Amethyst Review

Unpacked

this, the lean season
calling for the culling
of berries, their tears.
broken lute,
shattered bits
disperse and settle
on the shifting ground
feeling of both swamp and tundra.
the shadow is an amulet
gleaming amidst moons
to soothe a struck night.

 

On the weekends, Kristine Brown frequently wanders through historic neighborhoods, saying “Hello” to most any cat she encounters. Some of these cats are found on her blog, Crumpled Paper Cranes (https://crumpledpapercranes.com). Her creative work can be found in Hobart, Sea Foam Mag, Philosophical Idiot, among others, and a collection of flash prose and poetry, Scraped Knees, was released in 2017 by Ugly Sapling.

Remember the Stars –

how you ached when you left
the lavish cloak of space
became stardust then dew,
leaves and blossoms bright
with the last echoes of your light:

sparking, dancing,
licked by rain and by rivers
through riffles and pools
Magnolias blushing, mimosas feathering
between sky and earth, the groan
of loss rasps past –

a tune half-remembered in the wind,
on the wing of a wren,
a note lingering in the glitter path –
calling, drawing you home

 

KB Ballentine’s fifth collection, Almost Everything,
Almost Nothing, was published in 2017 by Middle Creek Publishing.
Published in Crab Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal,
among others, her work also appears in anthologies including In Plein
Air (2017) and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017).
Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.

The Blessing of Rain

The meadow folds in on itself
with an approaching squall.
Tall grasses lean over,
form shelters for mongeese
and other small creatures:
a casual benevolence
mothers know.

The air sizzles, sky larks wing
back to nests and hatchlings.
Kukui leaves tremble, turn upward
showing silvery slips. A lone
frog takes cover beneath
a banana leaf. Does it need
anything? Or think of death?

Prelude to the deluge, wind
drives clouds across grim sky,
then bows in silence at Gaia’s
altar. The momentary hush
is filled with holiness, everything
just as it is. Rain’s benediction
descends as truth, elixir
of unspoken mystery.

 

Carol Alena Aronoff, Ph.D. is a psychologist, teacher, poet. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and won several prizes. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart.  She published a chapbook and five books of poetry: The Nature of Music, Cornsilk, Her Soup Made the Moon Weep, Blessings From an Unseen World and Dreaming Earth’s Body (with Betsie Miller-Kusz).

No Choice

I have—for many years—
fallen in love with phantoms—
enamored—of morning dew—
shuddering—at impermanence.

Grabbing a fistful—
It slickly slips—
through my fingers.

Inevitably I return—
to reddening leaves—
the ground of life—
the Bodhi Tree…

 
William Fogarty is a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, and Energy Mastery. He is also an aspiring English and Italian Language poet. He currently lives in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. You can view more of his self-published work at https://wfog35.wordpress.com/

rachmaninoff …….off key
.

a minister
maybe…….a member

of the house of restoration
this man……stands

in the street
asking…….for handouts
&
my hand’s out
the window

holding…….spare change

~

coming toward me

—his steps…….tentative
—his eyes…….locked on mine

he stops

a few feet from me
takes a tiny bow

~

emboldened by this:

act of prayer
he approaches

holding a pamphlet
in his large…….dark

hand…….he hands

me the slip

for the son of man
has come to seek
and to save that
which was lost
it says

~

this man’s story
i do not know

but i…….have seen
his eyes…….in my mirror

drunk
punctured

flatness…….looking back

—song birds…….soaked
…….in oil

~

perhaps like saul…….like me

(persecutor
persecuted)

his name has changed
& now…….a witness

he wears…….fluorescent-yellow
—vestments— city-issued

that make
his claim

to this intersection:

