Amethyst Review

Tooth fairy


St Bride’s day,
the row of candles stand blessed,
and the snowdrops,
more haphazard 
yet still as full of cradled promise,
wait under the moon
outside your window

as I, slipper footed
swap first tooth for a single coin
weighing much 
more than it should.
Enamel, milk-like 
soft as your still-baby face
with the gap which has opened up

between us.
Outside,
blackbird breaks the snow’s silence
and, deep within the hedgerow,
a nest is already being built.

Alice Watson is a new poet, a priest, and a mother to young children based in Northamptonshire, England. She is inspired by the natural world and her faith. She has had work published in Earth and Altar and Dreich. She chats about faith, ministry, and feminism (amongst other things) on Twitter @alicelydiajoy.

Puds


An earth angel,
the colour of a hobnob,
plush fur shines like gold.
His paws, dirty pink,

ears twitching to receive signals.
Stripes of a tiger,
paws outstretched or crossed.
Sagacious, divine.

Whiskers an antenna,
pink nose, not that he
uses it. He uses taste
to discern, licks gravy

off his meals, only
eating half the meat.
Until we gave him a new
bowl. Now he can dip his whole

head and whiskers, 
devouring the entire serving.
From another dimension,
he sleeps lightly, bass

rhythm in four-four time,
always smiling, often snoring.
When he’s awake,
He opens his front paws,

his tummy exposed,
he absorbs a chin tickle.
Curled into a ball,
an orb of light.

Paul Attwell lives in Richmond, London, with his partner Alis, and cat, Pudsey. Paul’s experience of ADHD help shapes his work. The pamphlet, Blade is available from WRP at https://www.wrongroosterpublishing.com/ The pamphlet, Early Doors will be available mid-November. Paul’s poems have been published on various ezines.

Two Ways of Looking at a Redbird  


Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic 
power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the 
sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight                                           
in and of themselves….

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

                          --- Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Nature


The dab of vivid red is a grace note 			    
in the snowy landscape, a painting, 			    
a photograph waiting to be made.			    
It is cardinalis cardinalis, its bold color		    
a surprising result of evolution, 			
one mutation after another, 			  	    
some that work out better than others		                
and voila! the bright northern cardinal.		    	
The delightful fit between the cardinal 
and the lens, retina and brain pleases us		    
so much because we evolved together.			                	
Our visual capabilities and aesthetic sense	
have been shaped by ten thousand
generations of mutation and natural selection.			    
Homo sapiens and cardinalis belong together.	   

The dab of vivid red is a grace note
in the snowy landscape, a painting,
a photograph waiting to be made.
The cardinal may be hidden
from the hawk but we can hear his trills
as he hops from branch to branch
in our overgrown thicket
on the shortest, darkest day when
the weary year lies down to die,
like a wise elephant who knows
she has had enough of this life.
Then in a flash he flares upward
through the overcast sky with the color
of the rising sun and the rainbow 
promise we still need to hear –
the dark will not last forever.

James Hannon is a psychotherapist in Massachusetts where he accompanies adults and adolescents recovering from disappointments and illusions.  His poems have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Soundings East, Zetetic and other journals, and in Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets.  His collection, The Year I Learned the Backstroke, was published by Aldrich Press in 2014.

Dust


I abandon my desk, twist
down the stairwell and out 
to the street into a nearby church, 

which hosts Tibetan monks, 
three saffron-robed men 
bent over the floor, scattering 

colored sand. I blink 
to adjust to dim space.
Why don’t they ask for more light?

Two weeks they’ve been here, 
intent on their artwork.
Static fills the chapel. 

Are they whispering? Praying?
Or is this the rasp of their sticks 
dispersing dust? 

Oceans form storms,
fanciful creatures, desires, all 
needing to be noticed or made pure.

Fringed flowers, vines, yellow tongues, 
secret doors. I often return,
but can’t bring myself 

to that last ritual, that final day.
I hear that local children arrive
and bring brooms. 

Everyone stands in a circle and chants 
until one monk breaks 
the mandala with his thumb. 

This signals a great collecting of dust 
into jars, carried to the river and cast -- 
to widen the blessing.

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. She founded Artwell’s We the Poets program (www.theartwell.org.) Publications include poems in Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, One Art Journal, Passager, Philadelphia Stories and three books: Camera Obscura, Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press, 2021) and Sparks and Disperses (Cornerstone Press, 2021).

A Hole in the Poem

I balance barefoot on a rim
around the poem, wary
of glass unbroken.
Smooth edges don't last.
Just look down at the ground
along the curb on any street,
bits of bottle shape themselves
into nothing left to say,
unlike the window that laughed
right in my face when I threw 
it a curve ball. How strong
we are to fragile things, 
and yet we cannot save them.

Beth Oast Williams’ poetry has appeared in West Texas Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER Journal, Poetry South, Fjords Review, and Rattle’s Poets Respond, among others.  Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.

