Amethyst Review

Still Life


The view from a window changes
while that of a painting next to it doesn’t

‘what comes to us has chosen us’
she says setting down her coffee cup.

Bruegel’s returning hunters lean into each snowy step
or just the step we see assuming others
ankle-deep in snow’s deceptions
masking known to unknown ground as the hill drops away.

Leaning into steps aids balance with caution
of slicks, trips, errant falls
their long-pole spears hung with rabbits 
over shoulders, in front probing for the next step
a pack of dogs following nose to ground

the hunter’s faces turned away from us
in a scene with dozens of people none face us
only the next step’s hidden offerings
some walking iced-over ponds and streams
some skating, some fishing through holes in the ice
we are the scene’s only witness
a face seeing itself.

Slowly we begin to feel chosen
by a frozen moment outside ordinary time
yet within it not as contrast
but as what is there naked
saved for us caught up in a moment’s motions
not seeing its stillness.

Outside the window seductions of movement,
its singularity masking our duplicity, our multiplicity
tasks us.  We are only a white van racing a grey road 
for a few seconds. An erratic scattering 
of bright yellow-orange leaves falling like impulses,
each a glance of sunlight at just this angle
missing some branches, fenceposts 
favoring others.
Overhead is a sizeable hawk, wings outstretched
in a turn: we see both wings at once      one above
one below its body neither flying nor falling.

Don Brandis lives quietly outside Seattle writing poems.  He has a degree in philosophy and a long fascination with Zen.  Some of his poems have been published by Black Moon Magazine, Amethyst Review, Blue Unicorn, Leaping Clear, and others.  A book of his poems is out  – Paper Birds (Unsolicited Press, 2021).

Renaissance


Listen / you hear fine ribs of stone / that vault and arch and fan to stars / soldering a cage of sound / that holds you not against your will / but from a hope of resonance / so lose yourself in these mazy lines / catch hold of a thread / then let it go / for there are many and which will lead you / deliver you to reasons why / basses grounding / tenors the touchstones / holding firm / countered by alto false relations / asking the questions you dare not / trebles probing the highest bounds / you cannot think that angels sing like this / they do not seek / but annunciate that one concerted purpose / yet fearlessly these voices twine / untwine entwine and intertwine / their figments of eternity / until in a flourish of infinite fullness / the singing is done / and you are undone / and at that crux of perfection / and dissolution / you are reborn / in the twist of a Tudor rose //

Alice Stainer is a lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing on a visiting student programme in Oxford, UK, and is also a musician and dancer. You can read her work in Black Nore Review, Atrium, Feral Poetry, After…, The Storms, and The Dawntreader, amongst other places. Recently nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize and the Forward Prize, she is in the process of submitting her debut pamphlet. She tweets poetically @AliceStainer.

In this dream, are we the seer or the seen 


the rider or the driven,
              the seizer or the seized? 

In this dream, are we the stillness
              or the motion, 
do we offer or partake? 

In this dream or in this waking, 
do we hear the sound or make it, 
              make our vow or break it? 

Are we one or two or more, 
are we movie or projector, 
              writer or director, 

do we look to the sun or turn away? 
Are we the water or the thirst? 
 

Karen Paul Holmes has two poetry books, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich). Her poems have appeared on The Writer’s Almanac, The Slowdown, and Verse Daily. Publications include Diode, Plume, and Valparaiso Review. She has twice been a finalist for the Lascaux Review’s Poetry Prize. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and spends time in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

Study of Falling Water


In the village when the sun 
has passed over my house,
I go to a place where women 
once washed clothes, and listen 
to the sounds of falling water.
The day hot on my skin, 
the stone smooth and worn, 
I imagine them meeting 
with woven baskets 
a hundred years ago.

Water flows through the village 
into a marble basin.
It falls in a heavy irregular stream —
water from the fountain endlessly falling.  
I take in its random pulse until
I am the fountain and the sound,
no longer battling against hard edges,
making my way gracefully, 
around and beyond.

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Helen Steenhuis has been living near Aix-en-Provence since 1989 working as an English language teacher. Her poems have appeared in The French Literary Review, Equinox: A Poetry Journal,The Poetry Library: Southbank Centre, London, and Cumberland River Review.

Spring Rain

There will come a day
when this winter rain will change
to spring rain
though you can't imagine it now,
here, where you are living
deep in January. 
There will come a day when the air
will soften
like soil thawing
and your skin will soften, too,
expanding,
the way roots tendril outward
sensing they will find welcome.
And you will tilt your face to the sky
and whisper: oh, here you are!
Here I am.

