Amethyst Review

Unbound

He came to me mid-afternoon,
a frosty day, the sunshine weak,
twig filtered light, skeletal branch,
bare bones undressed, the awkward joints
not camouflaged, thick foliage.

Disciple of uncertainty,
he came in mood, confessional,
not by me judged, found-wanting creed –
surprised to find self-reassured,
as journeyed over common ground.

The judgement lies where judgement made –
for questions from enquiring mind
are threatening to black law book bound;
though word – unbind and let him go –
is theme of good news, lakeside-shared.

Stephen Kingsnorth, (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church (following the onset of Parkinson’s Disease), has had pieces accepted by Nine Muses Poetry; Voices Poetry; Eunoia Review; Runcible Spoon; Ink Sweat and Tears; The Poetry Village; Amethyst Review; Softblow Literary Journal; From the Edge; Soul Lit.; Sparks of Calliope; Gold Dust, The Seventh Quarry, Allegro & The Dawntreader Poetry Magazines. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/

After the Storm

After a sudden storm, when the viridescent
sky darkens and the limbs cease cracking,
a Christmas tree ornament gleams
near a giant limb dangling from a small tree.
I reach for the wayward bough, but am stopped
in my tracks. It is a rain-soaked hummingbird,
this tiny jewel. Frozen in place, we stare
at one another. Then a shock of emerald
and ruby, shiny with rainwater, mined
from a storybook, lifts little wings
and disappears over my roof.
For a moment, I wonder if I really saw it—
a celebration of everything bright and delicate
against a foreboding sky. Now I see it
in my mind’s eye and carry it with me,
a celebration, however tiny, of joy,
against my own foreboding sky.

Diane Elayne Dees’s chapbook, I Can’t Recall Exactly When I Died, is forthcoming from Clare Songbirds Publishing House; also forthcoming, from Kelsay Books, is her chapbook, Coronary Truth. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world (http://womenwhoserve.blogspot.com)

Moonrise
—after a photograph by Barbara Jabaily

Below the dam, the moon skips stones across
not a pond, but a reservoir where time is buried
along with the tops of cottonwoods to tangle
if you dive overboard.

Buried in layers of limestone that crumble
as you scale the top of a ridge is another sea
as I am of another sea where I gathered glass
rounded by the rush of waves

and the tumult of a river wanting to be let go
as I wiggled out of my mother’s arms
as soon as I could toddle across the sand
feet wobbling back and forth, side to side.

How I always craved an uneven surface thinking
I could walk to the set of a red sun on the bay
but here West, I put my foot into the reflection
across a lake as if now the moon is mine too.

Kyle Laws is based out of the Arts Alliance Studios Community in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.

Home Territory

(Reflecting on Painting: Rejection at Nazareth)

I wonder if he always
occupied the same synagogue seat,
his sabbath set in childhood,
as with a pew rental place.

Did he ever dig a rib
at some trilling cantor’s pitch,
or sigh along with longer psalms,
stifle his gaping mouth,
or muse on a protuberance,
beneath shaded eyes,
or at least imagine
the barley bread, the goat’s cheese,
or olives, dates waiting ahead?
Did legumes wander into legomenon,
surely that a normal course,
of wisdom, growing stature
beyond the early phase?
It was his custom, weekly,
poor exegesis, menu spare,
expositions that missed the mark,
old men ceasing to dream dreams.

But village lad home visits,
seated, sawdust spreads the scroll,
scans scripture, but stops short.
Curtailed, docked, the prophet pruned,
the custom passage trimmed,
defeat of enemies excised.
He had it seems overstepped the mark
by not reading so;
had the boy over-stretched himself,
ignored his father’s tools
and chiselled ideas well beyond
station of supposed son?

Not that we would recognise
less lection be our trade,
know such sins of omission
but they textually did;
so cliff-edging anger
so out-of-the-blue to us,
makes perfect sense to them.

