Please join me (Editor Sarah) for a free writing hour via Zoom on Thursdays (6-7pm UK time). Work on your own project in companionable quiet, with optional chat at the end. Starts this coming Thursday October 16th. More details and book a place at Amethyst Review’s Eventbrite Page. Sign up and drop in week by week.
Editor Sarah has thought about offering these for a while, mainly because she so enjoyed the online gatherings for the launches of the All Shall Be Well and Thin Places & Sacred Spaces anthologies! They will be weekly on Thursdays until December 18th, resuming in 2026, and always free.
(For those interested, I am also offering a weekly online Amethyst Review Workshop with literary extracts, discussions and writing prompts at a small charge – these will be on Tuesdays, starting October 21st. More details to come, and for a forthcoming online retreat with the Friends of Julian of Norwich!)
After a painting by Mateo Pérez de Alesio, 1590 Oil on wood panel 33 x 44 cm Fundación Pedro y Angélica de Osma Lima, Perú
1. The woman’s hooded eyes slope downward from within a dark context—a whisper of gauze veils the clarity of her vision.
She coils her attention around the infant form. He, unperturbed, meets our gaze and reaches confidently for the breast.
2. I drift in warm pools of parallax. The baby, there, beside me peaceful and solid like an oak panel. My mind wraps itself in black silk, the voices, receded— as if to seek their sustenance elsewhere.
3. The woman in the picture exposes her left breast, its flesh still micaceous and smooth, and strings the nipple like an arrow in its bow.
The child lays his hands on her as upon a bowl of raw clay shaping its supple essence to the curving form of his palms.
4. When I used the pump to try to increase my supply, I often suffered. I needed the warm water from the shower and urgent massages to loosen the frequent clogs. I worked and squeezed through the burning pain until I could see the bulging duct—the culprit, like an enemy erupting from deep within my chest. I thought I needed strawshard to pierce the disturbance. But then I would summon the latch and burst flesh between my fingers into a thin stream of relief, draining two days’ worth of trapped milk, a wing blooming in the wrong direction.
5. The painter prepares the surface first, planing, sanding, burnishing. And then layers the thin skins of gesso—the sticky essence of the earth— marble dust, water, and hide glue. After it dries, he conjures form: a young mother and her infant son.
They bloom in rosy gradients of azuritas, cal viva, bermellones, oropimente, albayalde, and cochinilla.
Then he clothes the pigments with the textures of time.
6. These are the intimacies of art, that they may pollinate your good health.
7. Once the conditions were met, the iconography secured, the earth mined open, I held your raw church like a jaw and her myth boiled through me becoming meadow, a blue basin of stone, a ripe cloud approaching to quench the depths of your system.
Sonya Wohletz is a writer whose work brings together image, history, and landscapes. Her work has appeared in Latin American Literary Review, Revolute, Roanoke Review, and others. Her first collection of poetry, One Row After/Bir Sira Sonra, was published by First Matter Press in 2022. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.
At the west end, the limestone bluff is worn with worship, a millennium of feet drawn together towards towers ever collapsing and rebuilt from fire and flood and lightning strike.
Desire paths trace the snow mechanical erosion of our feet, reminders that they did not build this place for the likes of us.
Inside, the Deans’ Eye bathes us pallid blue and grey. The glass is old, Medieval so they say
It reminds me Of Wanuskewin, close to Saskatoon, Not the Visitors Centre, that can wait, The Buffalo Stone—
Look towards the east, And you won’t touch the earth again until You get to Russia.
—Worn down with pleasure of ten thousand itches scratched, now silent on the Bald Ass Prairie. Fuzzymandias.
When it reaches a certain age the glass Begins to sink. Clamped in a cage to stall Its slow descent.
“Don’t get too comfortable All of your stuff must fit a banker’s box”
Past the bones of St Hugh (what’s left of him) You’d be hard-pressed to miss the Imp. Standing petrified on the north side of the choir.
