Amethyst Review

Leftover Miracles

My mouth is narrow.
I cannot open it wide enough
to feast on all that a day offers.

Example: today
the sky is a sinkhole
writing in watercolor
which the crows are circling
(those slicked, stern critics)

there are eleven new roses
swathed around sticks
like tufts of pink cotton
almost too sweet

and a man stops
to tug a bit
on his daughters jacket
and answer why
for the seventh time 

he nearly misses
the shuffling bus
on which everyone notices
each other
and pretends not to

on which two women 
will tell him, what a sweet
child, and he will glance
at another man’s newspaper
surreptitiously.

Onion skins waft
their way into everything
a promise of tomorrow’s 
bounty, and the handprints
climbing up the walls
like a prayer.

And one mother holds
a sick child close 
to her breast, incarnate
Madonna of the one
resting in the corner.

Anything 
could be
ahead -

tiny fingers 
iridescent with suds
wild mornings
that suddenly grow still
the steel blade of hope
knifing its way through
a kind of despair

it is too much
to chew;
I am gulping 
the world down whole
I am managing
only the crumbs 
the leftover miracles
piled into baskets 
(nothing is wasted
after all, keep the
big meals for the ones
with larger stomachs)

I am watching the world 
break open and multiply 
before my very eyes.

Jenna K Funkhouser is a poet and author living in Portland, Oregon, always trying to cross through the membrane of the sacred surrounding us. Her poetry has recently been published by Geez Magazine, the Saint Katherine Review, Ekphrastic Review, and As It Ought To Be, among others.

Orpheus. Cerberus. Charon.

…und wussten nicht mehr von der leichten Leier
RM Rilke, Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes

I’d never thought to turn my song to any earthly purpose.
The singing always seemed to rise from somewhere else,
outside the tidy universe that swirled about my self-possession.

I’d hauled this dangling lyre through all the careless hours
like a birthmark, like last night’s dream or a surplus limb,
its cargo loose as air, swinging like a garment with my step.

But now it is the heavy place my fingers find, this empty hand
that reaches for my vanished bride, this instrument I never knew,
and never sought and never saw as instrumental ‘til today,

until beside this river into darkness, where love lies unaware,
and where the pathway plunges dimly on the distant bank,
the one-way road where every footfall signals dread but mine,

the fearful baying pauses and a twisted boatman dips his fatal oar
to fetch me over, waiting, living, at the shore.

DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. His work has appeared in Neologism, Consilience Journal, PoeticaMagazine and The Jewish Literary Journal, and is forthcoming in Tar River, Innisfree and The Deronda Review.

His Way 


Sitting on our flat tar roof
like a library lion, 
he was big as a raccoon
and striped, too, 
but without a mask. 

There were no trees, 
no ladders, no porch crannies 
granting access to our roof.
Still, the cat was there,
at roof-edge 
observing the street below.  

I let him in the rug-shaking door.  
At eight, I fancied myself 
a cat charmer, 
able to entice a feline 
with a slow, swaying finger 
held just a whiff 
from its nose.   

This cat showed no interest
in such a ploy. 

But when I sat 
on the edge of the bed,
suddenly 
he was on my lap— 
so large he overlapped my lap— 
purring.  

I tested the cat.  
Lifted him off me,  
stood up, 
walked around.
There was no clinging to my legs,
no fawning head rubs, 
no ingratiation. 
When I sat down, 
at once he settled again 
on my lap. 

I think this must be
what it is to meet the Buddha.
Appearing unaccountably 
and without fanfare. 
An absence of disdain 
and of neediness.
A presence 
encompassing
and yet 
without claim.  

I was eight. I knew this cat 
was not looking for a home.  
I led him downstairs,
opened the front door, 
watched him go on his way.  

Rita Moe’s poetry has appeared in Water~Stone, Poet Lore, Slipstream, and other literary journals. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Sins & Disciplines and Findley Place; A Street, a Ballpark, a Neighborhood.  She has two grown sons and lives with her husband in Roseville, Minnesota.  

The Campanile


A knell will sound regardless of who hears
or if there’s no one left to hear. A storm
will toll the bell, a sexton with no tears
to shed, no semblance of a human form.
Or else the bell will hang there silently
until its yoke dissolves and down it flies,
the clapper blanging one last misery
in flight, one muffled drumbeat where it lies.
Unless there was no bell or tower, rope
to pull or sound to travel, from the start,
solidity a philosophic trope,
a substanceless creator’s term of art.
The campanile’s loyal. There it stands,
all readiness to heed the next commands.

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). Selections of his poems will be issued by the Ice Cube Press and the MadHat Press in 2022.

Tenderly, April


In the latitude of longitude
life is blinking in its cradle
of this peek-a-boo dream.

Flowers springing in the
womb of willow trees,

as April paints her branch
with optimist brush,

fingers crossed
behind her back

toes tip in the hush
of newborn celebration

within seconds clocked
following the final frost.

