Amethyst Review

A Walk Through Orleans Cemetery

Under a parish of birds
headstones limp uphill,
bones arranged in time’s neglect.

Names remembered, Crosbys,
Doanes, and Snows of long ago.
Sea captains, strong wives,
and innocent children,
with lives of storm and joy.

We imagine stories—
epitaphs from the age of sail.

~

Here, lichen covers, damp as sea grass
where all present, set aside
a day honoring a life
prepared for history.

Family by family
arranged in a half-circle,
gathered and stood
shoulders touching
as they laid you down in peace
consoling
and blessing family names as they did.

~

And above,
battered trees watch
then, in an instant

flight,
……..a lifting off of spirit.

 

Writers, storyteller and educator Judy DeCroce, and husband, artist/writer Antoni Ooto are based in upstate New York.

These two creative souls gather inspiration during their morning poetry sessions where they present, critique and revise their work together over a pot of coffee. (Trader Joe’s Morning Blend)

Judy DeCroce, has been published in Plato’s Cave Online, Amethyst Review, Tigershark Publishing, and CultureCult: Nocturne Anthology.
Antoni Ooto has been published in Soft Cartel, The Ginger Collect, Amethyst Review, Young Ravens Literary Review, and both have been published in many others.

They are collaborating on an upcoming book.

December Meditation

When winter stalks into view

let the fringe of day stir,
finches and bluebirds mimicking the sun

let buds shaped like nails
pierce magnolias waxy leaves, blossom

let the lazy buzz of a wasp
remind you that summer soon greens

let dawn’s chill and later flame
fill you with tomorrow’s promise

 

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.

Volte-face

Beardless old man’s beard,
unflowered honeysuckle,
brambles dead in alive
above the hillside-cutting path,
hanks entwined,
scrabbling ivy latched
onto sad firs in plantation ranks.

On the brink
shrugging downy oaks
stealing footholds, uninvited also
among this lightless throng;
stationed along the track,
juice-green saucered spurge
targets earth space.

The black-breached bank
sucks in the eye,
tree-dark magnetic paradox
pulls us in to touch the dank,
threatens thorns: keep out
the unrooted, always running,
washing our earth from their hands.

Below, slopes shorn, scattered
rusted iron-black rocks, cold stones
Above, matted grasses slump
fringing the wood barred
by tree heather’s dried bouquets.
One sword lily, shouting Schiaparelli.
If only.
Her spike points another way,
valley-wards,

where crumpled rock roses
inch to the other side,
straddling scree, pink pin-pricked
with thyme, sprigged with lavender,
sprayed with heather
still dabbed in white,
fingertips dipped in cream that tastes of honey,
downy oaks stretching
breeze-swept limbs in light.

 

Jane Angué teaches English Language and Literature in France. Writing in French and English, work was longlisted for the Erbacce Prize 2018 and 2019 and has appeared most recently in Le Capital des Mots, Ink Sweat & Tears, Acumen and Poésie/première. Her pamphlet des fleurs pour Bach was published in August (Editions Encres Vives).

Gust

Only as I reach the bottom of the long slope
and embrace the curved limbs of the bridge,

does it catch me, in the otherwise stillness,
with a sideways swipe, an unexpected blow

to the ribs, a setting-off of sleeping neurons,
and the car staggers erratically, counterwards

for a second, trampling over the regular dash
of lane-lines. Then a rush. Grabbing for the wheel,

I drop everything I was carrying. All those
oversore words rained down in the tired hours,

with the two of us lying, seething, back-to-back,
stop their continuous, murderous looping.

For a moment, no more whispers of a pain
from deep within; no argument with the gods.

 

Robert Ford‘s poetry has appeared in print and online publications in the UK, US and elsewhere, including The Interpreter’s House, Brittle Star, Butcher’s Dog and San Pedro River Review. More of his work can be found at https://wezzlehead.wordpress.com/

Precision of the Minute Hand

The dark of October carries my darkness
in an empty birdcage, in not saying a word
to air that whispers incessantly, just below
my ear— dark face to face— I can’t look in-
to the eye of waking in the scent of camphor
& cedar— the fate of keeping something
wrapped in plastic.
…………………………………..For how long?
There, and not there—sad, or is it beautiful
brocade dress— once worn perfectly, and
now who will it fit? Who does this belong
to? Why am I putting it on in the dark?

