Amethyst Review

      A Second House
 
Fall’s apple crop 
from a diseased tree in the front yard
grounded, munched noiselessly by deer
who easily leap our picket fence 
as though it were an invitation
Moles in the pasture unseen
push up mounds of dirt
in their busyness, building felt pathways
for their blind lives
Winter rains near doubled leave flooded fields
for ducks and snow geese to visit
on their seasonal flights to somewhere south
of instinct, our name for our ignorance
 
If hunger were entitlement 
we’d not be living this tarted-up world-ache
preferring fantasy to ordinary life
insuring perpetual discontent
 
The house we build in thought
always adding on, outgrowing us
falls away to footloose truth
becoming a second house
a flat-land hut, really
a single room, no door, all windows
An earth observatory the whole world
comes to visit with room-sized songs and stories
 
A second house waits patiently
within our discontent
marking timelessness
before (excusing incongruity)
during and after, in -lessness
for notice it does not depend on 
 
Falling away are tundra, arctic ice
coral reefs, hammerhead shark, 
giant sequoia, Monarch butterfly,
their newly fluid forms merging 
their stories come to us
in hearing already heard
out of time, before and since
we thought ourselves entitled

Don Brandis is a retired healthcare worker living quietly near Seattle.  His poems have been published in Leaping Clear, Free State Review, Neologism Poetry Review, Poetry Quarterly and elsewhere.

Praying in the Doorway

Pause at the threshold,
in the space between.
The harried will curse
and push past. Let them go.

This is the Janus space,
facing both ways. Here
past converses with future.

Here you have yet to say,
“I will.”

Jeffrey L. Taylor never received higher than a C in English
throughout school and college. Through articles in recreational computer
journals, he learned to write with rhythm and conciseness, often too
concise. In poetry, that is not a problem. Around 1990, poems began waking him in the night. He now writes in the day.

Concerning the Angels

It is a step too far, to see
the contemplation and the fall
of such as these, that knew
no pity but intellectual grace.

It is not an issue of purity
in the fading light, the ghosts
of such as might have been.

There is no touch so close as water
or sweetness heightened in the cold.
Even now I cannot speak
there is too deep a botch in things.

Adam Walters is 24 years old and originally from Marple in Greater Manchester. He completed a BA in English literature at the University of Cambridge in 2017, with a dissertation on work of Wallace Stevens. He then completed an MA at Durham University in 2018 with a dissertation on the work of Hart Crane.

 
Peter
 
Keep him safe oh
You Who Save, my
son up on the barricades 
who took my ‘60’s stories 
home and stands against
the gloriers in the standard
hate the usualness the greed 
he could read before he walked 
and now he marches balking 
not an inch at 6 feet tall a
target unrepentant and I worry. 
Should I have spent those childhood 
walks imparting Shakespeare 
or Godot not Abbie Hoffman and
Rousseau he stands above me in
so much more than height 
he’s riding on a bus tonight to meet
equality’s enemies at some counter-
demonstration, for safety asked me not 
to come. Stand by him exonerate 
me too who adores him more than 
nation cause or You.
 
 
 

Wayne-Daniel Berard, PhD, teaches Humanities at Nichols College, Dudley, MA. He publishes broadly in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. His poetry chapbook, The Man Who Remembered Heaven, received the New Eden Award in 2003. His non-fiction When Christians Were Jews (That Is, Now), subtitled Recovering the Lost Jewishness of Christianity with the Gospel of Mark, was published in 2006 by Cowley Publications. A novel The Retreatants, was published in 2012 (Smashwords). A chapbook, Christine Day, Love Poems, was published in 2016 (Kittatuck Press). His novella, Everything We Want, was published in 2018 by Bloodstone Press. A poetry collection, The Realm of Blessing, was published in 2020 by Unsolicited Press. 

Flickering Rooms 
 
This bittersweet singularity. 
Low light gives an appearance 
of candles. Short days, long nights. 
The crowd sings alone with 
 
full orchestra.  Last chutes of sun 
are—gone without knowing, like 
tin whistles barely able to hide 
sadness; gone to southern lines  
 
drawn across maps of warm water; 
and gone too is the color green  
except the fields of winter grass. 
 
But here in flickering rooms  
we paint our words with bright 
colors to cast-out minor 
spirits. 
 
Short days, long nights— 
the twirl of ages. 
Where the town turns to field 
is a moving target like breathing 
 
or weather, the clouds come and leave  
like all the mass of everything  
that ever was and combined  
with the restless seed 
 
of beating hearts and living. 
People say that life hits a wall as 
the lights go out, but it flows down 
like water to somewhere else. 
 
The pools—each has a face, 
each in small places, a skin  
that keeps all souls separate 
and blood that flows lonesome 
 
—were once part of 
an ocean so small as to be one 
place, one thought, one word. Just  
look at them now, everywhere. 
 
Short days, long nights give  
the illusion of a pause before 
utterance. But only nothing  
pauses. 

