Amethyst Review

Sunday Afternoon 


I walk into the thrift store 
looking for immortality. 

As always, I find it 
in pieces—				the books:

nooked and crammed, alien or Proustian 
or ringing tiny bells to mark memories 

of distant doors—something I’ve heard of, 
something I should know—something

worth knowing.  Speaking in titles
as the fluorescent light moves

me, wandering across every color of spine.
Shelved skeletons in their paper shrouds, 

offering my new
original hunger— 			to know: 

which is always to want more. 
That’s why I’m here, where I can collect

myself—past and future memories, 
a few dollars each at most—I know I can’t afford 

my whole self at anything like 
full price; these I can gather cheap and leave 

precious— 				postmortem: 
Pompeii-perfect.  

I’m here, Sunday after Sunday, because I know 
I will not live forever. Not in the way 

I was promised as a child.  
Instead, by this ritual, I find my mind

made manifest— 			re-incarnate: 
caro verbum.  

The soft parts and skins transmute 
into papers full of psalms, the meated bones 

into offerings. All this knowing 
to burn through, to breathe in, to breathe 

into.  Devouring and jealous, I end
only knowing it’s never enough 

and always
too much— 				but broken:

pieces small enough to hold 
in my hand, small enough to hand

to my children—			here, my loves:
these are pieces of me. 

These are pieces of the world 
worth loving:				Take, eat.

Charisse Stephens is a poet and teacher with an MA in English from the University of California – Berkeley. She has a deep fascination for science, religion, history, and the places they intersect. Her work has been published in literary journals including SLANT, Neologism, and Irreantum. She currently lives in Salt Lake City, Utah with her partner, two kids, and dog Polly.

Ancient Ground 
 	 
I step through and stumble
on the tumbled rocks, the lichen
that lines the narrow footpath
between ancient boundary walls.

I caress the old stones, the shapes.
This one was a millstone,
that a threshold, there a food trough.
And then they were a wall.

And then rubble in a field
and again a wall. Today shaded
by oaks, they shift under my feet.
Wall, rubble, millstone; thresholds all.

Spy the ruin behind the iron fence -
that is to say, behind the iron
that was a bed frame then
a grape trellis then a gate.

Who can say what is a ruin
in a land that knows
how to use everything forever?
Tiny orchids bloom between the rocks.

Iron and stone were my ancestors too.
Strong enough to weather, to change,
to move aside when oaks
and orchids need a place to root.

I am the offspring of bed frames,
of millstones and rubble and walls.
Shall I become next a gate?
Or a trellis, threshold or path?

Franny Bryant-Scott is a Canadian poet, artist, art therapist, and interfaith spiritual companion living on the ancient land of Crete, Greece. Her writing is an attempt to meet, grapple with, and embrace her experiences as a human being living in a more-than-human world. Ever since she created objects and rituals of remembrance for wild birds and family pets as a small child, the transformative power of the arts to hold both the beauty and suffering in our lives has been at the core of all of her work.

Caedmon, a shepherd at the abbey, writes a poem

He fell asleep hard by. He was simple 
and lived among the animals,
was not given to speech except
to call his herd and settle them
before laying in the hay.

Fell asleep hard by,
because it was the time when
drinking started and songs were
improvised, and in terror
he would excuse himself
to find solace with the animals
who asked nothing.
Then, peaceful sleep would come.

Fell asleep hard by,
after answering the dream
that set him on fire,
his tongue forming sounds
never before shaped by him,
music to the locals,
holy prayer to the ears of the
abbess, and even the sheep
followed after, hearing
for the first time
sacred poetry.

William Ross is a Canadian writer and visual artist living in Toronto. His poems have appeared in Rattle, The New Quarterly, Humana Obscura, Bicoastal Review, The Hooghly Review, Underscore Magazine, Amethyst Review, Bindweed Magazine Anthology, Topical Poetry, Heavy Feather Review, Passionfruit Review, and others.