When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and birding. She volunteers in animal rescue, helping to tend to a cat colony in the neighborhood. She lives by a beach town, which provides much of the inspiration for her art. Her latest collection of poetry is “On the whims of the crosscurrents,” published by Red Wolf Editions. 

April Morning
 
A pair of sparrows, shut-ins
Buried in the lower boughs,
Draw up-wards in giddy banter
To unzipper this day, giving
Way to earth’s slow yawn and
Easeful stretch into a yellow
Smock of light, while darkness
Scurries beneath the sodden
Stoops and sloped porches
Of houses just come back to
Life. The last vestiges of a
Moonless night have been
Folded and tucked into the
Inky wounds that sit between
The branches of conifers as
A drowsy wind, frost-chilled,
Meanders across an expanding
Pasture of sky before its fateful
Stumble, spilling from its heavy,
Ice-laden bucket more blue than
This day can possibly bear.

A resident of Connecticut, John Muro’s first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published in 2020 by Antrim House. His second volume, Pastoral Suite, will be published this spring by Antrim House, as well, and both are or will soon be available on Amazon. A two-time, 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee, John’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Barnstorm, Euphony, Grey Sparrow, Penumbra, River Heron and Sky Island.

the snow is a metaphor 


i’m not so into purity these days but
man does the snow do it for me

pure white gleaming in the sun
like an endless whiteboard covered in glitter 
flawless and blinkingly bright
heaps of cold for miles

these days i’m about as pure as blood but
this view makes me yearn for 
a time when i didn’t feel this way

truth be told in my religion we’re more into 
blessed wine and living water
moving us through holiness
than stagnant virginity white

wooooooosh
the wind meets me vividly on the downhill 
trees lined up like rows of eager candles 
snow perching on floating pine 

the snow is indiscriminate 
frosted on trees smeared on surfaces
clouding the mountain air 
turning everything from the earth to my breath 
into white itself

need i mention the mountains?
hovering purplebluebrown in the distance

sun on snow sparkles like nothing
natural ought to have the right to
blindingly whitepurplegreen 
as it begins to melt 

turning the inscrutable unknowable 
into clear clear water

almost makes me believe God could be
   True

Rana Bickel (she/they) is a queer Jewish poet from Maryland residing in Chicago. She is a recent graduate of Barnard College where she was a member of the slam poetry team. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bourgeon Magazine, Thimble Literary Magazine, and the Jewish Literary Journal. She loves books, community, and rainstorms. 

yahrzeit for my past self 


a broken glass 
wrapped tenderly in a napkin

a soft black skirt 
a faded siddur

first i say the mourners kadish 
to an empty room

yisgadal viyiskadash shemey rabba
my tallis wrapped around my living shoulders

(they say that every single cell in your body is different than it was seven years before
i Know this to be true)

i inhale the spices, flirt with the flame and drown 
the many wicked candle in the red

then i tear off my clothes
and run into the sea

Rana Bickel (she/they) is a queer Jewish poet from Maryland residing in Chicago. She is a recent graduate of Barnard College where she was a member of the slam poetry team. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bourgeon Magazine, Thimble Literary Magazine, and the Jewish Literary Journal. She loves books, community, and rainstorms. 

The Inner Ganesh in Our Soul’s Eden


Your face is an elephant of roses in my heart;
	your soul I know,
For it is me stampeding, and off falls fire, 
	deciduous flames
On the tree of my being fill the steps of my running
	through your garden
And become other gardens where echoes stampede
	until all the microcosms
Of this joy exhaust the energy of limit
	and it submits
To this endlessness of feeling; birds fly
	from beneath my feet,
Created as the sound of my stampeding, singing
	into the air
Where they swim with the whales and dolphins and seals. 



S. T. Brant is a teacher from Las Vegas. 
Pubs in/coming from EcoTheo, Timber, Door is a Jar, Santa Clara Review, Rain Taxi, New South, Green Mountains Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Ekstasis, 8 Poems, a few others. 
You can find him on Twitter @terriblebinth or Instagram @shanelemagne. 

Place of No Anger 

The angry man described himself barren, useless,
but a reflected shine - gift of a copper ray
released him like the sun itself, once fogged by morning
now, in brightness, emboldening the sky,
made him king of drunken pools courtesy of dew,
as if the light had liquefied,
flexing orange crystals under leaves, promise under skin,
while insects coated pond and rivulet - a Venice of fresh life,
and diamonds filled his crevasses, gleamed blue-green,
while monarchs unfurled, floated slow,
and his shroud lifted, jettisoned his pain.
High on a hill, flowers arrayed bulky oak trunks,
life beat soft inside the petal silence,
he grew from quiet destruction, salient decomposing,
man and nature tempered by their clocks,
from mossy walls to saturated dark brains,
sun passed through his face, gilded new eyes,
ruby blooms loosened scenes from his calendar,
shuddering indifference like a bell tongue
showed him lightness, as imagination faked gravity,
the innards of his tired old ballet turned inside out,
new and clear as honey drip,
as water drew back, censure receded,
left the earth to its human findings.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Leaves On Pages, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.