Amethyst Review

Smile 

Looking, looking. Through a box of postcards. Her collection. All these postcards. Must be a hundred by now. Maybe more. At least. And then she finds it. The one with the photo of a Yorkie. Yes. That’s the one. That postcard. “Dear Elaine,” she writes. “When I was meditating this morning. You know. Mindful breathing. Watching my breath. Concentrating on that. Inbreath, outbreath. Inbreath, outbreath. Like Thich Nhat Hanh teaches. I had a revelation. Thich would call it “insight.” I know. But it felt bigger than that. Bigger. Much, much. It was this. That I don’t need anything. To be happy. That happiness can only be found in the present moment. Here. Now. No matter where I am. Anywhere. With anyone. Or without. I can be happy. In this moment. I mean. I used to think I needed something. You know. To be happy. That I needed to move to another city. To have more friends. To participate in more activities. Everything we’re taught we need. To be happy. But that’s not true. Happiness. It’s already here. Now. In me. In this present moment. I don’t need anything else. To be happy. None of us do. Imagine that? Light. So light. That’s how I felt. And free. That too. Anyway. I thought I’d mention this. To give you a smile. If you haven’t had one. Today. If you’re not smiling. Already. Like me. Right now. Smiling, smiling. Sorry. I can’t stop.”   

Laura Stamps loves to play with words in her fiction and prose poetry. Author of 48 novels, novellas, short story collections, and poetry books. Most recently: CAT MANIA (Alien Buddha Press 2021), DOG DAZED (Kittyfeather Press 2022), and THE GOOD DOG (Prolific Pulse Press 2023). Nominations: Pulitzer Prize (1) and Pushcart (7).  

Gold
                           for Josiah

	
Who would want to miss the world?	

The barn swallow’s nest under the eve,
the fiddleheads unfolding in the forest,
the patter of spring rain

the way the mourning dove speaks to us
of our longings 

and how unfailingly sunlight and moonglow 
remind us that all light casts shadows.

The complexities of our lives urge us away
from knowing things as they are

from realizing that what we are drawn to
is God
   
waiting to be noticed.                                         

   

Michael S. Glaser, Professor Emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004 – 2009. He now co-leads workshops which embrace poetry as a means of self-reflection .He is the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA 2012).  (more at http://www.michaelsglaser.com )

Quarry



I would sit inert.
The BB gun pumped
The imagination, loaded
With illusions of the hunt,
Stalking barn swallows
In the beams they haunt.

Spit a BB and swallowed
As they flew away with each
Miss, until the miss wasn’t
A miss. A shock of feathers
Lie still there, a spot of blood,
A flush of surprise, throat frozen.

Crestfallen. Fun was in the pretense
Of hunt and hunter, not the shot
Or success. I gave it away, the gun,
To someone else’s son and took up
A simple stick, a spear, and went
Afield where the butterflies were.

Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. His poems have appeared in many magazines, most recently in Ibbetson Street, Sheila-Na-Gig, ONE ART, London Grip, and Ink Sweat & Tears. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.

Gabriel


God entrusts His words, His strength His
Archangel, the land’s guardian. I was conceived,
Born to describe, grown to shape with words.
Rufous hummingbird my yearn for meaning.
Imagination my Tree of Knowledge. In shade
Elohim, from whom you pass the pomegranate.
Let me interpret the seeds on my tongue.

Grant me the future salvia, sage of diviners
And the scape. Clear my lungs, so I could
Bring the long exhalation to your horn. If
Revelation be theirs, if annunciation sounds,
Incarnation be the fruit we at last deserve.
Every ear shall know the ring, brass and 
Light, brilliant as the way words sing.  

Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines. He writes poetry and fiction. He considers the sacred an important element of his personal poetics. He advocates animal rights and living comforts. He has three beloved dogs.

Not the Ascent 

I was growing with the mountain, 
and rising to meet its breath. 
I found my filled hips level with the glacier, 
and lifted my eyes to it as I was taught to do, 
blinding myself blue with the frosted sky. 
I asked the mountain if it would hold me,
and before it could reply, I knew it was not 
the ascent I wanted, but something else. 
It was chasing the last glint of moon 
on a fox tail, running off trail 
through a cloud of wet flowers, 
and sinking into their cold honey 
as each stem towered above my spine. 
It was listening for that ongoing 
clang of cowbells swelling in each bud, 
until I no longer cursed the spiders 
living below for bites that bled black. 
It was remembering how I had passed 
this field so many times and wondered 
what would fly from its waving grass. 
The stillness asked me where I was 
and I did not know how to answer. 
I had not been looking at all. 
Now, I was growing again with the mountain,
falling to meet its breath through each tree 
entering my lungs, until all I carried 
was the wind and the wind was carrying me. 
I asked the mountain again if it would hold
my body and bring me closer to itself, 
to love me beyond all disbelief.
It was not the ascent it wanted from me,
but something else, and it was blooming. 

Nora Kirkham is a writer from Maine currently based in Scotland. She was raised in Japan, Australia, and Eastern Europe. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from University College Cork, Ireland. Her writing has been featured in Rock & Sling, Clayjar Review, Ruminate Magazine, Tokyo Poetry Journal, and St Katherine Review. 