—of failure
…….and faith

legal

~

you say
god helps those
who help themselves
 
and my hand
out the window

will only encourage
his begging

i say

there comes…….a blackness
 
consuming
 
when flesh…….abandons bones
when confounding voices     
 
deafen reason
 
when every hand
on every clock
 
turns back
to the hour
 
of your regret
 
& the whiskey
you loved
 
stings
—nettle in your blood
 
regret…….ballooning
in your veins
 
as you needle
through…….one more
 
hour
 
like rachmaninoff…….off key
 
and you cannot stop
 
you cannot…….stop
you…….cannot stop
 
      ~
 
and you feel
your body
 
crawling
crawling
 
to its end
 
begging
begging
 
to be
 
blinded
 
by
 
the light

d. ellis phelps’ poetry, art, and essays appear most recently or are forthcoming online and in print in The Enchantment of the Ordinary; Texas Poetry Calendar 2019; Poets & Dreamers:  Dreamers and Displaced Issue; & Voices de La Luna.  She is the author of Making Room for George, a novel and of the blog formidableWoman.  She is co-founder and animating director of the poets for peace, San Antonio reading series. recently serving as managing editor for the inaugural anthology of that group, The Larger Geometry:  poems for peace (peaceCenter Books, 2018).

Remembering the Black Forest

I saw far fewer sights than I had planned.
Some little thing would take me by surprise:
A stand of flowers that had seized my eyes,
A cuckoo call I strained to understand.

Those firs and pines that loom on every hand
Will have their way and cut one down to size;
The tangy air, in time, will mesmerize
One—leave one sapped and frayed at last—unmanned.

So there are towns that I may never see—
Triberg, Schönwald, and Bad Säckingen—
Mountain meadows I may never reach

Fringed round by walls of oak and spruce and beech
That will forever loom beyond my ken
And yet forever haunt my memory.

 

William Ruleman recently retired from college teaching to devote himself to writing and painting. His most recent books include the poetry collections From Rage to Hope (White Violet Press, 2016), Salzkammergut Poems (Cedar Springs Books, also 2016), and Stefan Zweig’s unfinished novel Clarissa (Ariadne Press, 2017). His website is www.williamruleman.com.

“A happiness within you – but not yours.”
– Dag Hammarskjöld

That summer,

beneath a blue-white sky,
we ran along the river,
crushed thick grasses and vines
beneath our feet
as we searched for a way
to cross to the other side, to find
what we could not see
yet had somehow caught
and changed our hearts.

Sometimes our deepest love
speaks in a foreign tongue
we must translate
without key.

 

M.S. Rooney lives in Sonoma, California with poet Dan Noreen. Her work appears in journals, including Leaping Clear, Ekphrasis, Heron Tree, Naugatuck River Review and Soul-Lit, and anthologies, including American Society: What Poets See (FutureCycle Press), edited by David Chorlton and Robert S. King, and Ice Cream Poems (World Enough Writers), edited by Patricia Fargnoli. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

HAWK SHABBAT

Once a Cooper’s Hawk settled
outside the first-floor window
at the back of our Manhattan apartment,
perched on the wrought-iron bars
of an empty air conditioner cage.

In the cold, high realms of the air
it had traveled a great distance
and from afar with piercing vision
had spied our cage and courtyard,
one protected space within another.
It felt safe enough to rest surrounded
by high walls, like being
at the bottom of a well of air.

The hawk was so tired it didn’t care
that we were inches away,
separated only by a pane of glass.
Its head swiveled all around,
facing backwards on its neck,
and with its beak it ruffled
its neck feathers and tucked its head
under its wing and was fast asleep
while fierce-looking talons
gripped the bars of the cage.

It was a Friday evening, and the peace
of Shabbat was falling like a veil,
shadowing the world as the hawk slept.
Not wanting to disturb its rest,
I left the room dark as I set the table
next to the window and lit the candles,
softly singing the blessing,
shielding my eyes in prayer.

My husband and daughter and I
blessed the wine and the bread
and quietly ate our dinner by candlelight.
Twice the hawk woke and stared at us.
Its black pupils rimmed in gold
pierced me with inexpressible wildness,
as fierce and strange as God’s angel.

Like a sheet of mica clouding its gaze,
the hawk’s inner eyelid slid from front to back,
and again its head rotated, and it bent
its beak under its wing and slept and woke
and slept again. I woke in the night
and it was still there, a dark form
immobile against the darkness.
In the morning it was gone.

