Amethyst Review

Draw Near

You, the masterful Artist,
breathing life into life into me.
You stitch the cosmos into
intricate garb, enrobing Yourself
with galaxies. On Your fingertips are nebulas, yet 
in Your palms, Your people find shelter.
You paint the depths of the velvety seas,
bestowing wonder and mystery upon every pearl,
colors as yet undiscovered flowing from Your palette.
Oh God, who else would create--
who else could create--
this dazzling domain
I am blessed enough
to call home?
Who else but You
would draft so carefully, so artfully,
arranging every last, perpetual detail,
from the flames of faraway suns
to each bristle in the paintbrush
held safely in the hand of the artist
who embodies Your mitzvot?
Oh God, who else would
have the compassion to 
place syllables and sounds 
on the tongues of ancient peoples,
to coax chaos into language
so that my ancestors could praise Your name?
Oh, God, let me study at Your easel,
let me read at Your bedside,
and God, let me love the world a little better
for You having drawn me into it at all.

Katherine Orfinger is a writer, artist, and MFA candidate at Rosemont College. She holds a BA in English from Stetson University. Katherine’s work has appeared in Beyond Queer Words, Outrageous Fortune, You Might Need to Hear This, Touchstone, Aeolus, and others. Katherine draws inspiration from her Floridian hometown and Jewish faith. She currently resides in Pennsylvania. 

Thunder Sounds Morning Sky Alive


Thunder sounds morning sky alive.
Lightning flashes – and for a moment –
the dark is parted and a line 
between Then and Now is clarified.

I am reminded of what I am not.

There is no feeling of loss or hope –
no call for my response.

I only watch the morning sky divide.

Rain soon follows to wash away 
all noise, except its own sensation.

I am passive as stone.
Sound bounces off me – bounces
between the felt and the imagined –
the way light has come and gone.

Ken Hada‘s latest collection is Come Before Winter (Turning Plow Press, 2023). His book, Contour Feathers, (Turning Plow Press, 2021), received the Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry. More at: kenhada.org

Salt of the Sea
 
My head dips
below the surface of the water.
a cornucopia of colors, 
sunflower yellow, cobalt blue 
move through the shimmering turquoise.
Piscine creatures with electric glowing stripes and
fins like twirling lace.
An iridescent parrot fish feasts on 
blooms of coral with its beak-like mouth.
 
I stop breathing
to better hear the sound.
Could it really be the voices of humpback
whales, who come here each year to calve?
Life speaks to life.
The sea is a garden, 
born of water and spirit.
 
Shafts of light stipple
across coral and the pale sand floor. 
I am held in light, suspended.  
No longer an observer,
salty as the sea, my blood, this body, 
belong here too. 
Baptism. Communion. Embrace.
Let these tears flow into a dance
of all that is holy. 
I am here now.
Here at last.

Kaylene Johnson-Sullivan is an author who lives in Alaska. She has published six books of non-fiction, completed a historical novel, and writes poetry when the soul calls for such. Two of her poems were recently accepted for the anthology Alaska Literary Field Guide. Her essay “Crossing the Wild River” appears in Deep Wild Journal: Writing from the Backcountry 2024.

             I Ching 

                    I

                      A thread -
                         intuition
                         memories, ravelled by time


                    draws me on 
                      to synagogues
                         universities
                           to poetry


                       Not love
               which requires actual flesh
                    but something invisible
                       a small apocalypse
                           of learning


                       I cherish
                  these threads, collect them
                      they become part
                         of my tapestry
                            
                           but some grow cold
                              neglected, a bitterness
                                  like the sediment in wine


                                      II

                          No sign post
                      no billboard
                           no answer sheet 
                                to let me know how I did
              
                            no well-worn trail  
                       just the woods 
                          familiar
                            changing
                              thicker now                                   
                                 more overgrown
                            

                           the trees

                     sometimes up close 
                       blocking the sun
                         sometimes       a small clearing 
                              with a bit of a view


                      the exercise       
                            feels good
                                   the ruminations  
                                          keep me occupied


                     I think     I can find my way back -
                                over the rise           
                                                across the stream

                           Looking back 
                             can tell us 
                          who we were
                            for a while

                         Looking ahead
                       a game of chance 
                           with rules -
                                age
                              inspiration 
                               fatigue
                              opportunity
 

                        the flicker of light
                 when fate and aspiration 
                            collide

Zav Levinson studied English literature at McGill University and Université de Montréal (M.A., Études Anglaises).  A trained cabinetmaker, he ran the studio arts workshop for the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University for 33 years. He is poetry co-editor of JONAH magazine  and co-founder of the 2-Susan’s Poetry Circle.  His second chapbook, reverb, from Sky of Ink Press, was published in the fall of 2022. His poems have appeared most recently in Montreal Writes, Canadian Jewish News and Dreamers Magazine as well as in the QWF fundraising chapbook My Island, My City and in the 2 Susans Poetry Circle 6^th anniversary chapbook What Lasts.

How We Play Opposites

With a first look outside at a grey morning,
we betray our attitudes
toward contrasts and opposites: those 

in the majority probably on the side of light.

