Amethyst Review

Ember, Nest, Gesture 

IRELAND, 6^TH CENTURY: Come daybreak, the last star winks out. Brother Kevin paces among the abbey kettles. Stirring, then seasoning, back and forth he goes, pacing, then pausing, to re-roll a sleeve. A vein pulses blue at his bony wrist. Throughout the day he’ll scour back-burnered dregs of gruel, and later, leftover lentils. 

It’s a prayer composed of soaking and scraping, burnished to gleam. 

By day’s end, perhaps worry besets him. So many needs to pray for. His narrow cell requires he angle his body until one lanky arm extends through the window: thus, he stands, his body a cross. Wind from the north chafes fingertips already swollen with sores. Reflexively, his other hand hovers, impelled to scratch—Don’t, he thinks, curling a fist, T’will make the chilblains seep. 

*

NORTH AMERICA, 18^TH CENTURY: Beneath starry skies a woman stoops to remove a live coal from the tribal fire. Perhaps she prays as she lays it atop the flat stone anchored inside a buffalo horn. She adds cottonwood sticks for long-burning fuel. Damp moss provides insulation, and a circle of wood seals the horn’s throat, isolating the ember in waiting darkness. Perhaps she sighs. She might yearn to be her people’s front runner, called to carry the fire for their next encampment. The original spark dates back hundreds of years. Rekindled, each blaze sustains a sacred continuity. Miles from where she now kneels, the appointed runner will eventually retrieve the burning heart of the coal, coax fresh tinder into welcoming flames.

*

Heroes, both. I am all admiration. Do my people feel carried, well-fed, warm? What words can I speak today to elicit figurative heat and light for them? Restive thoughts distract me. My hands clench, unable to fully entrust my loved ones to God’s care. 

I forget every tale carries the star as well as the singe, promise alongside pain. 

*

KEVIN, AGAIN: Throughout the night he prays, hands raised, festering skin forgotten. Legend recounts a female blackbird alights on his wrist: stark iridescent sheen. Perhaps she strokes his scabs with her beak, easing the fiery itch. She must have calmed his urge to pace as—so the story goes—she builds a nest in his palm, then lays a clutch of blue-green eggs speckled with russet. 

Freeze-frame that whimsical scene: a living statue cradling marvel. Hatching takes two weeks. Consider standing that still: an itch you can’t reach, those pins-and-needles, then the burden of numbness. Ideally, divine strength shouldsustain the monk. But at what cost? Notice those flagging triceps, that snarl of hair darkened by sweat. As poet Seamus Heany once wrote:

A prayer his body makes entirely/ For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird.

*

Perhaps you’ve seen Tableaux Vivant, or “living pictures.” The 19th-century parlor game eventually went public, moving from homes to the stage. Actors, mimes, or dancers would pose, unspeaking, as if captured in amber. The still life might represent a famous person, event, mood, or era. 

One insomniac night, while worrying about my family, I sensed an invitation. I was to picture each person uniquely posed with Love, then close my eyes and mentally leave them there. In the dark. Like an ember enclosed for safekeeping. 

But how to begin? The memory of a dance I’d once seen inspired me. Imagine a man clothed in white, at sunrise. With Kevin-esque arms, he extends the straight edge of a linen cape behind his body, at shoulder height. Backlit, the fabric ripples below his outstretched hands. When he draws his arms together over his chest, linen sheathes his body. That move approximates a protective presence made visible: a little tent of weightless shimmer. 

On that sleepless night I pictured my fretful self likewise encompassed. Then I positioned my people, one by one, with God: a troubled grandchild, piggyback; an anguished friend facing outward, unaware a scarred hand would soon tap her shoulder. 

I gazed until the peace of each image prayed through me. 

Words a certain rabbi once spoke before healing the blind deepened my resolve: “Do you believe I can do this?” he asked. Oh yes.

I find repeating this question often evokes new tableaux. One day, riled over political venom, I pictured the speakers as kindergarteners, myself included. We curled on mats the color of sherbet, our lips sweetened by cookie crumbs. My anger softened. Praying for enemies felt doable.

Such imaging may sound fanciful, even misguided, but early church leaders used the term perichoresis, “to dance or flow around,” to depict the dynamics ever-pulsing within the Trinity. The root word has evolved to mean “choreography.”  

It’s not, however, foolproof. I usually visualize outdoor settings peopled with those I love (or loathe), each uniquely connecting with the Divine in timeless, static tranquility. Yet when real-life crises erupt in their lives, I resemblethe weary monk plagued by chilblains, tempted to claw what hurts, worry the scab. The wound seeps, and my psyche primes itself to contend for only the best outcome. Let me direct! 

