Amethyst Review

Living with Afib

At home between walls
I have to catch my breaths
as they come like blown bubbles
to control them, make sure
they do not overtake
my mind and body, and throw
me as a heap into a darkness
of no return.  

By the sea, I sit on a bench
to steady myself,
so the ocean and I breathe
together, in and out,
in constant rhythm,
each supporting the other
until I find myself
in the throws of my imagination
swimming out to join
the waves reaching out
to welcome me.

Janet Krauss, after retirement from teaching 39 years of English at Fairfield University, continues to mentor students,  lead a poetry discussion at the Wilton Library, participate in a CT. Poetry Society Workshop, and one other plus two poetry groups. She co–leads the Poetry Program of the Black Rock Art Guild. She has two books of poetry : Borrowed Scenery (Yuganta Press) and Through the Trees of Autumn (Spartina Press).  Many of her poems have been published in Amethyst Review, and her haiku in Cold Moon Journal.

Distancing

I hear a bird’s call into evening,
but I cannot see it. It is close,
perhaps on a branch, a window ledge. 
The air is cool, and I need to rest, 
retreat into the dark, 
disassociate from myself. 
There is a reason we cannot see at night. 
The bird’s voice rings, bells fading, 
then quietens; 
it is as if today has fallen into mist.  
This morning I felt different, 
full of plans, epilogues.
I listen intently for the bird, 
now distant, as it drifts away
into its own sound – a relic of itself.

Ion Corcos was born in Sydney, Australia in 1969. He has been published in Cordite, Meanjin, Westerly, Plumwood Mountain, Southword, Wild Court, riddlebird, and other journals. Ion is a nature lover and a supporter of animal rights. He is the author of A Spoon of Honey (Flutter Press, 2018).

Inside of any side 
 
Inside, the indefinite twirls in shapes, – 
once we size a mutter, we hear the sky echoing 
a good gorgeous solid emptiness. 
Outside, a heart a whirring coaster, 
riddling, riddling, a riddling efficiency. 
All lyrics showing their mettle with serenity, 
a huge shout-out given –        the world 
favouring itself and a helix hovering 
all night over the adobe globe; 
people seemingly at the windows about to ask: 
is love the only real normal? – or its 
symmetrical quotient available, too? 
A wish or just a kind of it, looking almost 
like a teacup, a straight slightly slanted-bodied 
miniature mountain upside down, 
liquids slipped or slopped over. 
The indefinite is always that, too fast, or deferred, 
the price for the price itself.
 
What’s definite, then, which we never can
           pay for – what we only need to 
           pray for?
 

Jayanta Bhaumik is from Kolkata, India, from the field of esoteric studies and counselling. His past works can be found in Poetry Superhighway, Juked, Madswirl, Vita Brevis Press, Blue Lake Review, Pif magazine, Acropolis Journal, Streetcake Magazine, and elsewhere. He is available @BhaumikJayanta

Skylines and Horizons 
 
Outside of city limits, earth
Meets waning sky, becoming one
Long linea nigra. A birth.
All that the eye sees when the sun
Sets low is boundary, yet none
 
Of this – what’s visible – contains
All that there is. Beyond all sight,
All silence, parameters, and planes,
I sense that there is something right
Along the edge that’s made of light.
 
Each time I’m on the highway driving
Back, there’s that moment when we turn
Around a bend. Not yet arriving,
Inside of me, I feel a burn.
A longing, a longing to return –
 
But not to the familiar blocks,
The taxis or the greasy spoon.
Instead, I want an equinox.
I want the sun to cross the moon,
To signal something coming soon.
 
Against the sun-less stretch of sky,                                                    
The towers reach above. What man
Has made, seen from the ground, seems high –
Seems higher than the eye can scan,
But from this distance, fades again.
 
Horizons give me wider views:
Yet still, they aren’t the whole frame.
The city skylines start to lose
Their novelty and seem the same.
They’re not the home from which I came.
 
 

Mary Grace Mangano is a poet, writer, and professor. She received her MFA in poetry at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and her poetry, essays, and reviews appear in Church Life Journal, The Windhover, Orchards Poetry Journal, The North American Anglican, Fare Forward, Ekstasis, and others.  She teaches at Seton Hall University and lives in New Jersey. 

Drinking Gin in a Kayak on a Still Lake in June 


The world above 
The trees even to the crisping of leaves at the edges.
The tall grasses along the shore. The large silvery rocks.
The empty Adirondack chairs. 
Docks, sleeping boats. Clouds. 
Blue sky with streaks of soft pink.
Even the arc of a bird in flight, the race of a dog along the bank, 
My own foot over the side of the kayak.
All twinned in the perfect mirror of the lake.
An inverted universe, an exact upended replica.
 
Then a fish jumps,
or my hand falls into the water
or the kayak rocks as I bring the glass to my mouth
and the world below trembles,
suddenly warps and wavers in
fluid abstraction - swirls of color and shapes
still head over heels 
but incomprehensible chaos

Is it too much to hope that it will be so,
at the hour of, the moment of -
an instant of perfect stillness, pristine clarity
Then soft, a sudden hallucinatory dissolve 
into a world without
edges, as I flow into the prismatic mystery. 

