Amethyst Review

Five Birds
 
in silence, I walked
from farm to shore, 
through eucalyptus and chaparral, 
and stopped—briefly—
the chaos of my mind
 
in wooden temple, 
thick with incense, 
I listened to a monk, 
not much older than I, 
speak of compassion, 
and for all sentient beings
a freedom from suffering
 
now, in the not quite sunset
the heat, 
and with it—
my clarity—
descend west, 
down my back
as I drive home, 
cross the Richmond bridge
 
grey metal triangles
faded blue water
and jagged edged earth.
small islands dot the bay, 
beckoning birds and sailors
with false promises of
respite or refuge
 
every few yards—
the rhythm 
of one long breath—
a bird dead 
lies north of all lanes.
the speed of each flight,
the shock of each impact
evident in blood and splay
 
I feel shame 
for their slow extinction
unnoticed.
 
Counting corpses—
three, four, five—
I wonder,
who collects the bodies and
tallies their numbers?
who gives dignity to the lives lost?
 
and who will grant us ours
when we smash ourselves unwittingly
against the gates of progress?
 

Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have been published in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cleaver, Francis Ford Coppola Winery, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. She is the winner of La Piccioletta Barca’s inaugural competition and the Chapman University Flash Fiction winner. She is finishing her latest collection, Monarch, a poetic memoir of overlooked histories from her American West (CA, NV, OR, and WA).

What lies below affects the surface
 
Who am I without the land?—the rivers, mountains, 
valleys, trees, forests—even the stones
are alive and moving gayly.
 
Our moments here, in company, or alone,
all continual movement hones
the very atmosphere, daily.
 
I need to be near the skin of the earth—on my own, 
by myself with the land—gnawing the bone
that flows, that knows my human frailty.
 
The red in my blood is shown
and repeated through nature’s stone.
I am amazed that I actually thrive/ survive.
 
The stone is blood red because of the loan
of iron content—that special energy blown
into and coming from the red color—life’s fluid drive.
 
Balance, symmetry, consistency are touchstones.
When the wind speaks, I am taken to the zone 
of pattern, movement and loveliness of the land,
 
beauty that is transient, yet with healing undertones;
a visual entrance into life which ebbs and flows
with the red color—its energy flowing through all the land.  
 
 
                        *Inspired by Andy Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides

Annette Gagliardi has poetry published in the Southwest Journal, Dreamers Creative Writing Online, Down in the Dirt Online Magazine, Trouble Among the Stars, Poetry Quarterly, Poetic Bond and others. She has work in three State’s poetry anthologies and her poem “Gourmand of Orange” has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

consider the paradoxes
 
like lilies of the field
salt that flavors
and seed that grows
were the good news of His kingdom
now consider some of the parables of an earthy realm:
mercury
the metal that pours
or perhaps
the iceberg     the mountain that floats
then there is water
shapeshifter into liquid, solid or gas                               
finally                           
consider ourselves 
the smallest of parables
yet clothed, seasoned 
and growing into thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold 

Sister Lou Ella Hickman’s poems and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and journals as well as four anthologies. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53)

HAIBUN: OF HUNGER & FIRE

A chorus of chick-a-dee-dee-dee greets late winter dawn and spring-hungry us, who clutch mugs of hot coffee against the chill. A flock of chickadees cluster in the barberry bush now doused with snow, their black caps barely visible within the weave of pencil-thin branches. But their bobbing dark heads give them away among last summer’s shrivelled red berries and a few clinging leaves. In groups of five or six, they wing to the feeder and back again, a circus lilting through air, sunflower seeds clasped in their toes. Blue jays, nesting in the evergreens across the way, also wake hungry. They screech a slurring jaay, jaay – whether to intimidate or pre-emptive to mob – I don’t know. The tiny chickadees keep a distance from the raucous bully-blues. You stoke the fire; sparks rise; woodsmoke scents the air.

Snow blankets barberry
Birds jostle for sunflower seeds
Sparks quickly settle

Kathryn MacDonald’s poetry has been published in literary journals in Canada, the U.S., England, and Ireland. Her poem “Seduction” was short-listed for the 2019 Freefall Poetry Contest. She is the author of A Breeze You Whisper (poems, 2011) and Calla & Édourd (fiction, 2009). Website: https://KathrynMacDonald.com.

Beyond
 
There is not one bright star she can name 
but more than a billion burning her eyes 
fat dizzy to the void.
 
Shrewd orbits spinning in galaxy dust. 
Sailing comets glisten gone fiery tales 
burning in fictive beauty.
 
Her disorder - explosions of imagination.
The voices within her universal cluster.
She thinks the skies are laughing at her.
 