L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in Rattle, The Reader, The Istanbul Review, The Worcester Review, The Honest Ulsterman, hundreds of others, and is the author of three full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006),  American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (erbacce-Press, 2016), The Rainflock Sings Again (Unsolicited Press, 2019), Floodlit (Beakful, 2019), and The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021).   

PULLING WEEDS FROM THE CRACKS IN MY BRICK SIDEWALK 
        
In early April,
after a hard rain,
 
I spent an entire
afternoon pulling
 
weeds from the cracks
in my brick sidewalk.
 
I have my doubts 
about how useful
 
this will be 
since the weeds,
 
like my deep-rooted 
sins, always return.
 
I have tried everything, 
even toxic weed killers,
 
without success.
It might be months, 
 
but the weeds 
always return,
 
mocking my
foolish effort.  
 
I use a trimmer
to hold them at bay, 
 
but modern technology 
can only do so much.
 
Since it is spring and
a time for a new start,
 
I ask for the strength
to make an exchange: 
 
My weak faith will gain
the weeds' strong persistence
 
while my steadfast sins
will gain my many doubts.

Harold Whisman is a retired English and journalism teacher for Norfolk Public Schools in Virginia.  In his “golden years” he helps babysit his grandchildren for their working parents and writes poetry.  He finds both jobs often frustrating but also very rewarding.  His poems have been published in Ancient Paths and Better than Starbucks literary magazines.

After John Muir 
 
I will fuse spirit skies. 
I will touch naked God. 
 
I will span ancient hues. 
I will wrap silent cries. 
 
I will grasp holy breath. 
I will burn holy scents. 
 
I will chant unknown hymns. 
I will dance empty steps. 
 
I will bless magic trees. 
I will call mythic birds. 
 
I will push mountain streams. 
I will fill mirrored lakes. 
 
I will name countless tides. 
I will stride endless shores. 
 
I will spin nightly orbs. 
I will toss diamond stars. 
 
I will stoke brother son. 
I will fan sister moon. 
 
I will look with my heart. 
I will sing from my soul. 
 
I will spin endless poems. 
I will keep quiet tears.
 
I will ache soundless joy. 
I will weave glory days. 
 
I will fuse spirit skies. 
I will know what I know. 
 
I will touch naked God. 
I will be what I am.
 

Barry T. Brodie is a poet, playwright, actor, director and teacher.  He has written two books:  The Language of the Star – Journals of the Magi and Tom Thomson – On the Threshold of Magic (Black Moss Press).  He is a co-founder of Shō Arts Studio in Windsor, Ontario.  He teaches a course on the creative process at the University of Windsor.

 
Lot’s Wife (II)
 
A white requiem of promises reaches me—
you’re finally here 
who have been traveling since before I can remember 
 
and you come bearing his flag 
which, distracted by the wind for a moment, 
reminds me of your facial tick.
 
To your eyes I am immobile—
veined stone with a shock of hair, 
monolith whose pauses between speech 
rare enough to be oracular
cement your view of the scene: 
 
one square of an ancient codex
with a border of human blood 
that offers an order 
 
to read 
how birds and flowers outstretch 
the sun 
 
how like a pillar of salt, nothing about me prevails 
but everything remembers. 

David Capps is a philosophy professor at Western Connecticut State University. He is the author of three chapbooks: Poems from the First Voyage (The Nasiona Press, 2019), A Non-Grecian Non-Urn (Yavanika Press, 2019), and Colossi (Kelsay Books, 2020). He lives in New Haven, CT.

Vespers of the Cat
 
Settling of a summer afternoon
The cat catches olive branch shade
Stretches along the flagstones
Provides its own cushioning
 
Moment’s wholeness in the long cat’s head
Forming an instant into a twinkling globe
Forgets about the morning
Neglects a sense of limit
 
Little eternity out of a heavy day
Accepting of radiance by the grateful cat
Blinks in the tinted breezes
Dozes cosmos cradled

Martin Potter (https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog) is a poet and academic, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Scintilla, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Poetry Village, andother journals. His pamphlet In the Particular was published by Eyewear in December, 2017. 

Explaining the Rainbow
 
The moon needs no footnotes or praise
nor does the rainbow whose beauty
 
silences thunder. Thales it is said
tripped and fell while studying stars.
 
Anaximander introduced the infinite
as the beginnings of all. Anaximenes
 
concerned himself with the behavior of
earth, the sun ~ and explaining the rainbow.
 
Poets thought the stream of colors 
across the sky the goddess Iris.
 
And children busy playing
disturb timelessness with their giggles.

Barbara Alfaro is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award for her play Dos Madres and the IndieReader Discovery Award for Best Memoir for her memoir Mirror Talk. Her poems have appeared in various journals including Poet Lore, Variant Literature, and Glassworks. Her poetry collection, Catbird, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. http://www.BarbaraAlfaro.net