Amethyst Review

The Size of Infinity

How do I explain my body
as more than its own universe
of gravity and undiscovered particles?

No one is tightly bound,
but maybe we’re all micro and macro,
each atom a solar system
sailing in infinite inner space.

Size doesn’t matter.
Space is vast between any bodies,
from galaxy to God Particle.

Imagination may be a signal received.
Yet I fear that enlightenment is local,
how I look inside to see
fireworks of stars exploding
on the low ceiling of my skull.

 

Robert S. King edits Good Works Review. His poems appear widely, including Chariton Review, Kenyon Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Southern Poetry Review. He has published eight poetry collections, most recently Diary of the Last Person on Earth (Sybaritic Press 2014) and Developing a Photograph of God (Glass Lyre Press, 2014).

We Live Among Ghosts

We live among ghosts
We prefer their company
Ghosts love us more
God loves us
Jesus loves us
Mary loves us
The evangelists too
The disciples too —
undecided about Judas,
The saints and popes for sure
Lots of dead people love us
We believe only
love outlasts death
trickles down to us
through limestone
fills our pure wells
We all need this liquid
Sing it, dance it
Breathe it, drink it in
Allah, Buddha, Shiva
Adam and Eve, uh
Even Killer Cain loves us
Everybody loves us
Doesn’t it feel good?

Okay, your sister won’t speak to you
about that thing that happened at Christmas
plus, Mom had post-partum depression from
your birth through graduation
Mark, your colleague, that deserved the
promotion you got by blowing
the boss and several more
but there’s comfort available
if you know where to look —
Look to the ghosts

My grandfather taught me to shine shoes
That girl I kissed once got killed
One of my ancestors was a slave
Singing sad slow songs
I love all the ghosts
that I carry with me always
Jimi, Janis, Lennon, Marley
John Kennedy, the president

and Marilyn
in my house all the time
in her silk robe Geisha-style
She says, “Come to me and open wide …
Oh, my wife
doesn’t act or dress like Marilyn
plus, I’m not sure she really loves me

With that love genuine and simple
warm and ecstatic
like Mary and Jesus
all the saints and popes
all the beautiful ghosts.

 

E. Martin Pedersen, originally from San Francisco, has lived for over 35 years in eastern Sicily, where he teaches English at the local university. His poetry has appeared in The James Dickey Review, Ink in Thirds, Mused, Oddville, Former People, The Bitchin’ Kitsch and others. Martin is an alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. He blogs at: emartinpedersenwriter.blogspot.it

Head in the Clouds

Can you ever ask a cloud
To slow down for you,
To stay in such and such
A shape or formation
Of your fancy?

Unfettered, those sky gypsies
Are shapeshifters drifting
Across the endless azure plains,
Doing what they do best –
Inventing and reinventing
Themselves as they go along,
Offering no apologies whatsoever
For not having lived up
To your expectations.

Whilst there have been attempts
To classify them with names
With the likes of cumulus, cirrus,
Stratus, fractus and altocumulus,
Such a list remains inadequate
In the light of their morphing fluidity;
Providing them with ample room
To manoeuvre from the
Limiting labels stamped on them.

Naturally, they are aerial surveyors
In constant contemplation of
The vast expanses,
Amassing as they go along
A trove of variant perspectives
Beyond our accessibility.
And when the occasion
Calls for them to unburden,
They leap into their next
Earthbound adventure;
Finding themselves

Absorbed into a
Gravity-defying vessel tour
In the interior of an
Arboreal antiquity,

Frolicking amongst whales
And other sea monsters,

Another time, plunging over
Some precipices in a
Tropical jungle

Or meditating as a glacier
Beside an emperor penguin
Colony.

Life’s possibilities are for them as
Inexhaustible on earth as it is
In the atmosphere.
And often in my life,
I have wished to be this
Indefinable,
Fluid and adventuresome.

