Amethyst Review

Walls


Walls awaken the worry they were meant to ease
even as their quadrants warm and contain me.
The witch-cruel winds whip outside
while inside, I have a mind
only to watch the worries multiply
because only through upkeep are walls kept up.

Laws wall us off from calamity,
according to the word of the builders
but inside the boundaries of rules,
doubts multiply. Do they lie?
Disobedience is born as desire to step outside.
Laws reign only through the rigors of self-rule, 
in which we so seldom can abide.

Beams cut the earth, forcing you to choose 
who goes on which side.
You must live inside
the reality you chose
as people rarely let you choose again.

So, do I pray
for a band of unchosen children
to circle my square of sanity
until they’ve got my foundations quaking?
Would I welcome the trumpet blast
that exposes me and mine to the winds
and those I’ve kept out? 
Would anybody?

I’m not a builder nor a prisoner.
Just a denizen who has purchased
and now has to tend.
In my walls, doors and windows open
to neighbors, strangers, nursery rhymes distorted
by an ice cream truck’s rusty speakers. They open
to those stuck in here with me.

We broom the worries to the corners,
paint the walls a warm color we all can live with
for a while, and discuss
where wisdom resides—
In? Out? Between.

Shaun Anthony McMichael is the editor of The Shadow Beside Me (2020) and The Story of My Heart (2021), poetry collections written by trauma-affected youth dealing with mental illness, and instability. Since 2007, he has taught writing to students from around the world, in classrooms, juvenile detention halls, mental health treatment centers, and homeless youth drop-ins throughout the Seattle area. Over 80 of his short stories, poems, essays, author interviews, and book reviews have appeared in publications like The Chicago Tribune, Litro, Bull, Spoon River Review, PopMatters, and more. His debut short story collection, The Wild Familiar, is forthcoming from CJ Press (Fall, 2024).  He lives with his wife and son in Seattle where he attends church most Sundays. He hosts an annual literary art reading, Shadow Work Writers. Visit him at his website shaunanthonymcmichael.com.

Shoreline


Along this rim of the Pacific		I breathe
	with the sea’s rise and fall	 my pulse
		echoes its rhythmic surge.
Feet flex with these sands 	dense
	yet undulating	a ground that shifts
		when liquid power pours out upon it.
Piercing calls of shore birds		the roll and rumble
	of whitecaps		a soft exhale
		as this giant body of water recedes.

Rocky tidepools harbor rippling anemones
	a rainbow of sea stars.
		The ocean’s pounding oscillations
leave behind 		gelatinous strands of seaweed
	driftwood fragments		abandoned shells.
		A shoreline that accepts what the tides bring in.

Isn’t this what my body must do—
	absorb 	whatever breaks
		upon it	wave after wave.
It forms its own tidepools—	pockets
	that shelter 	sorrow 	joy
		passion	pain.

I have heard this body keen
	with the winds  	cry
		with the plaintive voice of gulls.
Sometimes it sits	in silence
	letting life’s questions
		wash over it.

Isn’t this body called upon
	to hold		
		the immensity of life—its storms
its fierce loves	its calm interludes.
	And just like the shoreline		
		when it reaches	deeper
it becomes 		the sea floor—
	strong enough
		to cradle the world’s cadence.

Melissa Huff feeds her poetry from the power and mystery of the natural world and the ways in which body, nature and spirit intertwine.  An advocate of the power of poetry presented out loud, she twice won awards in the BlackBerry Peach Prizes for Poetry: Spoken and Heard, sponsored by the (U.S.) National Federation of State Poetry Societies.  Recent publishing credits include Gyroscope Review, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, Encore: Prize Poems 2022 (NFSPS), Persimmon Tree and Blue Heron Review.  Melissa has been frequently sighted making her way between Illinois and Colorado.

The Vision
for Bert

Nimble as dancers we step into the water.
Small waves lap at our ankles,
the current pulls us until we start our journey,
stroke answering breath, over and over,
our swim suits thin into transparency
until only the ocean clothes us,
and we lose the contours of our bodies,
but we still feel the moon jelly fish gently
poke at our skin. We swim on and on
never losing sight of each other.

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.

Portrait

I am but a laudatory
patron of this aqueous world,
watching life unfold in its
perfect constancy:

the black-and-white spotted
upside-down catfish, that
swings awkwardly right-side-up
to munch on bloodworms,

the small tetras, their red bird-of-paradise stripes—
the speckled-green dwarf frog that springs up,
marionette-like from its dead man’s crawl.

All of them
flash their light in this
humid greenhouse,
fresh with the murmurs and
burbles of one thousand conversations—
I listen.

They glide, uninterested
in my patronage.

Five glass fish flitter past 
and I watch their bodies
contort around a sinewy
spine. 

Diminutive brown hearts
beat so rapidly, 
I think they will explode.

And I think about floating,
and about the ways of things,

and I know what they say
and I do not know 
what they say:

but the day is so warm,
and the trees are so happy,

waving their arms and
yawning. The fish
and the plants are talking
to each other,
so why interrupt?

I content myself 
with opening the window,
and sit down to write this poem,
this prayer. 

