (Dempsey & Windle, 2018 ). She received an ‘honourable mention’ in the Survision James Tate Memorial Prize, in 2021. Her main website is at JulieSampson. 

Lingering 

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden
Portland, Oregon


I don’t remember why I paused. 
Might have been to catch my breath 
on the uphill path or to grab 
a last panoramic shot of rhodies 
and azaleas astonishing in whites/ 
pinks/purples/yellows/blues.

I had five goslings on my mind––
golden innocence paddling
across the spring-fed lake––
not to mention waterfalls 
tucked with curated randomness
around the garden’s edge.

Might be why I didn’t see 
the child skipping up the slope 
or the mother unscrewing the mason jar. 
Only this: a stunned monarch––
shocked by how freedom felt––
spreading wings––royally––
on a rhodie’s violet bloom.

As if grateful for the sun
and my awe-filled stare, 
it posed for two dozen clicks,
waiting for the future to appear.
It approved, as it folded up
its wings, the art of standing still.

Blissfully retired in Clackamas, OR, Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. Her poems have appeared in more than 175 journals throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. For more: www.carolynmartinpoet.com.

Shepherd’s Hour


You’ve been a rusty parking lot for desolation
but this hour your night mind calculates
sheep bells deep in the belly of the ravine.

Your herd wanders through fog in syncopation,
their frosty breaths leave behind trails of
ellipses.  You light another cigarette and

stumble down the steep hill of brambles
to crouch among their low bleats. Musk 
of their matted wool drapes you in stillness, 

stillness you’re prone to making thick with 
gloom and inertia. But this hour, listen to the 
steadying of their hooves in high grass, place 

your hands onto the rippling lilt of their haunches, 
taste the haunting vapors of hallelujah, so strange
to your lips, secret chord ready to release you.

Nikki Santer‘s poems have appeared in various publications including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Heavy Feather Review, Slab, Slipstream, [PANK], Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, Grimm, Hotel Amerika and The Main Street Rag. Her work has received many honors including six Pushcart and three Ohioana and Ohio Poet book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her twelfth poetry collection, Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me, is a sequence in tribute to the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington and was recently published by the arts press, Cereal Box Studio.

Nature's Gift


Do flowers
have
souls?


Large white
blossoms
reign
over the 
prairie


Majestic
in their
stature,
kings
and
queens
all-knowing


Infinite
beauty,
free
and wild,
total perfection--

Born in Cincinnati, Bobbie Saunders is a graduate of Emory University, B.A. in Psychology and Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, B.F.A. in Painting & Drawing.  Her interests include running, baseball, swimming, playing with dogs.  Her poems have appeared in Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Talking River Review, Westward Quarterly and others.  Illusions is her collection of poems.

Living Room									

The cradle of my mother’s arms 
became the site of her second daughter’s
final breaths. 

There was built a bridge, moments
long, and mourning wide, 
housing them both, pearls of Child
and of Nurture, before gently dismantling

to return as the nook of an old, worn couch.

I am a woman of twenty-nine.

A third daughter.

Prayer and solitude linger, 
these alternating mechanisms spinning
the cogs of my worship,
not to be overridden by any ordinary
force. 

To this day when light catches 
in corners of everywhere, 
I want God to be there smiling.
For my body to cease its ticking and winding 
so that my sister can hear that I remain
curious as to what I was doing for three
years, or if we had once crossed, starfire to starfire,
before settling into His plan, 
all of us watching on while our mother

draws the blinds in the cave of the living room.  

Amanda Emilio is fascinated with and often writes about the strong ties between everyday life and spirituality. Her work has been published in The Janus Journal and The America Library of Poetry: Impressions of Youth. You can connect with her on her instagram: @sun_spotsss.

Older Than God


God might be the 80-year-old
with the dyed red pageboy
going pew to pew after Mass
picking up crumpled bulletins
donation envelopes scribbled on
by kids who ran out of Cheerios
and whose parents were praying
Mass would end before the baby
wailed oh God, she’s screaming 
make her stop Father is looking
saying hush does no good at all
what the hell is she crying about
forgive me for cursing but I see
the struggle in the Father’s eyes
as he fights between love for all
and frustration okay we’ll go out
Pageboy God remembers those days
but now everybody’s gone
and the old woman cleans
here’s a pair of sunglasses
put it in lost and found
I once was lost but now am
found in the box in the vestibule
the choir leaves lozenge wrappers
in the loft like fallen leaves 
it hurts to bend to pick them up
they should clean their own mess
she always taught her children
that but did they listen one
drinks too much another 
died the third lives in her house
with her wife oh yes her wife
but it’s all love fine with God
okay the church is clean enough
blow out the candles quaff the lights
breakfast oh look below the crucifix
that homeless man is sleeping
God wants her eggs and bacon
she nudges him arise he does. 
 

Sue Fagalde Lick has published two chapbooks, Gravel Road Ahead and The Widow at the Piano: Poems by a Distracted Catholic. Her poems have appeared in many journals, as well as the anthologies From Pandemic to Protest and Opening the Gate. She and her Zoom poetry dog Annie live on the Oregon coast, where she is a Catholic music minister. 

Life Cycle
 
Each second an unveiling
rich black tuber
 
coaxed 
into thin green air
 
red-winged blackbird
trilling in bleached bullrushes
 
her eggs    will break
and the nest     fall into dust

Ruth Chad is a psychologist who lives and works in the Boston area.  Her poems have appeared in the Aurorean, Bagels with the Bards, Connection, Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Institute of New England, Constellations, Ibbetson Street, Montreal Poems, Muddy River Poetry Review, Lily Poetry Review, Amethyst Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice and Poetry Super-Highway. Most recently, a poem has been published in Voices of the Earth: The Future of the Planet III. Her chapbook, The Sound of Angels, was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2017. Her forthcoming book, In the Absence of Birds will be published by Cervena Barva Press in 2024. Ruth was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2021.

The Goddess of Remorse

It’s full on dark night when
the bar of gold light sears 
across my heart. Coming 
from nowhere out of nothing 
right onto me. Coincidence. 
No meaning in it, a fluke 
of twisting beams that I 
can’t track its source. 
Hand across my chest 
now, the mark a layer 
removed: under the strip, 
my hand’s back and underneath 
that skin, bones, beating. 
The life in me, on a night 
I can’t sleep, anxiety stirring
bad memories with its 
nightmare stick and here
I am, marked by light, clothed 
and naked, part of me bright 
and honest, part the biggest
lie I know. What am I? What
is happening here? I am not new 
news. The voice between
time. Seconds tick, my chest 
thumps to move my blood, 
The life in me all shadows
and bright dreams, all the 
bustle of day punctuated 
by the lost and quiet night
of this. I want to lift this 
bar, turn my hand, hold 
its fire to warm my palm. 
Instead, I shift, let it spear 
back into my heart, let 
the light break me open, 
burn me alive. You will know 
my face by its shadows. Time
to get the shadows right, let
light fall shining wherever it may. 

Neile Graham is Canadian by birth and inclination but currently lives in Seattle, Washington. Her publications include: four full-length collections, most recently The Walk She Takes (2019) and a spoken word CD, She Says: Poems Selected & New. She has also published poems in various physical and online magazines, including Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Mad Swirl, and Polar Starlight.