Dorothy Cantwell has worked as an educator, actress, and playwright, Her work has been published in the Long Island Literary Journal, Brownstone Poets Anthology, Constellate Literary Journal, Flash Boulevard, Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters, River and South Review, Poetrybay, and Angel City Review, among other print and online journals. She has been featured at various venues in NYC where she lives and works. She studies poetry with Sister Fran McManus in the St Francis of Assisi Poetry Workshop.

Balance.							      



Burned fields.  other devices.  the tops of trees.  the even welds.  traces of roots on the roadside.  what we will do in the wake when the leaves dry.  we stood at the back window.  our child stood at the back window.  the trees top to the circled trunks swayed.  bending.  the wind comes from the ocean behind the dunes from the cove swaggering through to the mountains broadly backed.  silent.  we stood at the back windows we watched the storm close around.  a glare of white clouds.  thoughts to drive on the coastal marking miles in forests.  a spine of the bridges the bays.  loose footed rocks.  strewn waves dodging balance.  thankful along its crest.

Michael Ricketti was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Lenapehoking.  He lives in Nicosia, Cyprus where he works as a university lecturer and serves at Kuruçeşme Projekt – a community yoga, meditation, education, and art initiative founded with Sevdiye Ricketti. His work has been published with Welcomat, Vallum, Enclave, Bluepepper, New Note Poetry, Instant Noodles, and Bodega. His novella ‘Yayla’ was shortlisted for the First Series Award by Mid-List Press.

River Mouth
Henley Beach  South Australia 


The pelicans disappeared overnight.
In the still of yesterday afternoon
they stood sentinel, balanced
on the cross pipe up stream
from the weir that gargles this city’s
river life into the sea.
The morning moon wanes. Horses still graze
corralled by soft banks and timber rails 
bordering freedom, captivity.
At sunrise ripples spread through reeds
the first five pelicans emerge, lift beaks
rise sure footed to yesterday’s perch
as though to deliver this new
shining fish of a day.

Ann Nadge lives in Adelaide, South Australia. Her career as an Educator involved teaching and consulting in Sydney and Adelaide, in secondary and tertiary settings and briefly as a Research Associate in the School of Education, University of Cambridge. Ann has published five books of poems and edited two for Australia’s Ginninderra Poets. Her work has been included in several anthologies. Although she cannot read or play music, Ann has collaborated with composers in Adelaide and Amsterdam to create new works, including several hymns. She currently enjoys semi-retirement and is active in the Anglican Diocese of Adelaide. 

Adamant

The stubbornest of adamant can crack
and even shatter. Adamant can melt.
It can be dynamited, laser-cut.
Once wind and water carve a single rut,
a slab of adamant has to dissolve.
No alchemy can ever bring it back
to what it was before an ibex knelt
to drink out of a pool of recent rain
a ledge of adamant collected in
a shallow bowl. Besides, the worlds revolve
for only so long. Then their stars begin
to swallow them, and adamant, like all
the other matter, turns to cloud again
like mist that curls around a garden wall.

Dan Campion‘s poems have appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). A selection of his poems was issued by the Ice Cube Press in July 2022: https://icecubepress.com/2021/10/01/a-playbill-for-sunset/

Beacons
 
 
God placed a star inside each stone,
inside each waterfall and leaf.
Not for wishing, but knowing,
and not our knowing but his, knowing
that we would want to reach
down to find it, to discover what
it was we saw once shining there.
 
But none of those sparks can be
reached and aren’t meant to be.
They’re beacons to beckon us
to wonder at the source, the start
of all things whether stones or stars,
or leaves or waterfalls—all things
which start and end in him who calls.

Michael T. Young’s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. His previous collections are The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost and Transcriptions of Daylight. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His chapbook, Living in the Counterpoint, received the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared in numerous journals including Pinyon, Talking River Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Vox Populi.

(lingua franca)


I hear ocean, bleached conch to my ear.
tidal swells relate infinity and back.

you hear me among diaphanous seaweed, 
polished sea stones, blue crab husks.

mix of unnamable spines.  you are guardian.
master of brine.  we adopt common language, 

share awe with sunrise glint, or weep 
a glittered cushion.  I will save you 

from a coffee table, or forsaken shelf.
toss you back to riptide, toward 

waning moon ribbon.  forage depths.  
agnostic in vast heaven's surge.

adopt snails.  salt and sand.  
withstand fingers of unproven gods.

Sam Barbee has a new poetry collection, Apertures of Voluptuous Force (2022, Redhawk Publishing).  He has three previous collections, including That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53), a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016.  Also, Uncommon Book of Prayer (2021, Main Street Rag) which chronicles family travels in England. His poems have appeared recently in Poetry South, Salvation South, Dead Mule School of Literature, and Streetlight Magazine, also upcoming in Cave Wall, among others; plus on-line journals Ekphrastic Review, American Diversity Report, Grand Little Things, and Medusa’s Kitchen.