Amethyst Review

Sacristy in February

 

What to do with the Poinsettias
when Lent approaches?
Red leaves still velvet, still sumptuous,
gathered in a group of six,
they flow together like flames in a fireplace.
What to do with them now,
when the sacristan rousts them from the sanctuary,
relegates them to a cart in the hall?
Here, in the land where Poinsettias don’t bloom outside,
I can’t keep all these refugees in my room.
I can’t consign them naked to the cold earth
where their velvet will wither into black rags.
So I decapitate them,
deflower them,
pull their rootbound potshaped soil,
snowy with vermiculite.
I dump those clumps
onto the mulch gone ground
over the tulip bulbs.

 

Anne Higgins teaches English at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg Maryland, USA. She is a member of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. She has had about 100 poems published in a variety of small magazines. Five full-length books and three chapbooks of her poetry have been published: At the Year’s Elbow, Mellen Poetry Press 2000; Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky, Plain View Press 2007; chapbooks: Pick It Up and Read, Finishing Line Press 2008, How the Hand Behaves, Finishing Line Press 2009, Digging for God, Wipf and Stock 2010, Vexed Questions, Aldrich Press 2013,Reconnaissance, Texture Press 2014, and Life List, Finishing Line Press 2016. Her poems have been featured several times on The Writer’s Almanac.

The Nature of Prayer

A rosary of flowers,
a litany of birdsong,
cricketspeak and
traveler’s palm
percussion.
No need to light
candles as sun
illuminates the space
between branches
and leaves, warms
the petals of plumeria
and puakenekene
so they release their
fine incense to fill
the air with scents
of the sacred.

Nature’s temples,
uncontrived,
abide in silence
and beauty,
surrounded by
swirl and torrent,
cycles of tumult
and calm inseparable.
All part of that
divine, seamless fabric
imbued with
intelligence and spirit,
patterned and naked
awareness. No need
to pray or ask for
anything, just rest.

 

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).

The Prophet

The present turned into the past
almost too fast
to call it the present
as she stood transfixed there,
hiding from the future —
the future that always,
inevitably,
became the present,
then the past,
thus blending time together
into one prophetic vision,
searing the seer’s all-seeing eyes
that she hid behind her cowl,
the prophet’s cowl, that
always failed to veil them.

 

Cynthia Pitman began writing poetry again this past summer after a 30-year hiatus. She has recently had poetry published in Amethyst Review, Vita Brevis, Right Hand Pointing, Ekphrastic Review, Literary Yard, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Postcard Poems and Prose, and Leaves of Ink. She has had fiction published in Red Fez and has fiction forthcoming in Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art.

The Call

Geese take wing in choral cacophony.
.Each extending its…neck beyond the thump

of its breast...As a quiet wake

of backlit haze envelops the lake..With

the first calls of morning they say—On
….they say—the way is long

they say—and so—
……they say —
……………………………go—

To be human is to witness. Each day
you take your place. Be still. Be vigilant. Alert

to possibility. Aware of grace and pain.
How difficult not to know

what will happen next...The oblivion
stars unlearn the future all the time...Ages on

they turn to dust……&this dust
becomes you. Even at this distance you burn,

though slowly. Because ears are always open
we hear the call. This dust that is me

and the dust that is you awakens
to a kinship. Put aside

your memory of wreckage. Even what
is deep in your animal mind:

you must put it aside...With the gravity
of the first tumultuous

thoughts of morning you must
..walk—-no matter how slow—

but walk—
out into the sounding pool

of the arriving day.
If I knew another way—

………………I would name it.
Here is my only guarantee—

That I will

………………go too
for so long as I can

……………..— I will go—

 

 

Ash Dean grew up in Ferguson Missouri. He is a graduate of The International Writing Program at City University of Hong Kong. His work has appeared in Cha, Drunken Boat, Gravel, Ma La, Mason’s Road, Soul-Litand Afterness: Literature from the New Transnational Asia. He is the author of Cardiography from Finishing Line Press.  He lived in Suzhou, China for 6 years. He currently lives in Songdo, South Korea.

The Laughing Buddha visits our local Panera Bread

There goes Ch’i-t’zu
peddling his expertise to the girl with golden rain boots, an elf of
fourteen years
who would just like a week out of this lifetime that permits the
casual wear of ordinary flip-flops.
Mud between toes, a chocolate cake to corrode your sweet tooth
“There, there,” sings the monk of Fenghua,
“Tomorrow…a high of 83 degrees. Rain will sleep in bed, with a bowl of black bean soup
taking her temp. from the nightstand
as you climb these trees of oak.”

“Okay, Ch’i-t’zu.
What other tricks dance in that burgundy burlap messenger bag?”

“Well, let’s see. I’ve got satin bears, pinewood tops. Hot Wheels for boys, but I think what this Little Miss would really enjoy is this lavender My Little Pony. Friendship is magic.”