I have to mentally sweep closed a black velvet curtain. Visually disengage. Much as I want to watch heaven at work, faith insists Mercy continues to move behind the curtain. I re-summon an image of Kevin, no longer pacing, almost maternal. I think of the woman who yearns to run with the fire. Inside that buffalo horn the hidden ember conserves its heat—over time and miles—vital, yet stilled, in the waiting darkness. God of stillness and fire, keep me steady. Readied.But oh, this terrible in-between: the freeze and the singe, the hour-as-is and yet-to-be-seen. What if I lose the friend I love before she can sense the hand of God poised near her shoulder? Ah. Picture them both one frame ahead, her name legible on that outstretched palm. No nesting bird there, but a place for her gaze to rest: the promise of life to come. 

Laurie Klein’s prose has appeared in Brevity, Beautiful Things, Tiferet, Cold Mountain Review, The Windhover, and elsewhere. Winner of the Thomas Merton Prize and a Pushcart nominee, she is the author of Where the Sky Opens (Poeima/Cascade). Her second collection for The Poeima Poetry Series, House of 49 Doors: entries in a life, will be published by Cascade in 2024.She lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Bharata & the Deer


In my last life I was a politician — a good one —
they named a city after me — its streets swept
& beggarless — even the stray dogs’ fur shone —
but I walked away from everything —
homes hung with Mughal silks
the laugher of children in sunlit courtyards
my wife’s body — warm from dreams at dawn.

I cast off my clothing like old lives
& sat by the river Chakra — its waters 
washing over shaligrams — ammonites
sacred to Vishnu, tightly coiled snakes
in centuries-deep sleep — & I meditated 
till my mind was a shoreless sea —
thoughts darting away like silver fish. 

But prarabdha karma had yet to fruit 
& I was wrenched from bliss —
a doe damp from a lion’s breath 
lept over the river & died beside me 
& out from under her a living fawn —
I’d never seen anything so vulnerable —
wet leaf-mulch eyes looking up at me. 

I fed him milk & later grass from my hand
& we walked in the forest & when he tired
I carried his fine bones on my shoulders
& I when I slept, he curled up by my flank —
soothing my sleep with his pulse —
& when I meditated I saw him —
nose black & wet as a shaligram. 

When death came, it was a storm
& my last thought was of my deer, 
shaking in the rain, so I was born a deer — 
but a jatismara remembering past lives — 
so I skitter through the mustard field 
to the banks of the Gandaki where the rishis are
to drink the water rippling with their wisdom.

Charlotte Couse lives in Wareham, on the south-west coast of the UK. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Southampton University and works as an acupuncturist and practitioner of Chinese herbal medicine. 

Not Afraid of Bees

There is enough complexity of life
in this micro-creature
to still the gaze 
and protract the 
ordinary progression
of time.

There is enough simplicity of being
in the observer
to abandon all assumptions
about the observed, 
an open-ended question
about whom is whom.

There is enough nakedness of intention
to challenge the usual
apprehensions
on both sides,
in both dimensions.

There is enough congruence
between the iridescence of 
paper wings and the iris 
of an eye, to birth 
mystics for years to come. 

But who is the mystic?
Is it the bee?

Honey and fear mingle
in one shared aliveness,
one sweetness,
one wariness. 

The bee leaves me alone
without really leaving me alone.

Cortney Collins lives on the Front range of Colorado with her two beloved feline companions, Pablo (after Neruda) and Lida Rose (after a barbershop quartet song from The Music Man.) She is the founder of the pandemic-era virtual poetry open mic and community Zoem, which ran for two years and produced an anthology of its poets’ work, Magpies: A Zoem Anthology, of which she is co-editor. Her poetry has been published by South Broadway Press, Sheila-Na-Gig, 24hour Neon Mag, and other various print and online journals. 

Impatient Spring


Warm morning light eases the transition
from melting snow to winter lawn.
Four robins skip across the turf,
pausing to peck at both soil and snow,
ignoring juncos and wrens
that forage for dropped seeds
below a feeder monopolized
by cardinal, titmouse, and chickadee.

I step outside for the morning paper,
greeted by the call of another robin
high in the white oak that towers
over the yard.  Snow is still banked
beside the driveway, witness to shoveling
during last week’s introduction to February.
Beside it and below the oak lies bare lawn.
The robin calls to me, as if to say
snow may fall again, but we are here,
and there is no stopping spring.

Ken Gierke writes primarily in free verse and haiku. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming both in print and online in such places as Amethyst Review, As It Ought to Be Magazine, Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Breakfast, and Silver Birch Press. Glass Awash, his first collection of poetry, was published by Spartan Press in 2022. His website: https://rivrvlogr.com/

Roots

                          
I’ve been soaking them in a wheelbarrow, 
a little like bathing a baby,
rubbing off any remaining dirt 
to see their vital darkness,  
smell their resin, 
feel their bumps, U-
turns tapered like tusks,
reaching like rays of light.

A buckthorn’s jagged root 
the length of my keyboard 
seemed ancient and lonely.
I scraped off the dark red bark,
peeled off the softer layer of phloem,
then, whittled a blocky crescent moon 
out of the lemon-yellow wood, which,

when it lived in this moist New England 
ground among voles, fungi, and sow bugs,
did not rot; while my father lies 
in his Jerusalem grave;
and our forebears mingle 
in the fertile soil of Poland.