Jennifer Skogen is the author of the young adult series, The Haunting of Grey Hills, and her work has recently been featured in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Green Ink Poetry. Jennifer lives near Seattle, Washington, and goes hiking in beautiful places whenever it isn’t raining (and often when it is).

Echolocation


1.
Under a streetlight  
a rabbit splashes 
across a puddle 
surrounded by
melting snow.

2.
Pigeons spring into the sky 
blowing a circle of skittering leaves.

3.
Muffled thuds of rocks
knocked off a cliff 
pause over a lake
to disclose 
the white dots 
of mountain goats.

4.
Grasshoppers crackling above
the wheatgrass and needle and thread
camouflage the slower rattle,
the quieter rattle that is the humming
of the unhidden machine 
that runs everything.

Jeffrey Thompson was raised in Fargo, North Dakota, before it became a watchword for cool, and educated at the University of Iowa and Cornell Law School. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where he practices public interest law. His work has appeared or will appear in journals including North Dakota Quarterly, The Main Street Rag, Hole in the Head Review, The Tusculum Review, ONE ART, Maudlin House, Trampoline, Funicular, New World Writing Quarterly, and The Dodge His hobbies include reading, hiking, photography, listening to Leonard Cohen, and doom-scrolling the ruins of Twitter.

Intercession


Pollen becomes 
honey through the 
intercession 
of one bold bee.

My prayers for you
fluttering throne-
ward like the dove
sacrificed, rise
translated and
presentable
only by the breath 
of the Spirit, holy.

My part in this 
miracle is
no greater than 
buzzing among 
blossoms and seeds,
obedient. 

K.L. Johnston is an author, poet, and photographer whose work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, anthologies, and travel journals as well as a photo illustrated book of meditations.  She holds a degree in English and Communications from the University of South Carolina and her wide-ranging interests contribute to her writing and art.  Her work explores the connections of humanity with the physical, spiritual, and liminal places she has stumbled into in her travels and in her own back yard.   She devotes her unscheduled time to writing and satisfying her curiosity about people and this planet. You can find out more by visiting her Facebook page “A Written World”.

From the Spear Side


Today a bumpy veil of clouds
   drifts, as though designed by a child’s
chalk-rubbing, tracing unlevel ground, 
the subtle rawness of some shale-
   turned-slate, flat but foliated.

   How their gas absorbs the light
and fastens it to blue, brocaded
   shimmer, sheen and blaze—not quite
a sun itself but its conveyance!

   What’s embossed but the faults and flaws
we fixate on—one odd misstatement, 
                                                           then
regrets recycled without pause:
remorse for true harm, shame for gauche
   gestures, thinking we’re too grossly
                                                          marred?
That gash, capacious, opens to stars.

Deborah J. Shore has spent most of her life housebound or bedridden with sudden onset severe ME/CFS. This neuroimmune illness has made engagement with and composition of literature costly and, during long seasons, impossible. She has won poetry competitions at the Anglican Theological Review and the Alsop Review. Her most recent or forthcoming publications include THINK, Thimble Lit, Ekstasis, Reformed Journal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Christian Century, Relief Journal, and the Sejong Cultural Society.

Objects are Farther Away Than They Appear

All day there were tears about to come about to burst or leak or crash through something that sits in my heart a full magenta red vermillion blood crimson water balloon pulsing bouncing soft and consistent. This private gentle thudding of remembering pushing membrane walls. Always I have been this way swimming diving deeper seeing only those lighted sea creatures soundless and electric, thinking I would land somewhere but never stopping.    When you were here there were always moments of relief from my no-reason-for-it sadness.  Moments of forgetting. Bliss and quiet. 

All day I remember I am getting wherever I am going without you. No wonder I didn’t want to start this thing. Getting out of bed alone. Now decades long the filament between us more real than not. Precious metal fishing line transparent silver violet yellow gold citrine sparkling.  The water deep beneath my feet lapping.  Together we knew each rock and its echoing vibrations. In the mountain only we could walk. Paired footsteps in its memory.

Alone the journey gets so dark. Velvet black. Now blind I am feeling less and less afraid. Just curious.  The antennae of my skin leading me with love down inside the mountain. Nestled. Protected in its caves, in the wet sulfur smells. The expanse of water lapping along our rocks. I see these things and say these things. I am an inch away from seventy.  

Release the morning. 

Open to light.

Release the tears of a thousand seas. 

Heal me.

Bonnie Raphael is an artist and writer living in Thousand Oaks, California. She holds a master’s degree in art from California State University, Northridge, and a bachelor’s from Immaculate Heart College, formerly in Hollywood California – now closed, but very much alive in spirit. She is semi-retired from teaching, This is her first published poem. A lifelong Buddhist, she is grateful to Amethyst Review for the opportunity to share her work.