There goes my little Ashlyn
waddling forth to wisecracking Santa, giggling as if she heard a joke from
Mommy, away on a business trip
who would wag her finger at such an engagement, but within ten minutes
relent and return his black tea grin.
Our personal Boo Radley? The neighbors say so.
“I hail from miles beyond,” Ch’i-t’zu clears his throat,
“But I’ve heard this town’s bereft of cheer. Morning toast, without your favorite strawberry jam.
Tortillas. Without meat. Or salsa.”
We can only nod
while Ashlyn blesses his cotton tummy, rotund.

 

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.

Pebble and Stubble

That which gives often…
often receives nothing in return.
Do not be deceived by the
writings etched on stone pillars.
Corn often grows taller than words
words often grow taller than deeds.
The simple man strides upon fields
with stalks as thick as dictionaries.
We take a full cache and fill silos
forty suns per one field.
Horse hooves and wagon wheels cut
deeply into furrows of freshly turned soil.
Geese feed in flocks as finger-like
tendrils of wispy fog rises.
Wrung ones neck for our bellies
now we give it spit and hot coals.
At dusk, we watch wise men
gather petrified husk and stubble
to craft tablet and rope.
Field mice dart across the clods of
earth, searching out feed and trying
not to succumb to a Great Horned Owl..
Starlings, crows and ravens pick
clean all discarded pebble and stubble.
Within our breath, the sun reappears
another slow time within the solstice.

 

Ken Allan Dronsfield is a disabled veteran, poet, and fabulist. He resides in Seminole Oklahoma, USA. He works full-time on his poetry, dabbling in digital art. Ken’s poem, “With Charcoal Black, VIII” was selected as the First Prize Winner in a recent major Nature Poetry Contest from Realistic Poetry International.

SECULAR COMEDY

A cool moon chimes softly in the winter sky,
swelling like a bell in an empty church.
The stars twinkle as soft as some nun’s sigh.
Tonight is lousy with liturgy. I search
for secular symbols, untouched, unglossed
by doctors of divine arcana. Black
as an old cassock, torn, carelessly tossed
upwards, this sky is a tangible fact.
I sully it with nuns and bells, the dust
of my lost religion. It’s a disease
I can’t cure or won’t. I mistake stardust
for ritual, moon for meaning. Cease.
Enough. I will look at things as they are.
I’ll learn to walk at night and just see stars.

 

Mark J. Mitchell’s novel, The Magic War appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied  at Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work appeared in several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. He lives with his wife, Joan Juster making his living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco. A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/

deluge

 
 
i stop
& nod

to the cement-truck
driver……crossing

the farm to market
road…….—huge tumbler

…..rolling

I think…….about
ingredients:

shells
shale

limestone

too much
or
too little

causes

—disintegration

how many roads
we’ve travelled

~
 
the day…….you
announced:

i’ve joined the army
 
how i thought
this………might

harden……you

how it did:

pills for rage
pills for sleep
pills for pain

~
 
too much

………for years

you wouldn’t
look up

your back
to every wall

~
 
have you…..ever
 
prayed
 
for rain
for a job
 
for a soul
 
      ~
 
today…….you call

full
overflow

of the old…….you
the one…….i knew

mama
 
i want
 to tell you
 
i have     
so many
ideas
 
      ~
 
I think…….about
intersections:

of faith
of mistakes

how i
came to
call you

my son

by making one

~
 
I think…….about

the time…….you
& i………prayed

…….for our lives

—perpendicular
…..roads

in front of
the cement plant

that day
the tornado

turned up
trucks

only yards
from us

~

how we shook
how the deluge

(almost) overtook

how we bow

to a god
neither of us

understands

 

 
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).

The Imams Pray at Auschwitz

“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” – Adorno
I
Once you enter these gates
you know there is no place
to hide in the safety of metaphors.
The sky above you,
the earth below you,
the graves stretching all around you.
If you were to recite
all the names of the dead,
your lips would become numb,
you would lose your voice.
In the shadow of the chimneys
you must not submit to anything,
not even as you kneel at the Wall of Death.

II
Once you enter these gates,
you cannot escape
the factory of symbols,
churning out images day and night,
gestures of meaning,
left or right,
life or death.

Pity, love, reverence
will not save you,
your call to witness
will be studied, weighed, judged.

Yet every prayer is a question
with no beginning, no ending.
Pray you must, for the limits of prayer,
the betrayal of words.
Pray for the sky, the earth, the questions.

 

Phebe Jewell is a writer and teacher from Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in Bindweed Magazine, Crab Creek Review, and Crosscurrents.

The Light Tears Loose

Every now and then/ I see a sunset / and I want to crawl inside of myself / and match that kind of glowing. —James Diaz

Evening sun divides the horizon,
shadows whispering the lawn,
that last blaze burning the sky.

The air sparks –
the cosmos no longer contains me,
and my soul twists in longing . . .

A bend in the road surprises with fields of poppies –
awe swelling when I breathe wren-song,
listen to violets unfolding.

And when the light finally flares, then disappears,
I am the craggy mountain, the grain of sand
lapped into the ocean. An ember
arcing, illuminating the deep.

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.