 

Anne Whitehouse is the author of six poetry collections.  Meteor Shower (2016) is her second collection from Dos Madres Press, following The Refrain in 2012. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love, as well as short stories, essays, features, and reviews. She was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and lives in New York City. You can listen to her lecture, “Longfellow, Poe, and the Little Longfellow War” here.

Fighting Death

In the late garden, I stand among stranglers, those late bloomers, hiding
beneath thick and green leaves of summer, waiting for their tender skins

to thicken a bit more, before the first hard frost, before ice seals their in-
fancy without thinking twice. This natural elimination is hard to take.

Once again, I overplanted the garden. I couldn’t hand select the plants
started from seed. I thought everything deserves its one chance. . . .

Now, I’m miserable. It’s mid-October, and I find myself, checking on
the preemies— wishing I were a witch who could cast an intoxicating

spell upon these rows of peppers, and overnight, they will be ready
to be picked and cleaned and put by in whatever recipe I have on hand.

I long to save them, and feel the late morning sun creep over my shoulder
and settle upon this garden’s compulsion to live, like me, to the bitter end.

 

M.J. Iuppa  is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program and Lecturer in Creative Writing at St. John Fisher College; and since 2000 to present, is a part time lecturer in Creative Writing at The College at Brockport. Since 1986, she has been a teaching artist, working with students, K-12, in Rochester, NY, and surrounding area. Most recently, she was awarded the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching, 2017. She has four full length poetry collections, This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017), Small Worlds Floating (2016) as well as Within Reach (2010) both from Cherry Grove Collections; Night Traveler (Foothills Publishing, 2003); and 5 chapbooks. She lives on a small farm in Hamlin NY.

A Monk’s Tale
It’s a midwinter night of a waning moon. I am on pilgrimage over the mountain to a monastery– for much needed illumination. Thick snow walls line the way like a bobsled run and the road is packed squeaky hard. I don’t know its length but it leads straight to my goal, a blessing as I’ve lost my sense of direction. And I have all the time in the world since I don’t know what to do next.

I am prepared — a warm coat, felt lined boots and a sheepskin hat–though frost is forming on my beard and long hair. I try on Rasputin or Tolstoy and listen for distant wolves. Maybe a pirate with a bad conscience. A partisan, courting death and every woman in town. How can I be lost when the road is so straight except for ups and downs?

Down I drop again and see lights of habitation far on the port side. I close in on a barn incandescent at 3 a.m. A nativity scene? The baby Jesus? Am I a magus?

It is far too bright for a dairyman monk, as tied to the land as any cenobite. But he is not alone. A midnight birth has gone badly. There is a healthy looking calf but her mother hangs by her back legs from a hoist in the barn roof. The blood is abundant. I am committed to silence and this is no time for inquiry of the exhausted farmer. I walk past.

What sign is this? On how many nights would I view this nativity scene? Not too many. Coincidence, of course, but how can we be shown the remarkable except by coincidence? Where do we see signs? Does it matter if we can’t read them?

I arrive an hour before dawn. I enter the open chapel and lie down in a back pew. Awakened as the monks arrive for Lauds, I try to look pilgrimy. One monk asks me to come with him to a waiting room. After Lauds the Guest Master comes to greet me. This is Brother Placid, who asks me, “F-f-f-f-f-r-o-o-m wh-wh-where h-h-h-h-a-v-v-e u-u–u-c-c-c-come?” I am tired and young. I laugh. It seems like a joke. Placid is as good as his name.

He brings me to robust Brother Anselm who asks if I have ever stained a floor. Having pulled myself together a bit, I say “No, but I think I can manage.” We work a large room in silence for a few hours. Then breakfast with a reading. I expect now to be asked my purpose or vocation. I get a ride in a station wagon back over the mountain to town where Anselm will stop in at the hardware store. We talk on the way about his lifestyle and he drops me off at a good location for hitch-hiking. My monastic career is over.

 

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.