 

M.J. Iuppa ‘s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017).For the past 30 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.

Shall we gather at the river

If angels trod here,
they had thin splayed toes,
or the sharp angles
of hooves.

We know this river.
have marked its source
with coded emblem, with cairn.
Have ringed its mouth
with marina, refinery,
casino and clam bar.

We have sent men
to plot its path,
graph its depth and runoff;
have found shiny town
and shanty, shirtless fishermen,
and willow.

Nowhere
have we found
a throne.

And yet, here we are, some of us
surprised. We look
around at our skinny selves,
shifting, uneasy, some of us,
silly really, without hat or suitcase.

Only these smooth
pebbles at our feet
to palm and skim
endless over the river.

Marilyn McCabe‘s work has garnered her an Orlando Prize from A Room of Her Own, the Hilary Tham Capital Collection contest award from The Word Works resulting in publication of her book of poems Perpetual Motion, and two artist grants from the New York State Council on the Arts. Her second book of poems, Glass Factory, was published in 2016. Her poems and videopoetry have been published in a variety of print and online literary magazines. She blogs about writing and reading at Owrite:marilyonaroll.wordpress.com.

The Garden

It waits for me
rain-whipped, wind-
blown, snail-threaded
sun-kissed,
fluttering in its coat
of many colours,
in thorn and calyx.

It calls with a voice
of insects and dew,
with the glint
of sky-bright
winged things,
cloud-flung branch
and cool root,

with the many ways
sunlight paints
the life of petal and leaf,
with the quiet comfort
of shadows,
the blazing flames
of translucence,

with the sparkling light
of iridescent wings,
the song of birds,
the trance of wind,
the rush of grass,
the push of shoots,

the pull to break
out of the darkness.

 

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.

Lost Child

Come away, O, human child! For the world’s more full
of weeping than you can understand. W.B. Yeats

 

Listen. One hushed winter night I rushed
westward over the moors. There waves

of moonlight rayed the storm breached
shore. I don’t believe in chance

for omens, visions, saints,
are my everyday life. Far off,

Fanad Cove’s beams swept mercifully
to-and-fro. Gail winds wailed

while a monk seal whelped
over her pup’s corpse below.

My mood went apocalyptic given the merciless
squalls of the sea, which is when I breathed

a benediction for the mother-to-be. I entered
the stone-heeled cottage of the coracle maker,

to the mother’s screams and crossed
myself thrice. And as though in a dream

caressed on her breast, she was kissing
the stone-cold seal pup, or so it seemed.

An at the hearth her husband moaned,
why is our son so cold? The child’s eyes closed,

lay lifeless, cord tied in a Celtic Knot.
Midwives know the womb’s meant to be a poem

of joy, no tomb. And as I clombed home
the craggy cliffs were covered in the snowy

whiteness of seabirds in clamorous song,
………………….keening the child who was gone.

 

Moná Toirésa Ó Loideáin Rochelle’s poetry collections are On the Brink of the Sea (Cave Moon Press, 2019) and Mourning Dove (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Her awards include an artist residency from Fundación Valparaíso, Spain, and a writer scholarship from New Camaldoli Hermitage, Big Sur, California. Her poems appear widely or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, American Journal of Poetry, Notre Dame Review, Spiritus, and Southword. She volunteers with Doctors Without Borders and Catholic Relief Services. visit https://monalydon.com/

Poem with Lines Stolen from Peter Dent

They’re building new futures over what I saw as mine,
territorial claims involving self-pity and a quiet life,
events foreshadowed by imaginings and shouted warnings.

Self-medication was nothing, a world walking endlessly
towards more of the same, seasons going out of fashion
as dreams swing this way and that. It’s no wonder

things don’t change, they’re not worth second opinions.
I was surrealist before that school opened its doors;
put it down to time travel and synchronicity.

Unless I speak don’t join in. Existence is nothing,
do not dream me up. It’s not a question of belief,
more about millions of words spoken in dismay.

© 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).