Amethyst Review

Calling at Night


When he phones his daughter
In San Diego
Or his oldest friend
In Philadelphia
His first words
Will be exuberant
To avoid sounding vulnerable,
To conceal the fear
That he will close his eyes
And never open them again.
Instantly their voices
Soothe his spirit
As it becomes a blue rose
He will name Tenderness
For the affection
He will always offer—
He has never once
Picked a rose
From his garden,
Wanting each one
To live, to gradually
Unfold into light.

Michael Miller’s poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review, The Yale Review, and Raritan. His new book, War Zone, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Light

From beyond, darkness looms.
Not seen but felt, its tentacles 
threaten to entwine me.
I spread my arms wide,
slide down the dew-dampened hill,
dive toward the horizon,
and crash into the hard sky.
I feel its cerulean blue
crack into pieces, each piece curled
like in a sunbaked lake bed.
My bones crushed,
I slide easily between the cracks
and glide into the dark universe
spotted with starlight.
I swallow the light of each bright star
until only I shine.
Now I, my Self, am made full 
with His Light.

Cynthia Pitman from Orlando, Florida is the author of three poetry collections: The White Room, Blood Orange, and Breathe (Aldrich Press, Kelsay Books). Her work has been published in Vita Brevis anthologies Pain and Renewal, Brought to Sight & Swept Away, Nothing Divine Dies, What is All This Sweet Work?, in journals Amethyst Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Third Wednesday (One Sentence Poem finalist), Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art (Pushcart Prize fiction nominee), Red Fez (Story of the Week) and others.

Blue Moon

Someone told me tonight was the night
There would be a blue moon.
So wakeful at 2am, I went to see and it’s true
It wasn’t blue, but it was hanging there
Vast and rather scary, in its size and majesty.
I thought I’d make a cup of freshly brewed tea 
And savor the taste of tea and moon
And soak in whatever magnetic or magic rays, 
Extending towards me and earth on this special night.
The man in the moon must have thought it was a game
A fun hide and seek peek because as I disappeared to stew
The aromatic leaves, the moon disappeared behind murky cloud
Teasing me with rays, with phantom silver light, still bright enough
I could make my way back to bed, disappointed.
I had the promise of a rare moment, of a celestial sighting 
But it winked at me just for a moment. 
It’s like life, I think. Rare appearances of beauty, mystery, magic
Making a sleepless and sheet-tossed night, special.
Frustrating. Leaving me regretful. 
Wanting more.

Wendy Westley was a successful nurse, midwife and therapist for many years in the UK. She now writes short stories and poetry. 

Heartfast
after the visions of Catherine of Siena

The color of beloved is red. I’ve bathed in it, his lambsblood—
	worn his foreskin ‘round my
finger; what better gift is there for a lordsbride than four 
	wounds: father, son, holy spirit—I
knifed my hair, threw food in the fire, wrapped my mother’s
	wishes ‘round the legs of fledglings 
	and shoved
	them from the nest.

If the mind is a cell, then what is a heart? A pyre made by blue
	wefts, palm-eerie, so easily snuck out
of a chest. I neglected it—scarletstone of my own, I prayed
	for hollowness, for the whirl of ashes,
prayed for cleanness notyetseen. Christ-beloved planted a thrum
	with his thumb. His holy heart so hot—
	wanted by all 
	but buried in me. 
.
I try to speak of it, but the tongue does not know this dance. I
	can show you, instead, my flesh: ribscar 
smiling beneath my breast. Touch these bones after I am dead.
	Starlight is but a dew drop compared
to God’s love, hot. I spend hours seeking to name it. My heart. 
	My whispering bloodpeach. Christ
	tells it a secret
	before he hides it in his sleeve.
 

Kale Hensley is a West Virginian by birth and a poet by faith. You can keep up with them at kalehens.com.

Shrine

The deeper in our cave we go, the more
the nature of a shrine comes clear. A house
on stilts, a cabin on a Blue Ridge slope,
a lodge in view of Everest, the same.
A wikiup, a yurt, a sidewalk tent,
the same. A white house, red house, blue house: shrines,
cenotaphs, and sometime mausoleums.
Some people think of them as coliseums
where rivalries play out, bright armor shines
and clashes until every strength is spent.
Some people light a candle, watch the flame,
see promise in it or, at least, a hope
for friend or sibling, parent, child, or spouse.
I feed the fire to hear the heartwood roar.