What Can I Say About Eating Raisins During the Storm?

I’m not confident
            the storm’s end has come.
It hasn’t flattened my home
            nor tattered my hope.
All will ride the rainbow
            to the other side,
We don’t know when.
            The present wind, 
            no matter
            direction
            is now my friend.	
None of us controls weather
            and fear is a lying dictator.
Let my master be the one
            who’s always been there with me
            even in the dismantling.
Living on the edge, I look directly into the sun.

Author Laura E. Garrard is also an artist and CranioSacral Therapist on the U.S. Northwest Peninsula, where she enjoys time with nature. Her poem, “Filled to the Brim,” appeared in Amethyst Press’s Thin Places & Sacred Spaces anthology. She is a member of Olympic Peninsula Authors and has received four scholarships from Centrum Writers Conference. Her poetry and prose have been published in journals like Bellevue Literary Review, The Madrona Project, Silver Birch, and TulipTree Review, which recently awarded her a Merit Prize. She writes a cancer poetry series, Poetry That Fits, on Penn Medicine’s OncoLink.org.

The Answer Lives Inside


I could tell you about this city, the rows of windows 
up and down the bodies of buildings, illuminated 
at night from within. All those rectangles of glass 
like the lines along the fuselage of airplanes 
that make me wonder who’s behind them. 
Who’s living the secret lives inside?

Morning sun glints off the panes like a Marian apparition. 
The feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe is 12/12, 
which, if you believe in the life of numbers, is double 
what’s needed for completion: months of a year, 
a dozen eggs, the twelve signs of the Zodiac 
with their individual architectures of behavior.

Our Lady gave Juan Diego a cloak of roses, emblazoned 
her image on the cloth so people would believe him.

How many of us need that?

My friend told me how a child asked Agnes Martin, 
“Agnes, what are your paintings about anyway?” 
The artist took a rose from the vase on the table and asked, 
“Is this flower beautiful?” 
Yes… 

Agnes hid the rose behind her back.“Is the flower still 
beautiful?” Yes spoke the child. 
“Well, that’s what I paint.” The power of beauty 
to be present even in its absence…

Making the invisible visible — pulling threads 
from the air and arranging them on canvas
or paper. The lines and rhythm of breath 
suddenly seeable.
 

Susan Jackson‘s two poetry collections, Through a Gate of Trees and In the River of Songs, were published by CavanKerry Press. All the Light in Between is a Finishing Line Press chapbook. She is currently completing a new book, Geography of the Possible. Jackson believes in the power of literature and the arts to build community as well as forge greater understanding across world borders. In addition to her writing, Jackson has a healing practice using a number of hands-on healing modalities.

The St. Jude Dog Lady

It’s always just ‘bout halfway through the Mass:
She and her ratty little dog walk past
The rite itself, the priest, the weekday crowd
Of faithful folk upon their knees and praying.
It must be said at least she isn’t loud:
She stands before the statue of St. Jude,
Eyes tightly closed and hands upheld, displaying
A proper reverential attitude.
I wonder what her hopeless cause might be
That brings her daily to the effigy.
What situation can she not surpass
That drives her on and feeds her monologue
So fervently? Some personal morass
Or is she simply praying for the dog?

Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Dappled Things, Amethyst Review, the St. Austin Review, Pensive Journal, America Magazine, The Society of Classical Poets, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of The Catholic Poetry Room.

Well

A small circle of light swirls
through layers of clay and sand like an eye 
from the depths of the earth.

You are so delighted!
You worked with such persistence
despite the odd looks of those that passed you; 
with an auger and your brute strength, 
you bore through the gravel

and the layers of sand and clay
and finally found what you were looking for, 
what you knew was there:
the well that will allow you to stay

even when the winds whip up and the temperature drops
and the snows cover the earth with shivering silver.
You found the spring of living water welling up, 

from within the heart, the heart reflecting
that small circle of light.