Bracha K. Sharp has been published in the American Poetry Review, the Birmingham Arts Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry (where she was a nominee for Orison Books’ Best Spiritual Literature, Wild Roof Journal, The Closed Eye Open, and the Thimble Literary Magazine, among others. She placed first in the national Hackney Literary Awards and she was a finalist in the New Millennium Writings Poetry Awards. As her writing notebooks seem to end up finding their way into different rooms, she is always finding both old pieces to revisit and new inspirations to work with. She is a current reader for the Baltimore Review. www.brachaksharp.com

On the Edge


On the edge of an ocean front property in Maine,
at the foot of a red spruce,
are two partially submerged dress shoes.
They were there nine years ago,
the last time we stayed,
and even then we only just about
made out they were wing-tips.

Their laces are still stiff with rigor mortis,
each tongue too close to its sole to speak,
their eyes cataracts of lichen.
They do not see the tern glide, hover,
then dive for its food.

Their mouths no longer welcome the human foot,
only the twig and fruit of that spruce
they are slowly becoming.

Surely, we thought, the quaking aspens
will tell us the mystery of this why and how and when,
but soon enough we stopped listening,
went on with our day,
becoming ourselves again
only as we neared the edge of holy darkness,
and took off our shoes.

John Hopkins has been an English teacher for forty-two years. He was the New England Association of Teachers of English (NEATE) poet of the year in 2008. John’s poetry has appeared in Commonweal, Saint Anthony Messenger, The National Catholic Reporter, The  Leaflet, Sr. Melannie Svoboda’s blog, “Sunflower Seeds,” The Catholic Poetry Room, Amethyst Review, and Father Timothy Joyce’s book Celtic Quest. For the past six years, John has been a Benedictine Oblate affiliated with Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham, Massachusetts. He loves to read, write letters, tramp the Blue Hills, and play pickleball with Kerry, his amazing wife, and mother of their wonderful children: Kate, Danny, and Brian. In February of 2021, John’s first book of poems, Celtic Nan, was published, and in February of 2023, his second book, Make My Heart a Pomegranate was published. You can reach John at brotherjohnnyhop@gmail.com.

Night Crossing
 
Long ago, late stars and oars upon the water,
a mountain drank its own reflection
and all eyes turned
toward the other side.
The ferryman set course
 
for the flickering lights, everyone
a stranger to the next in line, a diplomat’s wife,
autumn’s child, a seeker
of truth in the dark. Will you go
all the way to the top? she asked, will you take
the cable car as far
 
as the sun? The night leaned toward her
and told her the fare. She belonged
to the neighboring country, her money
wasn’t worth the wind
 
that was restless that night, that rippled
the flags on freedom’s pier.
But what is the price of beauty,
she said as her shadow
raised her from her seat, how much
against eternity?

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Arizona where he has developed great affection for the desert. Back in his European life he made many trips by rail around Austria and beyond. One recent book, The Flying Desert, brings his watercolors together with poems and highlights the bird life where now lives.

Who
 
I was convinced it was an omen,
seeing the owl on a plank
in the apartment complex—
wisdom, wisdom.
 
Making my way to the diner
for an evening soup and sandwich
I thought of how this wisdom
might manifest itself—
 
could it possibly be strong enough
to save me, save the world?
That’s asking for a lot from wisdom,
but I trusted my instincts,
 
now that I was on the verge
of a sharp increase in intellectual heft.
I said to the moon Be nice,
great things are coming—wisdom, wisdom.

Tim Suermondt’s sixth full-length book of poems A Doughnut And The Great Beauty Of The World came out in 2023 from MadHat Press. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, Smartish Pace, The Fortnightly Review, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

Metamorphosis 

 
As swans float through a shadow
bearing the heavy curve of the moon. 
As the earth unfolds the flowers' 
weightless brilliance.
 
That is how I thought the Light 
would come for me. Would glide 
upon me wordlessly, wanting 
love, perhaps, or resignation. 
 
And I would assent—to everything,
every list and slant of beauty:
 
blue wind with yellow birds,
the drifting shore of dawn, 
the green speech of a root.
 
Each small, surprising loss of heaviness.

Patricia Nelson has worked with the “Activist” group of poets in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her newest book, Monster Monologues, is due out in 2024 from Fernwood Press.

A Gentle Rain


The morning’s rain, 
like love, does not insist on its own way—

patiently, kindly, permeates itself 
down among roots of daisy and of oak
where it does the most good.

A mystery: something that ends well.  

We never get to see
the intimate congress of rain with root
in chambers underground,

yet from childhood I recall
the preacher in his long black robe,
halving a loaf by hand, raising a cup—

how he spoke of outward, visible signs
of inward, invisible grace.

Gentlest of rains settles in 

only as soil allows.  It is not arrogant
or rude.  It will reach 
the roots of life when it reaches them.

Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions.  His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and Covid Spring, Vol. 2 (Hobblebush Books). His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications.

dusk’s trees 


through still 
ness dance 

their pur

pling-black twigs
against fading s 

ilver sky and 
here just

there my

limbs my bones my
pumped blood my

pul

sing net of
veins en 

mesh 

on 

death’s

edge with

birth

Mark Goodwin is a poet-sound-artist, fiction-maker & re-thinker who speaks and writes in differing ways. He is also a walker, balancer, climber, stroller … and negotiator of places.  Mark has a number of books & chapbooks with various poetry houses, including Leafe Press, Longbarrow Press, & Shearsman Books. His latest chapbooks are: to ‘B’ nor as ‘tree’ (Intergraphia, Sheffield, October 2022) & Of Gone Fox (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, Clevedon, April 2023). Mark lives with his partner on a narrowboat just north of Leicester, in the English Midlands. He tweets poems from @kramawoodgin, and some of his sound-enhanced poetry is here: https://markgoodwin-poet-sound-artist.bandcamp.com