Dan Campion’s poems have appeared previously in Amethyst Review. He is the author of A Playbill for Sunset (Ice Cube Press, 2022), The Mirror Test (MadHat Press, 2024), and the monograph Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press, 1995). He is a coeditor of the anthology Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press, 1981; 2nd ed. 1998; 3rd ed. 2019). His poetry has appeared in Able Muse, Light, Measure, Poetry, Rolling Stone, Shenandoah, THINK, and many other journals.

Neo Native

They leave as soon as they have stretched
and purchased gasoline and maybe food

at truck stops on the interstate.
“It’s hot –  can we go now?” is all the children say,

confirming what they all agree –
they cannot wait to leave.

I was like them once.  I came and

smelled the heat-perspiring rocks
and saw the overwhelming sun.

Blind to arid beauty,
I could not see the desert for the sand –

the cactus for the thorn.
But as I stayed, I saw the desert’s soul unwind

in days of warm abounding light
and nights of sapphire dark,

with bright … unnumbered … myriads … of stars.
I came to see that I am of this land –

that I am also made of dust.

Richard West was Regents’ Professor of Classics in a large public university and has published numerous books, articles, and poems under his own name and other pen names. He now lives with his wife Anna in the beautiful American Desert Southwest, where he enjoys cooking and attempting to add flavor to his poems.

While in the Yorkshire Dales

After our meal of pulled pork and apple pie,
thick-cut chips and wilted greens, sated
to the marrow, we discovered still more–
outside, beside a swath of nodding daffodils–
a stepping stone bridge over gurgling waters.  
We skipped, laughing, across to the other side,
a trail that wound through a moss haven of woods,
along a drystone fence to the highest hill
where we stopped.  There, on top,
one massive sheep, poised like an empress,
detached and magnificent.  Solitary, she
regarded us.  We could hardly go 
any further as we watched her 
move not once from her wild throne.  

Andrea Potos is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently HER JOY BECOMES (Fernwood Press), and MARROW OF SUMMER (Kelsay Books.)

The Temple 

A lone bystander by a corner store
observing morning mourners haul great loads
to offices, their eight-hour, loathed abodes.
Those usual faces from the day before.

It meekly waits, inviting amblers in
to have an honest, though succinct, discourse
with The Advisor, who can quell the force
of peace-eroding rivers born within.

Even a vagrant's faded handkerchief
spread on the footpath halts some rapid feet,
but these wide-open, holy doors just greet
the sunbeams, wind, its emptiness, and grief.

Today, a doddering, cane-supported pair
expelled the sorrow of its sacred hall
by offering Jasmine flowers and lighting small
oil lamps. The bells' peals drifting through the air

turned eyes towards this temple's newborn smile.
Devotion births devotion; hence, a few
fleet-footed joined this couple's worship too,
and everything was tranquil for a while.

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India, where he resides with his parents. His poems have been published by Sparks of Calliope, The Hypertexts, Snakeskin, Ink Sweat & Tears, Autumn Sky Daily, Ekstasis, among others. He secured second position in the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest, 2024.

Sharon Kunde is an Assistant Professor at the Maine College of Art and Design. Her research
focuses on the racialization of representations of nature and naturalness in the context of the
emergence of national literary studies. She has published work in publications including Twentieth Century Literature, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Harvard Review, ISLE, and Cincinnati Review, and her chapbook Year of the Sasquatch was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2022.

Faith

She wants to paint two fish
in a sky-blue ocean
under a cornered, risen sun.

Her hand wavers in concentration
over the silkscreen fabric.
Lines smudge, colours run.

She tries another frame, floods it
with iris-purple ink
then, uncertain
what will happen, casts
dry salt on wet silk.

Each fallen grain
spawns another fish –

drawn by osmosis,
by each slow thirst.

Helen Evans runs two poetry projects: ‘Inner Room’, and ‘Poems for the path ahead’. Her poems feature in Mariscat Sampler One (Mariscat Press 2024) while her debut pamphlet, Only by Flying (HappenStance Press 2015), was shortlisted for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. She holds an MLitt (Distinction) in creative writing from the University of St Andrews. Places her work has appeared include The Rialto, The North, Magma, and Amethyst Review as well as in anthologies, including Coming and Going: Poems for Journeys (HappenStance Press, 2019) and Thin Places & Sacred Spaces (Amethyst Press, 2024).