Amethyst Review

Prayers

In evening shadows
she finds them 
in the gumption
of fallen sparrows

too young to fly,
scrambling for cover,
seeking in the spasm
of their terror

the stillness of a stone.
She finds them 
gleaming in the garnet 
eyes of gargoyles.

She muses about 
their stirring
subtle as a pulse,
occurring for no
 
apparent reason,
their stirring
deep within the ink-
black darkness
 
of the rosebud,	.
their stirring of pink,
pink at first so pale
it’s hardly pink at all.

Larry D. Thomas served as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.  He has published several collections of poetry, including As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems (Texas A&M University Press 2015).  Journals in which his poetry has been published include The Windhover, Christian Science Monitor, Southwest Review, Poet Lore, and Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith.

A Blessing for Hands

Hands born to swivel on the wrist; to lift
each item needing lifting, big or small;
to bend or straighten, push or pull; to shift
a weight or cargo, throw a stick or ball;
hands made to catch; to play along the rift,
to find a seam; to feel how overall,
a thing is rough or smooth; to set adrift;
to rescue; hands that helped a child to crawl;
that held a tree or table; gave a gift;
that soothed a tear, a baby’s caterwaul;
that caught, combined, caressed; that made short shrift
of mealtime; that refused to break or maul;
be blessed. Be strong. Be delicate. Be swift.

John Claiborne Isbell was born in Seattle, USA and later lived in Europe and the United Kingdom, where he went to school. He has been teaching languages for some time, teaching French and German at universities in the United Kingdom and the United States. He has published various books, including a volume of poetry, Allegro, with a picture of a cello on the cover. Two more books came out recently, both about women authors.

Prayer

I tried to solve the problem
by talking to God

Being organized about quests
First I parsed the Psalms
Then I tried silence
And ended up with cold fog inside
Pressing me down or maybe 
Holding me up

So that I look up and see the hawk
Gliding on the morning
Blue sky richer than gold
In circles of such joy

Rachel Ann Russell is a working on a Masters at Wesley Theological Seminary, and besides poetry is also a biblical storyteller. She has been published most recently in Calla Press and Christian Courier. She loves reading, chocolate, and her family but not in that order. 

Reflections

she said as she lay there
do not worry

she will be with them in reflections
of light through mottled stained glass
colliding in sun breezes
in front of me, and
spill through the dark
windows
that will carry her whispered hopes
for my life, and
travel in circles behind
my eyes
she said, don’t you see them?

she looked around elated
at my unseen light, confused-
bye for now

her last breath.

A writer and poet, Mary Baca Haque prefers to capture the essence of the natural world, coupled with elements of love and peace, hence her forthcoming publication, Painting the Sky with Love, (MacMillan, Feiwel & Friends Fall 2024). You can find her work featured most recently in the Wild Roof Journal along with the Cosmic Daffodils Journal (2023). Additionally, she has been featured in a travel book and a previous publication titled Madalynn the Monarch and her Quest to Michoacán. She loves to experiment with all forms of poetry, spend time with family and travel and resides in Chicago, IL with her partner Bob and her mini goldendoodle Georgina.  

2 Peter 3

“Consider that our Lord’s patience is directed toward salvation.” – 2 Peter 3:15


For once in church (before, I think, the Sacrament)
In silence deep and cast adrift in prayer,
I folded in upon the immanent
For just a moment (maybe more) and there
Was made of my own heartbeat so aware
As to preclude all else surrounding me
While sensing in the steady thrum its share
Within a tapping in eternity—
A tapping patient, tender, soft upon
The soul, as if of one preoccupied
With all the sad and silly goings-on
Of someone whom they love and try to guide
Beyond the lush entanglements of pride;
The tapping of a God whose strange delight
Is there to wait until I’m safe inside,
No longer wandering aimless through the night.

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, U.S. Catholic, America Magazine, The Society of Classical Poets, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He was the 2nd Place winner in the Catholic Literary Arts 2022 Assumption of Mary poetry contest and 1st Place winner in its Advent: Mary Mother of Hope contest later that year. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.

Shades of Majesty 

What is the colour of majesty?
Gold or purple seem too safe
What about purple draped with pink
That picks out marshmallow forms
Squishy, porous, shielding sharpness 
A purplish-pink panorama, painted by light
Or white in relief against darker shadowing under a pale yellow glow
Hammered silver topped with white under a translucent pink veil
Grey with more white floating above
Or bright white with shadings of blue grey
Shimmering like silver set off by shadowed secrets 
Deep blue with hazy white and the occasional fleck of yellow gold
Shades of blue, gentling into a lightening green
Blue fronted with purple, with orange-pink overtones
Perhaps just grey, messy and indistinct, frayed at the edges, enveloping 
Or how about black     fading gradually into a more defined grey
rising into a deepening blue

Before night overtakes
And colours are memories
It simply doesn’t matter… is the answer
I’ve looked towards those mountains
At every time of day now
And     visible or not
They’re always there
Majestic

Grant Shimmin is a South African-born poet resident in New Zealand since 2001. He counts humanity, the natural world, and the relationship between them as poetic passions. He has work published/forthcoming at Roi Faineant Press, Does it Have Pockets, The Hooghly Review, underscore_magazine, Dreich and elsewhere.

To My Reincarnation


Dear Sir or Madam, and I have no preference to state, 
please find enclosed herewith one soul, used 
but, I think, reasonably maintained.