Some nights, I hear them calling me in Yiddish,
telling me, I think, to rise from my warm bed
for some kind of familial duty;
and I promise them I will 
finish the sculpture.

Joel Moskowitz, an artist and retired picture framer, is writing poems about living in a house at the edge of a forest in Massachusetts. His poems have appeared​ in The Comstock Review, Ibbetson Street Press, J Journal, Midstream, Naugatuck River Review, The Healing Muse, MuddyRiverPoetryReview.com, BostonPoetryMagazine.com, AmethystMagazine.org and Soul-Lit.com. He is a First Prize winner of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire National Contest. 

The Substance of Things Not Seen 

we begin 
here
in the middle of the ocean 
clinging to 
whatever will float 

a rock 
a leaf
a voice from the door 
we hold
to the scent of his old clothes 
hoping his face will stay 
hold to the 
stumps of flowered walls and 
tar-papered floors 
our faith 
on wooden angels 
and pockets of gin 

on pomade braids and 
processions of little girls in 
communion white dresses 
on cornbread skillets and 
pots for sunday greens 
we cling to the spirits that hold to 
the bodies of chairs 
the shadows of halls 
the blue lines of paper 

shades that lie in 
the folds of veils 
and rings
and locks of hair 

the substance of things 
not seen
the evidence of things 
not known 

a rock
a leaf
a voice from the door 

a tide 
of salt 
and stone. 

Deborah A. Bennett is an American poet who was long-listed for The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award for 2022. Her work is spiritual in nature and inspired by her life-long affinity for solitary walks in the woods.

Adherent


Exaggerated emotions like in the Big Boss house 
are kosher for capturing eyeballs 
but the meatspace has other exigencies.

The unfalsifiable often belong to faith 
and its fasteners. Those on the circuit 
do not wish to validate it. 

From the cut of his jib, I know that co-traveler 
also, a seeker and I share a dialect—
the dialect of disciples.

Our paradigm isn’t to question the ways of
the cosmic; we are in a lilt with lauds. Our 
pursuit caps at His presence—intrinsic or imagined.

Sanjeev Sethi has authored seven books of poetry. His latest is Wrappings in Bespoke (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK, August 2022). He has been published in over thirty countries. His poems have found a home in more than 400 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He edited Dreich Planet #1, an anthology of Indian poets for Hybriddreich, Scotland, in December 2022. He is the recipient of the Ethos Literary Award 2022. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. In 2023, he won the First Prize in a Poetry Competition by the prestigious National Defence Academy, Pune, during its 75^th anniversary in the “family members category.” He lives in Mumbai, India.

X/ Twitter @sanjeevpoems3 || Instagram sanjeevsethipoems

Canterbury Ghost 

I could sleep in the fireplace.
Flat out, fingertips

to toes. I saw him there.
The resident ghost is agitated,

unsolid and pale.
He shakes my plate and cup

with thought alone.
Unfazed, I want to talk.

Not before I sip my first
cup of Jamaican coffee.

Not before my first bite
of my fruit scone, a mini monster,

poised to expand and conquer.
It’s surprisingly light, crumbly,

unlike the ghost beside me
asking for a piece.

I explain that ghosts don’t eat.
He growls that no one told him that.

I laugh and offer him a mouthful.
Confused, he disappears.

Paul Attwell lives in Richmond, London and is recovering from doing a Masters in Creative Writing with the OU. Paul loves to read and is a fan of Startrek. He spends time as servant to his cat, Pudsey.

No Earthbound Thing

The Cantus Mariales now have ended. 
I’m gazing at the heavens, and they seem
serene, unchanging. They are not. A bird

swims through that vast expanse as if it had
no project to set foot on land. The pale
pink clouds of dawn are white now, on their blue 

unbroken canvas. At their feet – the squat 
and jumbled realm of earthbound things, which are
my stamping grounds. If there should come a day

when more than light descended on the globe
as we pursued our business – when the clouds 
might open to reveal some entity

whose home is unlike ours – I would not bat
an eye, I would not spill my cup of tea:
each newborn instant threatens it. Above

our busy heads, the sky calls out to all
the dreamers, the far-sighted. And it says 
that it is quite unlike our world. The things 

that matter to us, it holds cheap. And we 
have little time for sunrise in the East,
but it comes daily. As the birds propel

themselves through air, I hear the singer yet.
He’s speaking of what’s holy. And my heart –
no earthbound thing – climbs up with every note. 

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.

The Artist’s Touch


The hawk affords no harbor for remorse.
It waits and captures, carries off, and feasts
in shady privacy on lesser beasts,
a practice owls and eagles both endorse.
The sparrows do not take long to come back.
Their raptor, after all, is feeding now,
not hunting. Parent birds show fledglings how
to peck at seedcakes, safe from an attack.
A feather and a strew of husks attest
to much hectic activity, a lull,
the continuity of breed and cull,
those specialties of weather, need and nest.
There’s not a breath of wind, each leaf in place,
held still remorselessly, as if by grace.

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/