The Silver Tether (Somerset)


There sits the silver twine, 
the tether, which so delicately
Holds and guides us to the nether. 

It is lost in a furrow, 
besmirched by those
Who have touched it but once before. 

It is illuminated
by that guiding light
of Soul’s transmutation at night.

Where bound is bound no more, 
Only tied and sent yore
to a place of such delight.

It is the argent
twine of memory;
and faultless dream-bound reverie.

It has been left here, discarded,
Below lamplight of Mayflies. 
Ornately winged flying souls—
our princely visitors of the skies.

Those bright comets
devised worthily,
as it watches only from its dirt bed, 
for an eternity.

Alicia Beatrice is an autistic poet, writer, folklorist and florist from Melbourne, Australia. She studies Literature and is interested in exploring our experiences of memory through nature, as well as how we (or neurodivergent minds in particular) process grief. She loves prehistory, hiking, old churches, cemeteries and travelling through England and Wales.

In Search of a Container for Jesus



This is how the talk 
of vessels starts,
the ark that might be Mary.
Or maybe it begins with the boat
that, despite carrying literally
the weight of the world, 
so easily moves on. 
How dreadful to be God's captain,
turning away the splinket
and the flomb just because
she could claim no spouse. 
It's not just attachment
but what's held inside, organic
coffee in a cup, fresh bread 
brought home
inside a brown paper bag. 
Somehow the theory holds up
if you understand emptiness 
is not a random
mental condition. 
You must believe God came
to me in a dream and invited me
for tea and biscuits, but it’s never
just that. It’s about my body
and what it could hold,
the trash receptacle,
the kitchen cabinet drawer.
Everything has a place to go
and every woman 
looks like an open jar,
or so it is written.

Beth Oast Williams’ poetry has appeared in West Texas Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER Journal, Poetry South, Fjords Review, and Rattle’s Poets Respond, among others.  Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.

Point of Order


We’ve pulled a thousand million G’s
escaping from the hearts of stars.
Each life’s filled with infinities.

We’ve slipped a hundred prison bars,
outrun a dozen packs of hounds,
survived ten deaths, and bear the scars.

We trespassed on forbidden grounds
the gods had posted clear enough.
Our intrepidity astounds.

We learned to deal and bet and bluff
and hide the wild card in our sleeve
from who but Nature, who plays rough.

The wonder is that we believe
belief belongs to us alone
when faith runs through all stems that leave:

a faith that granted life on loan
there’s light to spin and shade to weave.
The greenest grave is gravity’s.
Each life’s filled with infinities.
 

Dan Campion is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism and co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, a third edition of which was issued in 2019. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines. A selection of his poems titled The Mirror Test will be published by MadHat Press in 2022. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

The Tree in my Yard


Yellow-green catkins dangle
from oak branch tips 
eject golden pollen.

Red-tinged flowers open
bud-shaped wombs
receive gifts of the wind.

Spent tassels rain to the ground
—withered beads on a string—
tangle in piles like snarled snakes.

Greening acorns term
pulse to Mother Earth 
brown heads, replete with cap. 

Ravished
I lose myself
in mystery.

Fay L. Loomis lives a quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and Rat’s Ass Review Workshop, her poetry and prose have appeared most recently in Burrow, Amethyst Review, Bindweed, True Chili, Blue Pepper, Al-Khemica Poetica, Sledgehammer Lit, and Spillwords.

Those Times I’ve Taken God Seriously


A shorter list now than when I was younger:
No one is more worship-obsessed than the child
Who is told that there are no secrets,
And that all things--including him, and Him--are either good or evil,
And who will think of God even when in the company of others.

Now, it’s only those times when I wonder if the empty-feeling
Of sleepless nights--that black-pitted worry--
Is where God would fit, or if God is that emptiness,
The way that some people believe God is the in-between,
The gaps, the dark matter, the not at the edge of what is,
Like the line just the width of a spider’s thread that separates
The muddy-purple mountain from the sky at dusk.

To look at those mountains in early autumn,
The snow already gathering at the peak, 
Avalanching down into a blur of yellows and oranges--
A precursor of what will tumble to the valley soon-- 
He’s the last thing on my mind;
He can exist, or He can go on not existing
For all I care. Who can worship a deity so redundant?
After all, what could be more generous than this, 
Whose grace greater than the mountain that prolongs the morning,
Drags out the evening,
Those times when the day is at its finest?
Who else could put from our mind that death will come,
For which a possible heaven is no consolation,
Especially when it’s unclear
If a cloud can carry the weight of a mountain,
Or if there are autumns there in that perfect climate?

Goddfrey Hammit was born and raised in Utah, and lives in Utah still, in a small town outside of Salt Lake City. Hammit has, most recently, contributed work to Neologism Poetry Journal, The Loch Raven Review, and Riddled with Arrows, and is the author of Nimrod, UT. Website: goddfreyhammit.com