Amethyst Review

Beauty for Breakfast

1.

When they come for me, they will not be able to find me because I’ll be hidden in stones and oatmeal and three minute words.

I will not die —
Beginning to remember.

2.

Morning times.
Morning crimes.
Morning rhymes.

3.

Somebody lost a glove,
………but it is not me.
………………………Mine is not on the ground. I do not
..know where mine is.

Your eyes tire me out, but I will listen. I will devour the breakfast that you have prepared for me and clean the plate with my bread, mopping up the very last drop.

4.

Reading the Gospel of Matthew, we rise with him to the mountain top

and plunge into the epistemic anxiety of the parables. The Sermon gives us clarity.

Trying to interpret the parables reminds us that God’s intellect is beyond

the comprehension of our own. As we wrestle with the apparent

contradictions and tensions of divine justice, we can perhaps,

in our own extremely limited way, partake in the vulnerability

that he felt when he submitted himself to the ultimate just injustice

decreed by God. But because of this, we can all the more share

5.

The ….weight of yours
On the weight of mine
Your breath

Now
Our breath

Because of your freckled.
…………Knees.

Ariella Katz is a Boston native living in Moscow, Russia. Her writing has appeared in Arion, The Gate, and East from Chicago. She is the co-editor of Does the Sun Have a Light Switch? A Literary Criminal Almanac, an anthology of stories and poetry by formerly incarcerated people in Moscow.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett

Fail better, Sam?
But what if we just
fail worse
or simply
fail the same?
Is life nothing more
than a trying and a failing
a hoping and a waiting
a no-win game?
Surely, Sam
life’s something more than
obeying the call
to get up
and maybe fall
every morning?
No?

No.

No.
Get up and walk
your man said.
Get up.

Ailisha O’Sullivan graduated with an honors degree in History and English Literature from University College Cork, Ireland and worked in the Chicago Public Library system for several years as a librarian and storyteller before moving to Cluj, Romania, where she held a position as managing editor at Koinónia Publishing. She currently divides her time between translation and editing projects and working with local non-profit organizations. A sample of her poetry can be seen in the upcoming May 2019 issue of The Scriblerus Arts Journal.

The Fig Tree

It’s the biggest fig tree in California
People get off the train to take pictures of it
Children play around its shady umbrella
Animals burrow inside its mammoth confines
The sky rains on it and the sun gives it light
The homeless have a place to shelter
Its ecological system is vast
Its branches extend a full city block
Its roots are written in calligraphy
It can ask the eternal question
It spreads open like the book of answers
It transcends nature and primordial man
It is the symbol for a universal sisterhood
It is the Tao
It understands the way.

Mark Tulin is a former family therapist who lives in Santa Barbara, California.  He has a poetry chapbook, Magical Yogis, published by Prolific Press (2017). He has an upcoming book of short stories entitled, The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories.  His stories and poetry have appeared in Page and Spine, smokebox, Vita Brevis, Leaves of Ink, The Drabble, among others. His website is Crow On The Wire.

Phoenix Ascending

Out of my agony, I came.
Out of the fires that swallowed me.
I rose from the dreary egg of ashes,
a shattered pyre of scorched wood and bone.

I first thought of the landscape,
and my eyes came into being.
There was no more fire,
and the tears erupted and fell
through my spirit to the dust,
where my body rose up
and breathed its first real breath.

I remembered my wings,
each new feather
sprouting into being out of thought.
The old wood and fire
were no more.
In its place were rain and soil,
my body, my blood.

L.B. Stringfellow writes both verse and prose poetry, often exploring themes of transformation, woundedness, and interdependence in her poetry.  She grew up in the Southern US, has worked as a university instructor and as a professional tutor, and holds an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing.

Say prayer is sex with God

Say prayer is sex with God, biblically
knowing the divine in bedrooms, mid-sized
cars, with backs arched over kitchen tables—
knees bent, eyes closed, fingers entwined or clasped—
often without saying, needing, a word.
with a sweet release of oxytocin
and essence, desires meld like bodies,
two wills become lost in One. a little
death sought in the asking and receiving.
morning, noon, and night, the flesh is willing—
the Holy Spirit craves without ceasing—
the soul-shaking, toe-curling pleasure; this
blessed communion which leaves us gasping
“Amen” again and again and again.

MEH is Matthew E. Henry, a Pushcart nominated poet with works appearing or forthcoming in various publications including The Anglican Theological Review, The Other Journal, Poetry East, Relief Journal, Rock and Sling, andThe Windhover. MEH is an educator who received his MFA from Seattle Pacific University, yet continued to spend money he didn’t have pursuing a MA in theology and a PhD in education.