I have learned from nocturnal predators
something of the utility of darkness—

night makes it secure for them
to hunt without themselves being hunted.

Have come to understand

the play of opposites against
each other—in the ER coin-toss of triage,

at recess choosing sides.

If you see my eyes closed, Sundays, don’t
fault the dazzle of stained-glass,
or a brilliant illumination of the text—

I’ve conceded holy darkness equal time.

Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire.  Recent work appears in Red Eft Review, Wilderness House, Bookends Review, and The Windhover. His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications.  He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region Conservation Trust.

The Suffering of Others

So close, your eyes touch them
your ears hear their pleadings

but your legs cannot approach
nor your arms extend

your words falling futile at your feet
so close, so close.

You turn your eyes away—still
they crowd your silences, your headphones

awaken you at midnight
to tell you their nightmares till morning.

You pray for them—trying to ease your own pain
by handing them off to God, fate, history—

They do not go away, cannot, will not. And you know
for their sake and yours you must not ease your pain

but grasp it, examine it for the truth it reveals,
and draw it close to your heart

so close you can touch them, so close you can
send shock waves of love to the core of all being.

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry appears in Verse-Virtual, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Midwest Zen, Soul-Lit, and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). Father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.

Psalm with Pocket Stone and Door Key

I headache, I dry throat, I shallow breathe, 
my Witness, my Refuge, I am

one of you, locked in night smell
I go back over my footprints, comb grass
into comfort with my hands. I distort—
see eyes and mouths, spread & twist 
bodies worn inside out.
Walls weep and floors waver. 
I call myself
Scatter Moon, Brainling.
Look, see the exhaustion
of nails, unable to repent clawing. 
Once primroses grew from my fingers.

Ellen Devlin is the author of chapbooks Rita and Heavenly Bodies at the MET, both published by Cervena Barva Press. Her recent journal publications include: Beyond Words, 2023, Muleskinner Journal, 2023, Rock Paper, Poem, 2023, Westchester Review, 2023  She lives in Irvington, New York.

Fisher 

Not always as a dove. We often need
A seahawk, yes, the bonebreak bird
Of prey to fold his wings and drop with speed
Surpassing thought, to fall and thus to cede
The kingdom where his cry is sharply heard,

To plunge amid the weeds and murk as gray
As any grave. The breathless water seals
In triumph—till one feeder of the clay
Is slashed anew behind the gills, and yanked away
By some strange fish’s talons, until he feels

The specks and banks and schools he knew
Were muddy prologue to devouring grace,
And flight affords his shock-fixed eye the view
Of waters he had never known were blue
In homage to this heaven’s opened face.

It takes no eye so clear, as up he climbs
Where sun awaits and ether hazes wreathe
His form, to dream him in the world where time’s 
Hands fail, the world with which ours rhymes,
Healed of scars and newly taught to breathe.

Will Begley teaches, writes, and raises children in North Carolina. His poems and translations have appeared in journals including Dappled Things and The Road Not Taken.

When I have Penned My Final Thoughts 

When I
Have penned my final thoughts and left to meet
the sky,
don't organize my table; let the sheet,
the clipboard, and the cartridge pen lie there;
let them assume I've gone to get some air.

Don't switch
the desk lamp off. Its glow will reach me through
the pitch-
black, starry intrados, producing new
beliefs about a parted man's revival,
and say to me, "I'll wait till your arrival."

Should they
enquire about my absence of long years,
please say
to them that I am with The Pioneer
of verse, whose words can spawn a life and grow it;
He's guiding me to be a better poet.

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from India. He resides in Assam with his parents. His poems have appeared in The Society of Classical Poets, Fevers of the Mind, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Westward Quarterly, Dreich, The Hypertexts, among others, and some of his poems are forthcoming in Willow Review and Ekstasis, to name a few.

Equinox

Gazing through the window at the hint of dawn,
so many months since I've seen this sacred hour.
The house quiet, the bird under his blanket,
an occasional chirrup and settling of feathers.
The dog asleep on the sofa next door, her chin
curled to meet the stretch of her paws.
The creak of my husband shifting in bed, 
my space cooling beneath the duvet.
The birdfeeder is prepped for breakfast, 
its gentle sway an invitation to nesting blue tits, 
our solitary robin and the ever-present pigeons
who wait yawning to be fed like cuckoos.
Down by the pond a heron stares past 
its own reflection at the stirrings of morning.
I should open the door, run out there
with flailing arms to save the drowsy frogs
but it seems wrong to intervene, 
to interrupt this quiet morning prayer,
so I stay put, my hand on an empty cup,
shoulders stiff with last night's vivid dreams,
waiting for the rumble and click of the kettle
to usher in the safety of the risen sun.

 

Lisa Bristow’s poetry has been published in the Thomas Merton Journal, We are Not Shadows by Folkways Press, What the Eye Sees by Arachne Press, Kosmeo Mag and Faith, Hope and Fiction. She lives on the edge of the Peak District in England with her husband and rescue dog.