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from Methodist Church ministry, has had pieces accepted by Nine Muses Poetry; Voices Poetry; Eunoia Review; Runcible Spoon; Ink Sweat and Tears; The Poetry Village; From the Edge; Gold Dust, The Seventh Quarry & Allegro Poetry Magazines. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/

Spider

I am watching a spider crawl

in circles, anticlockwise,

toward the centre of its web,

meting out its sticky silk,

deft legs weaving the thread,

pulling the weft taut, letting it go,

while wind buffets the doily

of elastic lace,

an almost invisible spiral

against the grey-bright clouds

woven so tightly it could trap

the tiniest wings.

Two centimetres from the centre

the spider stops and leaves a gap,

weaves itself a little seat,

a transparent lily pad. I wonder

if it got tired, on the hottest

day of the year, or decided

to weave some emptiness

into its web

to let the breeze

blow through.

Lucy Whitehead‘s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, Black Bough Poetry, Burning House Press, Collective Unrest, Electric Moon Magazine, Ghost City Review, Mookychick Magazine, Neon Mariposa Magazine, Pussy Magic, Re-side, and Twist in Time Magazine. You can find her on Twitter @blueirispoetry.

Solutions

To solve the problems of the world,
a sunset robed monk,
a dress-by-guess artist,
and talkative philosopher,
three friends sit in the restaurant garden
over wine, dinner, and coffee.
Voices spiral through the points
of the compass rose
and entwine the geographies
of speculation
and the human condition,
voyage to Esoterica.

Delicacy of ferns
and silver bamboo leaves
climb the grotto wall
where the stream chuckles
at diners and
a lone frog croaks truth
solving the problems of the world.

Hope Never Dies

Nothing interrupts the darkness
except an invisible speck of light,
teetering like a candle’s wisp about
to be extinguished into thin shrouds.

Chosen ancestral-ghosts of youth,
hope seizes as you appear by the
Gate to claim him, Hebrew hymns
vibrating the root chakra of Malchut.

Hear my voice before you lift the veil.
I stretch arms with piercing prayers,
each vowel trembling flesh and bone
until his ageless soul shouts, hallelujah!

Malchut—head chakra

Michal Mahgerefteh is a poet and artist originally from Israel, living in Virginia since 1986. She is author of four poetry collections, managing editor of Mizmor Poetry Anthology, Anna Davidson Rosenberg Annual Poetry Award selecting editor, and,The Poetry Society of Virginia
student award judge.

The World is a Mirror of Infinite Beauty

The world is a mirror of infinite beauty
Found in the unaware smiling faces of the children of a hated race;
In the worst dazzling morning of your life;
Looking from the weed filled lot to the sleeping robin blue of the sky;
Listening to the symphony of traffic above an adagio of wind through oak trees;
Walking down the street in the evening, the scent of dinners sing.

The world is a mirror of infinite beauty
And we are lucky, lucky to for a moment become a witness.

Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Penumbra, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and The Ottawa Arts Journal. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, and the annual Salem Poetry Festival.

At Prayer

Stillness has dressed the table, smoothing
reflections in a marble floor.
One icon set against the whitened wall.

Briefly we rest with this, and then assault
the silence with our thoughts and feelings
all our tensions and attentions.

It appears not to resist, only makes way
before us, gracious, accommodating,
until we relent, too easily fatigued.

Deftly, the quiet settles back.
Somewhere there is water trickling
in the roof, birds beyond windows,

and a distant hum that switches off
and on. None of these affect
the stillness. It is all waiting.

We have such small endurance.
Suddenly a bell surprises us.
The world will soon enough resume.

This quiet will remain on hand, patient
of calm or tempest, pregnant with questions
of our readiness for change.

Tony Lucas has lived and worked in inner South London for many years, and continues to write and publish poetry.  His last full collection, Unsettled Accounts, was published by Stairwell Books in 2015, and he put together a pamphlet of more recent work, Presence, earlier this year.