Sheila Murray-Nellis is a poet and children’s author living in British Columbia, Canada. She and her husband, an Orthodox priest, are building a stone chapel on a property surrounded by the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy which they call St. John in the Wilderness Orthodox Sanctuary. Sheila has had poems published in St. Katherine Review, Windhover, Catholic Integrated Life, Mslexia, and elsewhere. For the past four years she has been Poetry Editor of St. Katherine Review, a position that gives her great joy. Her published work includes her book You Are Meant to Be Like Fire and several children’s chapter books.

On a Nearby Power Line

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. —Alice Walker


Perhaps the unforeseen nod appears as a blue ribbon
presented to the best cross-stitch at a county fair
or a one-hundred-dollar payout after the purchase
of a two-dollar lottery ticket,
or even a first-place award given to the standout poem
in a statewide poetry contest.
Whatever the amazement,
a sense of elation rushes through the body,
akin to a shift in weather.
As if an updraft on litterfall,
the feeling of exhilaration expands outward.

Once, my cousin, Katie,
experienced prize-winning success on national television.
A chain reaction of joy occurred during the game show
and within the family.
Like the thrill of observing dominoes as they tap one another
then drop into the ecstasy of effect,
why not celebrate the blessings of everyone?
Gathering exuberance from the world’s wellspring
can free the tension of expectancy.
Why not live without expectation?
Ease can replace the nature of anticipation.
How does the frugal surprise arrive as the unexpected gift?
Yesterday, a Cooper’s hawk landed on a nearby power line.
I got a good look.

 

Jeannie E. Roberts is an artist and the author of several books, including her most recent title The Ethereal Effect – A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2025. She serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs, is an Eric Hoffer and a multiple Best of the Net award nominee. She finds joy spending time outdoors and with loved ones.

The Handle is on the Inside of the Door

after John O’Donohue, with a passage from Anam Ċara


The door is white.
The room is white.
The rest is up to us.
Sometimes we are locked inside,
moving wall to wall,
windowless.
Some may make a skylight
and the stars offer curious company,
while others make the bed
with crisp, tight corners
yet fail to hear the song in silence.

The room is only as empty
as our imagination.
It might be a wild jungle
across the sea
as in that book by Sendak.
Only you can build the boat,
can lead the monsters dancing.
It is in the depths of your life
you will discover the invisible necessity
that brought you here.

When your restlessness expands
like a blaze inside you, 
a storm will rise in the center
of the room. The urgency
of what you were born to do
will rush over you, and you will claim
what has always been yours.
You will turn the handle
and step outside,
where Heaven and Earth
will celebrate your arrival.

Alfred Fournier is the author of A Summons on the Wind (2023, Kelsay Books) and King of Beers (March 2025, Rinky Dink Press). His poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Indianapolis Review, The Sunlight Press, Hole in the Head Review and elsewhere. He lives in the foothills of South Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona, with his remarkable wife and daughter and two birdwatching cats.

Mysteries

	after Tom Russell's Guadalupe

About faith they were never wrong, the desert
angels. Black clouds
above the mission church, an owl
at night for each departing soul
and prayers for rain ride the thermals
every day. An echo, echo
                                              marks the closing
of the wooden door as footprints
leave a dusty trail to midnight. Skunk time,
bats are saints flying in sacred space
and ringtails find a way
to bind their tails around belief.
Darkness is the miracle
                                           that makes miracles
complete: the crops smile again, roadkill
comes back to life and inside
old adobe walls the organ plays without
the hands of a musician. Listen:
                                                          the notes
are walking on their toes
uphill on the stony trail
to be closer to the stars.

David Chorlton lived in Manchester and Vienna before moving to Arizona and beginning to learn from the desert and its creatures. He occasionally returns to his other long term pursuit of painting. The Bitter Oleander Press published his book Dreams the Stones Have in 2024.