 

Ellen Chia  lives in Thailand and enjoys going on solitary walksin woodlands and along beaches where Nature’s treasure trove impels her to document her findings and impressionsusing the language of poetry. Her works have been published and forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, Nature Writing,The Honest Ulsterman, Zingara Poetry Review and The Tiger Moth Review.

The Spring into Summer Collection

The lake washes with liquid corduroy and yoryu
crinkle. Its brocade puckers in lines of seersucker,

flickers in slivers of silver organza and gauze.
A showcase of plumage glides across crepe,

spins atop satin, weaves upon a runway feathered
with migratory fashions. Mallard enters

garbed in green iridescence, as bufflehead follows
in black-and-white suit. In stiff-tailed attire,

ruddy duck rounds the ramp as the Canadians work
their plumes in an avant-garde gaggle of style.

Loon lifts her shawl of quills, spilling thrills in high-
flown-full-turn-and-swim combinations.

Buoyed by diamonds, Mother Nature bows, splashes
kisses, slips her designer shift toward the waves

of another season, another reason for ready-to-wear,
and the runaway collection of summer.

 

Jeannie E. Roberts has authored six books, including The Wingspan of Things (Dancing Girl Press), Romp and Ceremony (Finishing Line Press), Beyond Bulrush (Lit Fest Press), and Nature of it All(Finishing Line Press). Her second children’s book, Rhyme the Roost!, was recently released by Kelsay Books.

Illinois River

West Fork of the Illinois
Hisses as she sculpts the walls
of serpentine mineral into ravine or gorge.
Covered in a kaleidoscope weave of
fragrant Myrtle, pale-polished Madrone
Fir, Cedar and Pine-
Arboreal landings for Western Grey Squirrels
Sipping dew from Bryophytes swollen in the mist.

Green eyed lady dancing her way through drifts
of rosy Willow, Red Alder and Hazel-
Rippling past grey driftwood-
Cedar logs uprooted and torn
In the violent surge of winter storms,
Laying like giant bones abandoned.

Seeps and bogs of Darlingtonia Californica,
Cone flower and Rhododendron occidentale.
Home to Black Racers, Damselfly and Salamander.
Giant boulders softened by watery embraces,
Make drumming sounds, whispering ancient songs
Of sleek Salmon returning, Otters playing, Ravens soaring.
Native voices chanting like Cicada in the night.

Wild in December she licks and eats the earth.
A hungry beast that growls with rocks in her crop,
Always tumbling, rolling and ever grinding.
In Oregon’s summer heat
she becomes shallow pools filled with water skippers.

 

Deborah Dawson, native Southern Oregon Artist and Naturalist of 40 years paints watercolors that are passionate interpretations of nature and reflect her earth-based spirituality. Deborah loves using color and texture whether with words or pigment to express the subtle poetry of Oregon’s flora and fauna. The Artist has coined the phrase “Organic Design” which she has used for 20 years to describe her process.

On Sunapee Ridge

That last night on the trail
in a lean-to high on Sunapee Ridge
you woke in the middle of the night
and lay there with the moon shining
down through the trees
listening to the night sounds
– the wind overhead, insects chirring,
your companions breathing around you.

And you thought of the next day
when you would leave the woods
after five days and over fifty miles of hiking
and go back to electricity and running water.

You felt a bit beat up climbing mountains
with a full backpack in your fifties
but you were glad you did it
and came through with nothing more
than sore feet, and bruised shoulders
from the pack straps.

There was no patch that would be earned
or any certificate bestowed for hiking
the entire Monadnock-Sunapee Trail
but those solitary minutes looking up at the moon
and listening to the wind were enough of a reward.

 

Brett Peruzzi lives in Framingham, Massachusetts. His poems have appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine, Muse Apprentice Guild,Gloom Cupboard,The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly,Modern Haiku,Sahara, Pine Island Journal of New England Poetry, and many other publications.