Sattva at Large


The door said “Shekinah, 
Inc.” I started to knock but
heard “come” there you
sat behind a big desk 
cascade of yellow hair
like desert hyacinth 
turned upside-down, 
coral-colored long 
tunic matching the 
rose in your left hand
— were you writing 
with it, like pink quill
whose feathers had 
ascended, spiraled,
bloomed? “Enfin!”
your eyes smiled a
blue I was so close to
recognizing. “Your
training is complete”
which was good as I
was 70 and out of work
“What’s my position?”
“Sitting standing walking”
eyes blossomed wider like
smile, I could see wisps
of white floating across
them you put down the
stem “Your title,” lids
blinked like years “I
like to name the poem
last” you slide a folder 
across with imprint
of round glasses and
a scar white-outed in
coral and blue I open
it; calligraphy combining 
Obrigado font and Ben
Zion reads
        Sattva at Large
“Salary?” I ask
“Taken care of” and 
then I realized the entire 
earth of your eyes




Wayne-Daniel Berard, PhD, is an educator, poet, writer, shaman, and sage. An adoptee and former Franciscan seminarian, his adoption search led to the discovery and embrace of his Jewishness. Wayne-Daniel is a Peace Chaplain, an interfaith clergy person, and former college chaplain. He publishes broadly in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. His latest books of poetry include the full-length Art of Enlightenment and a chapbook Little Ghosts on Castle Floors, poems informed by the Potterverse, both with Kelsay Books. He is the co-founding editor of Soul-Lit, an online journal of spiritual poetry (www.soul-lit.com). Wayne-Daniel lives in Mansfield, MA with his wife, The Lovely Christine.  

For Dorothy, From Will 

Like a householder at winter dusk, pulling down
one blind then another, are you on some time
table I cannot comprehend shuttered within
warm against the onset of change? Are you captive 
inside the bright casket of a failing brain, 
or am I prisoner, shut outside in this night’s 
long slow advance? You seem lighter than before, 
unburdened by memory and habit, you sing 
still but the quavery voice, off key, that I hear
is not what you are listening to. What do you hear 
now, here now, beside me? Close by but out of reach, 
as you wait between the worlds, do you hear glory 
rolling through on golden clouds, inside, outside, is 
that untranslated joy the threshold where we meet?

Diana Durham is the author of four poetry collections: Sea of Glass, To the End of the Night, Between Two Worlds and Labyrinth; the novel The Curve of the Land and two nonfiction books: The Return of King Arthur and Coherent Self, Coherent World: a new synthesis of Myth, Metaphysics & Bohm’s Implicate Order.

Awakening
 
Every day, I  witness new blossoms in the park.
The day before, it was a black cat meditating by the pond,
Unperturbed by the shifting drapery of the sun.
 
Yesterday, I saw the water waltzing
To the tune of the breeze,
Oblivious to prying eyes.
 
Today I saw the ancient Willows,
Twinkling under the golden light,
Heads bowed in gratitude.
 
At long last, I took out the forsaken trowel,
And ploughed the fallow tract of the soul,
Hoping for Cadmium Yellow blossoms to peep out, someday.

Moonmoon Chowdhury is a poet and writer. Her works have appeared  in Borderless journal, Tell Me Your Story, A second cup of tea by The Hive Publishers, Sylvia magazine, The Pine Cone Review, Sonic Boom Journal, and more. She is currently based in Amsterdam. 

Tuesday's Child
                                  Tuesday’s child is full of grace.
                                  —from a nursery rhyme


You can’t trust words, even the quietest,
To catch the calm of orchids in the sun:
Soft yellows, centers flecks of pink and rose,
Transfixed by light in perfect equipoise.
Orchids, I mean, that now don’t look their best,
That look unbowed but now the least bit wan
Like children whom adults have long ill used,
Like the nine-year-old—small, silent—years ago—
I saw, spending his childhood locked inside
The nearby School for Boys.
                                               The sun’s flood tide
Poured down that Tuesday morning he refused
To answer, told a guard his wordless no—
The guard who’d flung him, sleeping, into midair, 
From bed to impact with the floor of the dorm,
Who’d laughed until the other boys became
Tormentors too, who’d asked his goddamn name.
Glory—through high, thick windows—summer glare—
Shone in his wide child’s eyes and held him firm.

Charles Hughes has published two books of poems, The Evening Sky (2020) and Cave Art (2014), both from Wiseblood Books. His poems have appeared in the Alabama Literary Review, America, The Christian Century, the Iron Horse Literary Review, Literary Matters, the Saint Katherine Review, and elsewhere. He worked for over 30 years as a lawyer and lives in the Chicago area with his wife.

Ode to My Digitaria (Crabgrass)


Lavish yourself across
the wooden bucket, flourish
as you cover every inch
of the circle of cracked earth
that nourishes and helps you grow
on your stout stems into the hot air
and light where you flare out
like a dancer, finger-like leaves
velvet to the touch.
You defy the lack of rain
and you are the last of intense green
to remain until the autumn frost
finds you but maybe not
the small part of yourself
pushing forth from the crack
in the bottom of the bucket.

Janet Krauss, who has two books of poetry published, Borrowed Scenery, Yuganta Press, and Through the Trees of Autumn, Spartina Press, has recently retired from teaching English at Fairfield University. Her mission is to help and guide Bridgeport’s  young children through her teaching creative writing, leading book clubs and reading to and engaging a kindergarten class. As a poet, she co-directs the poetry program of the Black Rock Art Guild.