Amethyst Review

Vespers

A gilded moment passes
tree to tree along
the street before
light folds its wings
to roost. Behind the house
hummingbirds
sip the final glow
before an eyelid closes
on the mountain’s rim.
All the world is undergrowth
to the rodents waking
in the woodpile as
a chill rolls across
the grass and sparkles
on the tip of every blade.
The clock displays
coyote time as
the traffic sings its last
work chorus of the day.
It’s the devil’s cocktail
hour: he’s dropping
olives into a glass of fear
and sitting back
to see what night will bring.
And a prayer
against him runs its course
from lamp to lamp
where moths display
the old and secret texts
of ultimate deliverance
upon their wings.

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems often reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. The Bitter Oleander Press published Shatter the Bell in my Ear, his translations of poems by Austrian poet Christine Lavant. A new book, Reading T. S. Eliot to a Bird, is out from Hoot ‘n Waddle, based in Phoenix.

Lauren Downington’s Doubts 

Over coffee, the seminarians
ask each other questions undisclosed
to ordination committees.
Is it worth it if this is just a myth?
Lauren says, Sometimes it just
feels like I’ve picked my favorite
story and decided to live in it.
She stares down at the Bible on
the table and adds, And even then,
it’s a story I hate half the time.
But the other replies: Has anything
else ever produced the same wonder?
Lauren shrugs and admits nothing has.
We’re wired for it, the second says.
Even if it’s false, it’s ours. And that
is enough to put a stopper on streaming
questions – for them to pick up
their readings again and try to make
sense of the senseless.

Megan McDermott is a poet and Episcopal minister based in Massachusetts. She recently graduated from Yale Divinity School and Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music, an interdisciplinary program dedicated to religion and the arts. Her poetry has been published in The Windhover, Rock & Sling, The Cresset, Letters, Saint Katherine Review, and Episcopal Café.

Plain and Simple

Standing on our weather-beaten porch, I
close my eyes, for just a minute, before

I take another step that will set me in a direction
that’s plain and simple, going forward until I

find myself back here in this very spot, stopping
in this velvet dark & autumn chill to listen

to the sound of scattering leaves that is
the sound of hands clapping, clapping for

my close calls, for my death-defying
escapes—for me— still here.

M.J. Iuppa ‘s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past  29 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

After the Crescendo

“I’m really getting bigger,” Lena says, scrambling through the
woods to the creek. Her four-year-old voice affirms the pride of
accumulation, of chubby hands
tying shoes, of climbing trees
like a monkey,
of saying the ”R” in “water.”

In glory we are born,
climb through green change
to a golden crescendo
of confounding growth.
Lost in the jungle there,
we hear voices call from all directions where loss disguises as bright
birds.

I say she will be Lena, queen of the jungle, some day.
She says, “I don’t want to be
queen of the jungle.
I just want to be the jungle.”
“I’ll go with you,” I say.
“I’m really getting smaller.”

11.14.2018
7.32 a.m.
31 degrees

Paired with nothing, I witnessed the
Occasion of its nearly inaudible thwack
Nearing the pond’s outlet; a single brown maple leaf
Dropped onto the surface and rippled the signal of its arrival.

***

11.18.2018
9.21 a.m.
34 degrees

Plowed perfect, snow mound reflected in the black mirror of the pond.
Oak leaves, blown from the southwest end of the water into the northeast cul-de-sac.
Note of the muddy bottom so low I cannot hear it,
dwindling, darker each day. Perhaps it is the B-flat of the universe.

***

11.20.18
11.33 a.m.
34 degrees

Pluvial night, the rain hangs on as mist.
Opiate ripples when a branch releases its gems of rain,
normal and lonely an act as releasing its leaves,
downward in silence, all around me the sound of rushing water.

***
11.24.18
8.33 a.m.
24 degrees

Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Old Sam Peabody!
Oblique geometry here, mirror-smooth there, thick battered hem, gray
nuances of ice seal it all – those on the bottom – those in the bottom.
Determined white-throated sparrow searching for Sam, though I’m the only one here.

John L. Stanizzi’s full-length collections are Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallalujah Time!, and High Tide-Ebb Tide.  His new books – Chants, Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces, and Sundowning will be out before the end of this year.  His work is widely published and has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, New York Quarterly, American Life in Poetry, The Cortland Review, Tar River, and many others.

THE ONLY KNOWN PHOTOGRAPH OF GOD

‘When you get a clearer picture you can understand
why so many want to stand in the dust cloud,
where there is comfort in confusion.’
– Thomas Merton

The only known photograph of God
turns out to be a silhouetted skyhook
slung from a wire, holding nothing
and not moving at all. It is not
uplifting or impressive, the sky
is grey, the image black and white.

What did the monk who took the photo
mean? Was it a surrealist joke or a way
to make an oblique comment about
expectations or absence, the unknown?
He took up meditation, talked in zen
and went to meet the Dalai Lama,

then his maker. Left us notebooks
and a damaged small black painting,
photos and calligraphies, a mystery
shaped hole in the centre of his work.
It is totally absurd to expect answers
that might help explain our world.