Ya know, I say, they probably are.
 
There is no moon tonight. Skies crowded 
by chubby clouds. Our bed will be cold. 
In her zodiac zones light years away 
 
her horror- scope keeps our love peeking 
into corners of her endless angled cosmos. 
Somewhere I must be there to fall - a star 
 
to make her odd universe- a wish come true.
Oh heavens - all things we do not know of each
other. Our hearts orbit this love as comets collide.  
 
Ya know, I say, they probably are.
 

David Bowman is the founding member of the Clemson Writer’s group. His poems have appeared in The Atlanta Review, Badlands, Wayne State Review, Mid-West Review, Pea River Journal and others. He is currently working on a collection of short stories set in Wyoming.

Four Poems from Reaching Heights
Before the Sangha
 
Before the sangha,
Buddha sits, holds a lotus
readiness is all
ripening blackberries yield
with ease to seeking fingers
 
Mud Holds Fast
 
Mud holds fast her toes
lotus reaches upward
in the sun
wet wings dry
yellow moth flies
 
Heights
 
Clouds encircle the mountain
axis of our valley world
like Ganesh orbiting his mother
on mouse-back
or my head fly-surrounded
as I sit in the garden—
flickering cloud shapes
misting the heights 
from clear sight
 
 
Opalescent Sky
 
Opalescent sky,
lake, and misted trees 
as morning coalesces
I swim jeweled waters
in breath and body 

Poets Victoria Crawford and George R. Ross became writing partners meeting in Thailand while retired.  Their poems are so closely written by two hands that who can tell who wrote which line or word was written by whom.  Some of their joint work has been published in Braided Way, Cold Noon, Active Muse, and others.  George lives in Boston currently with family while Victoria still calls Chiang Mai home.

Sonshine
 
We called it ‘bilge’, biology,
amoebic start, then tadpole, flea,
cork cambium and xylem, phloem,
and soon the phototropic turn. 
Before unknown, except the frogs,
beware the dog or catch the itch,
bark furrowed tree trunk running rings,
fed stem of sunflower, smiley face.
I now know what and how perhaps,
and always where and when as child,
but never understood the why
until one day, moped heavy blue,
and saw so much determined life,
black wriggle tail, draught drinking tree,
the brightest yellow facing sun
and knew the son still shone on me.
       

  
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had over 180 pieces published by on-line poetry sites, including Amethyst Review, printed journals and anthologies.  https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/          

 

St. Mary’s
 
When Flannery O’Connor sat in church
she sometimes thought about the captive bear
across the river in his little cage
inside the kiddie zoo in City Park.
His being there where children stopped to stare
in mirth or pity must fill out a page
that needed filling. Still, one had to search
for words. To cast their beams into the dark.
The proper angle, always hard to gauge,
one hair’s breadth off was certain to besmirch
a certainty essential to the care
of every soul. You had to mind each mark.
A comma out of place might damn this town.
Grant mercy, she thought, eyeing Mary’s crown.

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 February 2022. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Terentius Neo the Baker
 
In the hour before dawn, 
he’s kneading dough, 
the colour of skin,
 
slapping flat the thick balloon,
before setting it down, 
to rise like a breath, 
 
the room smells of history, 
desert heat, 
tents,
sheep,
and here they come: 
 
Eve,
          tired of squabbling sons, 
Sarah,
          welcoming Abraham home, 
Naomi,
          planning a road trip back to Bethlehem,
 
Terentius Neo has no idea 
of the shadows he serves,
or how his bread will survive, 
 
carbonised medallion, 
branded with knuckle prints,
pulled from the guts of Vesuvius.
 

Sue Watling is a writer and poet living on the north bank of the River Humber in the UK where she has an allotment and keeps bees. You can follow Sue on Twitter @suewatling

De nominibus

we argue about bellwort
in this late-night pizza joint,
sheltered from February cold.
well, not so much bellwort itself
as the value of knowing its common name.

you say it’s so we can ignore
the mysterium that is the verdant
respiring cellulose and chlorophyll
itself, and so, a sham.

i say it’s so we’re familiar
with bell-shaped pendent beauty,
impossible to ignore as we rush
by, obliged to say hello
to an old friend we recognize:

Adaming creation beyond the Fall.

i suppose our assumptions work
toward the same attentive end.
the familiar can breed contempt—
still: their names on my tongue.

.

Jacob Riyeff (jacobriyeff.com, @riyeff) is a translator, poet, and scholar of medieval English literature. His primary interests lie in the western contemplative tradition and medieval vernacular poetry. He is a Benedictine oblate of Osage Deanery and lives on Milwaukee’s Lower East Side.