The owners, if any, before me did not see it fit 
to leave a note, but I believe it was quite 
well regarded and not too badly treated

It has been serviced regularly, while in my care, 
if not frequently. There are some blemishes, 
though no major faults of which I am aware.

It has loved, and has been loved, although
whether it would recognise its loved ones 
if they met again, that I do not know.

It is, I will admit, long out of warranty, 
But if you treat it well it will give you years 
of faithful service, as it has done me.

P.S. When the date finally appears for 
you to pass it on, please do feel free 
to copy in this note to your successor.

Edward Alport is a retired teacher and proud Essex Boy. He occupies his time as a poet, gardener and writer for children. He has had poetry, stories and articles published in a variety of webzines and magazines and BBC Radio. He sometimes posts snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse.

All the Ishmaels


I think of all the Ishmaels, nomads 
of deserts, of seas, as I walk these streets at night. 
A rain has rinsed the fallen leaves and now 
it is so still I must remind myself 
not to trust the comfort this silence brings. 
Ishmael who learned to tune himself 
to the whispers of the desert wind, 
to the rhythm of a schooner rising 
and falling through green hillocks of the sea. 
I suppose we are all at sea, somewhere 
between horizons, following in the path 
of one man’s evil, another’s God, watchful, 
hunched neckless in our peacoats, listening 
for signals in the fog.

James Green is a retired university professor and administrator.  He has published six chapbooks of poetry and individual poems have appeared in literary journals in Ireland, the UK, and the USA. His previous works have been nominated for a Puschcart Prize, “Best of the Net” and the Modern Language Association Conference on Christianity Book of the Year; and, his chapbook titled Long Journey Home: Poems on Classical Myths won the Charles Dickson Prize sponsored by the Georgia Poetry Society. His website can be found at http://www.jamesgreenpoetry.net.

Moving Colors


At an exhibit by Grace Walker Goad, 
autistic artist of Nashville.


The color pink unfolds
over her painting, a hue
like the two vinyl gloves 
I wore cleaning my parents' house
before it was sold―
pink as our living room window
mirroring early spring buds
where, drapes buttoned up,
a scarf of wind on the chimney,
Mom sat in winter
in yellow lamplight.
Another painting's the color
of our 70s kitchen
in marigold-yellow,
like wild mustard 
staining hills behind our backyard
or Mom's blouse filling with sun,
opening the window to wake me.
Because the painter's autistic
"with lack of muscle control,"
she paints only abstracts―
Everything's communicated
through shape and hue
and swaths of sheer color.
I try to imagine 
the artist's hand
opening onto the canvas 
for the first time, like being born 
again in the sky―
For it's possible
to be born over and over.
And as I stroll down the gallery hall
I too am filled up with color
as if it were spirit,
by the time I leave,
taking concrete steps
to the parking lot―
into cool air,
under all-knowing stars,
in the late light of a blue moon.

David Cazden‘s poetry has appeared in various places such as Passages North, Nimrod, The Connecticut Review, Crab Creek Review, Fugue, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The McNeese Review, Barely South Review and elsewhere. He was poetry editor of the magazine, Miller’s Pond, for five years. David lives in Danville, Kentucky USA.

Fish Food


	“And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” ―Jonah 1:17a (RSV)

	“A Lobster Diver in Cape Cod Says a Humpback Whale Scooped Him Up
and Spat Him Out.” ―NPR story, June 12, 2021


They said, inking their scrolls, that Jonah snoozed 
below deck while a storm swelled and the roiling sea
threatened to splinter the suddenly unstable ship.
But who really believed, devising this scripture

hundreds of years later, that Jonah snored 
under God’s disappointed eye as desperate sailors
tested every seaman’s skill and uttered every prayer
they knew to save their battered boat? We don’t

need CSI to see through such feeble perjury. What scribe
supposed this spin was essential to selling the story? Jonah,
on the lam from God, a last-minute fare on a westerly cruise,
couldn’t have imagined evading the Lord’s command,

wouldn’t have shuddered had the Coast Guard drawn astern
and bullhorned his name into the wailing wind. We can note
that Jonah manned up in the waves’ wildest moments
and owned his transgression, told the crew to give him up,

but his capitulation doesn’t merit a late-news live feed;
many prophets came around when their options dissipated
like the raging whitecaps once Jonah was tossed into the foam. 
The same may be said for Jonah’s contrition in the belly

of the giant God dispatched to gulp him out of the brine.
Who among us doubts that Jonah in the dripping darkness
pled for deliverance, pledged any sacrifice, promised obedience?
Anything to get out. The depth of Jonah’s conversion might

concern us if we don’t also consider our own reflected faith. 
Instead, chew on this: God knew Jonah wouldn’t be the last
to flee a call, knew the slackers and deniers would multiply
over time. Perhaps the episode’s design wasn’t to school Jonah

but to deter future watery escapes by refining the marine diet.
To great quantities of krill, crustaceans and modest fish add
an occasional human. Bony and brittle, sure, perhaps too bitter,
but an evolutionary gurgle that should make us pause at the shore,

cause us to question how far we ought to swim or if it’s safe to sail
toward the false safe harbor of our own distant Tarshish. 
Our whales will probably puke us back into the sea. But maybe not.
You know what they say about creatures, once they get a taste.

Larry Pike’s poetry has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Fathom Magazine, St. Katherine Review, and twice previously in Amethyst Review. Finishing Line Press published his collection Even in the Slums of Providence (October 2021). He lives with his wife, Carol, in Glasgow, Kentucky.