© Rupert M Loydell

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).

Sufficient Grace: An Imagined Conversation with Flannery O’Connor

Sitting at my desk with eyes closed and dozing—the witching hour of 2 PM has arrived. There arises before me an image of a small, mousy woman wearing a sheath dress and unbecoming glasses. Like me, she is seated at the keyboard of her time, a typewriter. I recognize her and feel a desire to connect.

Flannery? Can you hear me?

Well, since y’all’ve been readin’ my work these last few days, I reckon I’m close by!

I’m overjoyed and honored to meet you! I hope I won’t be a bother if I ask some advice. You see, I’m starting out as a writer…and I’ve just been diagnosed with an auto-immune disease that could turn out to be like your lupus.

Well, ordinarily I prefer that folks just leave me alone. But now that I’m over here my burdens are a lot less than when I was livin where you are. And what you say‘bout yourself suggests we might have life strains in common. It’s not too often an oddball like me meets up with a kinderd spirit!

Well, I’d say we must have things in common. I mean, like me and everyone you had to live in a body. But your body was sick and didn’t allow you much time to work—that’s a burden!

Well, truth to tell, I’ve always felt that time don’t count for much. And being close to the Lord always helped me forget about past and future—that was a blessing I was right grateful for.

What was it like to having that gift?

Well, ma’am, during the times I could write, it helped me get deep into that other world—the story—and just forget most everything else. And also, a regular practice of prayer helped me keep my mind pretty well focused.

The part of time that was hard was near the end when I’d get tired out and realize my couple good hours was used up ‘til the next day. At that point I’d commit myself to God and thank Him for my filled-up pages, even if they was only a few. But I never doubted that the strength would come back again if I was patient and obeyed His will. I had a strong belief—a knowledge—that as long’s I done my part, the Holy Spirit would grant me endurance.

And then in the earthly world a God’s creation there was deadlines; agents and editors and even readers was countin on me. I was responsible to friends who’d helped me out and was goin to make sure my writin got published. It was a great comfort t’ward the time of my death to know that my words’d still be set down in books after I was gone. I s’pose you could say it was one a the ways I had a sense of “life eternal.” No, if I hadn’ta been a Catholic I sure woulda been at a disadvantage!

What did it mean to you, being Catholic?

It was a rock-solid belief I was raised with—trustin’ in the goodness of God and the beauty of His kingdom—the example of our Lord’s suffering and sacrifice—the struggle against Satan—a way to live that’d guarantee my soul’s salvation—and daily rituals and routines that was such a source of assurance. But a course, that ain’t even the half of it!

But so many of your characters seem so far away from God—even evil! How do you account for that?

Well, I can’t rightly say. Maybe they was the underside of the goodness I tried to live out in my own life. Maybe they allowed me ta get up close to transgression; maybe you could even say…flirt with it a little bit! (Not that I was ever one for flirtin!) And it sure created struggles for them characters; that mighta helped keep the stories intersting. Lotsa critics’ve had a lot to say about it; for me it was really just the way the ideas come to me. I had a strong feelin about redemption.

My trouble’s that even though I trust God and pray, I often don’t have the self-discipline to sit down and write for even two hours a day. I have pain and tiredness like you; usually not enough to keep me away from my desk, so it’s no excuse! When I do sit down and get myself started, the words usually come pretty easily. I just avoid it for some reason; sometimes it feels like something about it scares me…

Well, what in creation might that be?

Well, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I think deep down I’m afraid that letting go and creating means losing control—even insanity. My father was a writer with a serious mental illness back when it wasn’t really treatable. And even if there’d been a treatment he probably wouldn’t’ve submitted to it!

Whenever he was heading into mania he’d stay up all night pounding away at his old cast-iron Remington—banging out an autobiographical novel he never finished. There wasn’t any help back then for families like us. Just hospitals that locked the sick ones away and wouldn’t even allow their children to visit them. The worst of it was that the person I loved most turned into somebody I hardly knew. So later on I feared that by taking the risk of writing I’d be inviting the disease that destroyed my Daddy.

Well, I’m perty sure you know I lost my daddy when I was quite young, to the same disease that stood in wait to kill me. It was a slow torment, losing a loving parent to such a pernicious affliction. Maybe that’s where my characters’ battles with Satan began—something violent bore my daddy away!

For years we had no notion I was developing the same condition. Then people tried to keep it from me. But when I found out the truth I realized I sort of knew it all along. It was a relief but also terrifying to the bone to know what lay ahead.

Your word “pernicious” is a good one, ‘cause it suggests fighting something malevolent. Those auto-immune diseases are like that: what normally protects and heals turns on us and starts to destroy. The body goes to war against itself—hard not to see Good versus Evil in that!

I guess compared to you I’m fortunate because I was diagnosed later in life; and now more remedies are available. But honestly, nobody can predict for any one person how these illnesses are going to play out.

Only God has that knowledge, and this holpen me ta accept what I was up against. That, and knowin His will was for me to write as much as I could for as long’s I was able. Though that old lupus was fairly a demon, for sure!