The snow crusts hard here, so that one alone Can never make much of an impression. But each time April (with his showers sweet) Melts the ice, turning desire trails to mud The northern prarie bears a medicine wheel.
Yet still the Imp remains. Forever set in stone and frozen by his choice. Now singled out with a new a spotlight
—For the tourists.
Ben Blyth writes from Treaty 7 Territory, where he works as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Calgary in 2024. His poetry explores the sublime/mundane, pastoral/urban, tenderness/ brutality, and present/past; with a keen sense of form and an eye for striking imagery. Blyth’s work plays with nationality. liminality, and uncertainty in a fresh and poignant way.
The sun peeks through a gray wool sky like a shutter opening in a camera.
There’s a sense of something bright behind the cloud cover, something worth standing in place until my breath returns.
Swallowed beneath, all I want is the chance to keep staring at the light pouring through a single hole in a darkening sky.
Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit her online at http://www.jacquelinejules.com.
The Catholic-born Buddhist Recounts Visiting Angkor Wat
Exhausted from the long flight, we rise early. We sigh when we finally see the abbey. Time has stopped, leaving us frozen in a pocket.
The monks go about their business. They don’t pay attention to the tourists–even the faithful.
We each struggle in this finely-made net. This morning, an egg-white omelet. No begging bowl for me. The paper cut from my last day before leaving New York City throbs in time with my pulse.
I traded the God of my youth for Buddha, and yet believe I should cross myself in this sacred space.
Lynne Kemen’s full-length book of poetry, Shoes for Lucy, was published by SCE Press in 2023. Woodland Arts Editions published her chapbook, More Than a Handful, in 2020. Her work is anthologized in The Memory Palace: an ekphrastic anthology (Ekphrastic Editions, 2024), Seeing Things and Seeing Things 2 (Woodland Arts, 2020 and 2024). Lynne is President of the Board of Bright Hill Press and has served on many other not-for-profit boards. She is an Editor and Interviewer for Blue Mountain Review. She is a nominee for a Pushcart Prize (2024).
Hundreds of multi-colored umbrellas float above our heads red, green, yellow, and blue dots of vivid sight arranged in a kinetic mosaic of nylon and steel a colonnade of color filling the sky
my friend and I are not fully protected in our wandering below as we saunter from sidewalk to curb and back again from restaurant to shop to gallery separate and alone within the whole
the lazy rain drips through the many cracks through the voids around and between each one the umbrellas are singular and apart, but the same design within the space formed by this artistic installation
each an integral part of the overall creation where they all tip and bounce in the wind with their handles, like the letter j twirling, spinning in every direction
all higgledy-piggledy as if they cannot make up their minds or are unable to control the frenetic motion that has been instilled by the artist
my capacity for emotion is infinite but there is no longer room for animosity no room for dissension as to which of the umbrellas has an appealing hue
an agreeable orientation or shape or size and which one displeases or dissatisfies there is no purpose in sustaining such philosophies it is not my right to make that choice
at my age, differences can bring disappointment but they are not a sign of failure or defeat we are not separated from grace for being made of flesh and bone we are accepted with all our fragilities
the lonely ship to the isle of judgement is ready to sail the innocent and the deserving few without sin are permitted on board, but I will not be on it I must have mislaid my ticket
while walking with my friend down the dampened street together, arm in arm underneath that rainbow umbrella promenade on a cloudy morning in the chill of October
After retiring recently, Mark James Trisko heard his muses yelling loudly in the night, begging him to let their voices be heard. His work has appeared / will appear in Valiant Scribe Literary Journal, Spirit Fire Review, Amethyst Review, As Surely As the Sun, The Penwood Review, St. Katherine Review, and Austur Magazine. He currently lives in Minnesota, with his beautiful spouse of 47 years, four wonderful children and eight above-normal grandchildren.
See the moon, rotation-borne, rise from the earth that’s lined with seams of smoky quartz, smoldering under the husky orange of oak-leaf windfall.
Watch the golden harvest moon, an acorn once, lift and exchange its heavy earthly state for something smaller, light, essential, white.