Violence and Dawn

For T.O., 16, killed in a motorcycle accident.

Christ, who was our savior, did you kill
me with your words that fell
like leaves?
I was cast towards death, not ill
but still I plummeted towards hell
and grief.

By day I saw the face
of my own hand
within a pond.
Now I run a different race
across a different land
of violence and dawn.

You who sunk as deep as I,
must know my plight
and fate-
The tears of my dead age run dry
and cancel out my flight
of love and hate.

My hill was no different
than yours of clay
and dirt.
I understood the message sent.
What could I say
to you of any worth?

You, who stood above me,
now below me in my grave,
are judged as I was, too.
My dull eyes have failed to see
the meaning of dark waves.
On that day, I will be you.

Steven Lebow has published in print and online fiction in Aphelion, Infernal Ink, The Airgonaut, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Literally Stories, Flash Fiction Online, Literary Heist, Penny Shorts, Down in The Dirt, The Scarlet Leaf, and Danse Macabre. His poetry has appeared in The Pangolin Review, Literary Yard, Adelaide, and  Ariel Chart.

Credence

Each is bounden within the environs
of his or her aureole. Your godhead
defines you. Be leery. Cernuous stalks
mark the mood. I am held by cads of
another cut.In the smog of theistic
moorings: what we can’t explain we
must admit. This is the spread.

Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His poems are in venues around the world:   A Restricted View From Under The Hedge, Pantry Ink, Bonnie’s Crew, Morphrog16, Mad Swirl, The Penwood Review, Faith Hope & Fiction, Communion Arts Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

All Ways

the black hatchback blinked
a red triangle as it tipped
over the brink out of sight
down the dim tunnel of the road

side glimpse over a cornered gate
of the valley narrowing still far
below—on the broad back above us now
of the chalk upland we had walked

with cloud banks serried silver, white,
dark where the wind drove a grey
smoke of rain before them over
the flat. Slowly, the words are coming

back: green, light, the clack of crows,
phrases rustle their pathways
through the woods. Slowly, the mounded
plain spreads out south, red firing

flags stiff in the breeze, on its sheer
grass canvas, a giant close-up
of the concrete Horse, scrubbed White
again in June by abseilers.

Bumping along the track to leave,
a cow by fraying hedgerow
in the field suckles her calf.
With hawthorn, clambered blackberry

and next spring’s promise of primrose
in the shaded damp, wherever
I stand or look the land is shaped
by distance and perspective,

re-shaping in turn my thought,
linking memory of joy
to joy: a bridge over loss.
Sunken bridleway down past

the badger haunt, satin grass-
way uphill in the sun, all ways
growing the secret fractal
of language again in me.

‘HOW TO HANDLE THE MYSTICS’

Reduce the images to art.
Let there be nothing inspiring
or powerful about them.

No one should sing or dance.
Encourage them to be silent.

Rationalise everything. It is
the effect of architecture or colour,
an early example of surrealism,
myth, magic or dream.

I am walking through Google maps
and visiting churches in advance,
looking at annunciations and icons,
saints and miracles everywhere.

I do my best not to believe
but the churches are dark and cool.

You are in the shadow and the light,
the paint, the dust and air.
I wonder at what got left behind.

© Rupert M Loydell

(The title is from Thomas Merton)

Rupert Loydell is a writer, editor and abstract artist. His many books of poetry include Dear Mary (Shearsman, 2017) and The Return of the Man Who Has Everything (Shearsman 2015); and he has edited anthologies such as Yesterday’s Music Today (co-edited with Mike Ferguson, Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2014), and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: manifestos and unmanifestos (Salt, 2010).

On being asked if I share the gospel with my students

I know I’m not getting any of this guy’s money.
Because this is the missionary equation —
I with my presentation and my worn out
shoes, a life honed to a single point.

He with the presumption that he’s sending me,
like a spy or a timebomb, into the forsaken
darkness, like a single ember bright-lit
in a censer swung across the map.

His is a gospel of nets. Of capture. His is the gospel
that asks, If you died tonight, do you know for sure
you’d go to heaven? A gospel of the escape
route, the secret doorway, the cheat.

I can speak his language like a native, but can’t
quite find a way to tell him, I am no ember.
That mine is a gospel of tanks
rusting in the snow, a gospel of grass

growing over the place they massacred
their neighbors. A gospel of guard shacks peeling
off their paint. A gospel of old songs being sung
in the tavern, of year by year clear water filling up

the empty missile silo, of new bricks
making straight the rough streets.