I hope you don’t mind me making comparisons…

Lordy, not in the least! I been taken down from my cross and now my spirit dwelleth in the Kingdom. I trod out my days ta the fullest on the path God set for me. And ever since I reached the end I been at peace. I think if y’all accept your own talent and put it ta hard work like a mule ta plow, whatever happens you’ll feel the same peace that I did. Jus’ don’t ever give up prayin for strength!

No. But there’s death…

Yes, for us like ever-one. I was lucky, I s’pose, ‘cause death finally come while I was in a coma. So I just woke up in the bosom of the Lord. Maybe that was easier’n if I’d been aware when the time came; I didn’t suffer physically. Though just the same I could sense a lot of presences hoverin around me: “a cloud of witnesses.” But how dearly I loved those folks, that farm, my birds. And I hadn’t no chance to say goodbye.

But even long ‘fore that, death was fer me like an angel bird perched right on my shoulder while I typed, whisperin ta me that my time was short. Yet also remindin me that God willed that I live out the days he decreed for me, and that my purpose was ta write. Death seemed almost friendly ta me sometimes, urging me onward like that. See if you can’t have it be that way for you. Though, he’s also an adversary and you got to struggle against him to make damn sure he don’t take you ‘fore your time’s out!

And I assure you of this: when life finally ends, you’ll know the truth of the promise that we’ll be reunited with our lost beloveds.

You’re with your father?

All of us’s together again, dinin ‘round Andalusia’s big mahogany table! And, my, but them peafowl is hollerin in the garden outside!

And don’t y’all forget Saint Paul’s words: the Lord refused to remove the thorn from his flesh so that His servant’s strength might be perfected in weakness!

So for people like us… with bodies pierced by thorns…perhaps His grace is sufficient!

Sister, Amen!

Emily Peña Murphey is a retired psychotherapist who has published work in several literary journals. She was recently designated a finalist in the short story and essay categories of the Adelaide Voices Literary Contest. She has family roots in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Texas’ Río Grande Valley.  She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the U.S.A.

Drishti

Standing on my left leg, knee slightly bent,
my right knee lifted high in the warm air
of this room at the community center,
both arms raised and wrists limp,
I hear our yoga teacher remind us all of drishti:
Find a spot on the floor in front of you,
a fleck on the tile, a bit of pattern in someone’s
towel. Now soften your gaze so that you are
looking but not looking.

The hard stare seems to be the way to see
the world these days, reading five newspapers
a day and hopping from website to website
waiting for the alchemy of reporting
to reveal the golden nugget that will
bring down these evil clowns,

but as my shaky crane pose shows,
that way of looking, of being,
opens the window for the winged monkeys
of attachment, snatching attention
and carrying it off in their sharp claws.

Perhaps it is time to find
the unmoving point in all of this,
reduce the existential wobble,
to imagine the horizon in front of us
no matter where we are, find
the Steadicam of the mind that stills us
when all about is shifting, tectonic,

or even, now, to practice trataka,
gazing at a candle in the dark
with eyes open until they water,
bathing and cleansing the vision
with the tears of renewal:
one flame, one heart.

Steve Straight’s books include The Almanac (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2012) and The Water Carrier (Curbstone, 2002). He is professor of English and director of the poetry program at Manchester Community College, in Connecticut, US.

Enlightenment as Salvation
from Five Cantos on Enlightenmenet

The fire had worked its local menace,
The waiter and the boat rental manager
Had stories about how close the disaster

Had come this time, about the heroism of the fighters
And the ordinary evil of the arsonist
Who was out on bond for burning a barn.

We were camping not far from Lake Hemet.
The manager brought us to a corner
With a map of the lake and showed us where

We might find two bald eagles alighting
Or launching out from a wood along the lakeside.
They raise their young here, he said,

Because food is plentiful in the lake,
But there is not enough for more than two adults
And so, when it is time, you can find them

Chasing off their offspring over the water,
Insisting with wing and talon that their parenting
Work is over. Are they strangers, then?

I was not adept at motoring the boat
Out of the inlet through a shallow throat
Of water and into the manmade lake.

It took a few tries. I think sometimes of
My great grandfathers—less often
Of my great grandmothers and the women

In my family tree from an age yet older than theirs.
Did they ever imagine me, the Irish Catholic
Orphan from New Jersey and the German-born

Mother of eight in a Cincinnati ghetto?
Did they have hopes that I would be—
A doctor? A bishop? The mayor of a nearby town?

A father, perhaps? Well, I am a decent person
And in every respect a grown man.
I find it hard to think of myself chasing anyone off

The way those eagles have to do.
But I want no part anymore of the religion
They promulgated, my great grandmothers,

Zealously or dutifully or both.
I am afraid that even citizenship among the saved
Mostly feels to me like a flare thrown

On a forest road, from a car in which,
According to eyewitness reports,
There is either one person, or there are two.

Brian Glaser teaches at Chapman University in Orange, California. His first book of poetry, The Sacred Heart, is forthcoming at the end of 2018 from Aldrich Press.