Another bird poem

Here it is. Another bird poem.
Another bird bellowing, and I am
chasing the sound down the dense
hall of morning to the damp pear
branches where its call drowns
out all other thoughts, my book
forgotten, held open in light fingertips,
as the cars pass, drivers ogling as I
stand on the sidewalk, head tilted
heavenward focusing to find
the bird amongst the silver-sheened
greens and shifting golden globs of
too-early light against the dark
shadows, searching for the sound,
for the bird that must be
huge to make a trilling so
reverberant it beats against the
heart and overpowers it.

But it’s just this, a full-throated
house sparrow offering
its song to the wind.

 

Melissa J. Varnavas is a poet, journalist, and editor living in Beverly, Massachusetts. A graduate of the Solstice MFA program at Pine Manor College, her work has appeared in the literary journals in Oberon, End Times, Blast Furnace, Margie, The New Guard, and elsewhere.

Ruth

She is singing the songs of her childhood
While she hangs out the laundry.
The sheets will gather red dust,
They will smell of the sweet browning grass.
The song jogs something in you–
These songs are not sung very much anymore
In this part of the country.
She wears no shoes.

Parasites that would bore into her feet
Live inside the dirt.
It does not matter.
When her husband has fallen asleep,
And she steps outside to feel
The touch of the night air on her skin,
A touch that does not hurt,
The earth itself rises to kiss her feet.
She is nothing if not this body.

A body exists in time; this is true and inescapable.
But a body does not feel in time.
She is now, but she is feeling then.
She feels herself still in the years
When those songs were last played,
She feels herself still in your hands,
Which are now her hands,
And in the voice of the sea,
Which was then your voice.

You stand by the side of the road and listen
Before walking on. There is no point
In bringing her into the now of you,
Into the now of her.
You could make love to her desperately in the barn,
You could remind her of what she used to live for,
And then you could refuse to steal her away from her life.
Or you can do what you do: you can walk away.

When the locusts came, her husband burned the corn.
The smell stung your eyes and made the sheets grey.
You hid a chocolate bar for her tiny son
Behind the well. She found it there and thought, for a second,
That her nose was remembering– but no.
It is only the burning fields. The acridness spreads and binds you both
In the same diaphanous eternity.
She is still singing the songs of her childhood.
That childhood is also yours.

 

Stapleton Nash  was born and raised on Vancouver Island, where she grew up swimming, beach-combing, and writing letters to imaginary mermaid friends. Since then, she has lived in Montreal, where she studied literature, and more recently has been teaching English to children just outside of Taipei. She has had poems published in NewMag and The Mark.

Holy Apostles School Choir, 1957

Learning life’s sad hymns
and Hail Marys

days were a catechism
of memorized answers

first on my knees then up again
like a holy yo-yo

Or…

Posed piously in polished brown tie-shoes,
standing and singing in starched vestments

under the high vault of God’s house.
As the choir began to wane, the nun said,

“You know…if you sing, it’s like praying twice.”
Really?

Amazed, I looked at my best friend Billy…
he just shrugged.

 

Antoni Ooto is a poet and flash fiction writer.  His works have been published in The Ginger Collect, Soft Cartel, Amethyst Review, Bangor Lit Journal, Nixes Mate Review, Pilcrow & Dagger, Red Eft Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Young Ravens Literary Review, Front Porch Review, An Upstate of Mind and Palettes & Quills.

 

A Question
About African Violets

    —thank you, Christine

At a woman’s house
…of gloom,
…….and misery,
….and despair,
.and misfortune,

in her back room
….under small
…….fluorescent lamps—
………hundreds
…..of African Violets!—
…vibrant
and stunning!

In your house
…..of gloom,
………and difficulty,
……and blue funk,
and dismay—

where do yours
……..bloom?

 

 

Ahrend Torrey is a creative writing graduate from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. When he is not writing, or working in New Orleans, he enjoys the simpler things in life, like walking around City Park with his husband, Jonathan, and their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova. Forthcoming this year, his collection of poems Small Blue Harbor will be available from The Poetry Box Select imprint.