Hear leaves rustle, drop, and rattle— on earth, all falls, and falls to earth— while the soundless moon sails up above the weary blue-black hills.
Bear witness to the seasoned earth, and like all mortal things, embrace a moment in your fear-curled body thoughts of decay and moonlessness.
Succumb and die and lie still, finally. But at the last become a seed pressed into coming April mud, then break through earth and as the moon,
rise in situ from the turning earth, the earth you thought would claim your stony heart. Take root. Lift moonward. Be unafraid to fall again.
Brian Palmer is a retired English teacher and now pursues full-time his interests in studying and writing poetry, inspired by the natural environments of the West and Pacific NW. His recent poetry collection, Prairiehead, was released in the fall of 2023 with Kelsay Books. He is the editor and publisher of THINK: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction, and Essays. He currently lives in Juneau, Alaska.
Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received... but only what you have given. – Francis of Assisi
I’m steeping in it now, growing bushes in pots, brushing my teeth with lavender flavor, tucking sachets in every drawer nestling it under underwear. It’s with me, that lavender hillside in Italy, humped rows parted by a tractor’s billowing dust.
My laundry is redolent of Italy, like candied flowers around a dessert. I met Brother Lavender in a man sitting on a sunlit ledge beside the church. He was selling bags of flowers to tourists, dressed like a hippie from the middle ages. He was belled with bracelets that jingled scant melodies as he gestured to come and buy, holding up a nose-gay. I came and leaned forward to smell a burst of scent sudden and soft as the pretty eyes of a giraffe.
He was a day out of time. He offered me five for some uncountable amount in Italian, then just gave me the whole basket. I brought it home on the plane, fragrance inhabiting my suitcase and still carries me to a mountainside and the portable longing for home we all keep close, best answered by spontaneous gifts and answering anyone’s need.
Rachel Dacus is the author of seven novels and four poetry collections. Her poetry, stories, and essays have appeared in Boulevard, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Eclectica and Image: Art, Faith, and Mystery. Her work is in Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Radiant DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. She enjoys living in the San Francisco Bay Area, with its nature trails where she can walk to refresh her spirit and dictate ideas into her phone.
The angel looks tenderly interested— uncommonly so—in the sacked-out figure of Francis gently supported in his arms.
Or maybe he is just patiently waiting for this mortal to wake from his spiritual coma so that he can depart on yet another appointed round—
rescuing the next pope from his cardinal sins or plucking a child from a deep canal outside a doorstep in Venice.
In any case, Francis' dark-haired, bearded head lolls back in the swaddled lap of the divine messenger, who in this instance has nothing to say,
Francis being, as he is, beyond sight or hearing or sensation. And that rough brown robe of the earthy saint, tied at the waist with a simple cord,
must be scratching those perfectly formed angelic thighs in a most uncomfortable way. Forbearance, though, is a heavenly virtue which shines in the light
like the bare shoulder of this visitor with the exquisite bedside manner—the same shoulder that somehow sprouts, from the back of the scapula, a dusky wing.
Paul Willis has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent of which are Somewhere to Follow (Slant, 2021) and Losing Streak (Kelsay Books, 2024). Individual poems have appeared in Poetry, Christian Century, Southern Poetry Review, and the Best American Poetry series. He is an emeritus professor of English at Westmont College and a former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California, where he lives with his wife, Sharon, near the Old Mission.
could i see my reflection in its eyes while in a cage wearing a mini homemade green sweater over a self-plucked chest as it watches out the window wasps and pearl crescents competing for all the garden asters as elm trees absorb the autumn sunset into their golden leaves
Anthony Lusardi lives in Rockaway Borough, New Jersey, where he writes haiku and other poetry. He has been published in journals, such as Frogpond, Modern Haiku, hedgerow, dadakuku, NOON and Verse Virtual. He has four chapbooks, published by buddha baby press. To purchase copies, contact him through email at lusardi133@gmail.com.
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