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amsterdamreview.bsky.social
Amsterdam Review
@amsterdamreview.bsky.social
2.4K followers 2.4K following 150 posts
A literary magazine publishing poetry, translations, fiction, interviews, essays, photography, and fine arts. Follow AR Tunes on Spotify.

amsterdamreview.org
EIC @danielnemo.bsky.social
Managing Editor @phebel.bsky.social
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M𝐎N𝐎C𝐇R𝐎M𝐄 𝐂I𝐍E𝐌A𝐓I𝐂

#Photography by 𝗝𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗻 @jasonbentsman.bsky.social in the Fall issue

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At once symbolic and immediate, grounded and searching, capturing not just what is seen, but what is felt beyond the edge of perception, Bentsman's photographs invite the viewer to discern where one sense gives way to the other—or whether the distinction even holds at all.
December 10, 2025 at 1:46 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"You hum your melody inside me. You kick your beat into my drumhead until just before the / break."

A poem by 𝗝𝗲𝗻𝗻𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗼 in the Fall 2025 issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity
​Your cry. New string. New bow. New hand. Keep playing your violin. On June 9th, 2023, at 8:09 a.m. you birth your wordless word into day. New branch cracking air from the / sterile / freeze. It’s so cold in the room I can almost see your breath as a shadow of smoke on the scrim. A Local Black Hole Serves Up an “Awe Moment.”
December 8, 2025 at 3:40 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
Read 𝗗𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝗺𝗼's @danielnemo.bsky.social new translation of 𝑨𝒖𝒕𝒖𝒎𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝑨𝒓𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒑𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒈𝒐 by Tomas Tranströmer, the second poem of his first book, 17 𝑷𝙤𝒆𝙢𝒔 (1954).

hataaliinotes.substack.com/p/autumnal-archipelago

#poetry #poetrycommunity #translation #Swedish #Transtromer
Storm The wanderer suddenly comes upon the huge ancient oak, like a petrified elk whose crown spans miles before the murky green stronghold of the September sea. Northern storm. The time when the rowanberry clusters ripen. Awake in the dark, you hear the constellations stamping in their stalls high above the trees.
December 5, 2025 at 1:42 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
What becomes of heroes when the war is over? In its lingering aftermath, a boy grapples with the shame of a father broken by his ordeal as a prisoner of war.

#flashfiction by 𝗔𝘁𝗲𝗳 𝗘𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗱 (transl 𝗘𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗺 𝗔𝗹-𝗝𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗺 @essamksa.bsky.social) in the Fall issue

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#writingcommunity #war
​The schoolyard walls closed in around me like a prison. At school, I recoiled every time they called my name, shame weighing me down. Everyone knew who my father was. To them, he was just the madman who roamed the village alleys at night. At home, my mother no longer asked why I was upset—she knew all too well. My father sat with us, but remained unreachable in his own world, inspecting his bread before forcing a smile. But the smile never lasted long, and he would struggle to swallow. At random intervals, without warning, he’d leap up and dart out the door, disappearing onto the narrow streets.
December 3, 2025 at 1:41 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"December has no scent, / its whitened landscape / is a far wall with iron bars / that have been gnawed."

Three poems by 𝗦𝗶𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗠𝘂𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵 @simonemuenchie.bsky.social and 𝗝𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗲 𝗞. 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲 in the Fall 2025 issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity
Breaking open the black egg, the lynx bred from scattered skulls was, like me, never wife nor lover, nor a girl costumed against a father's grasp, scolded for listening at keyholes. Instead, like Astarte and the Red Queen, I welcomed the ocelot in me, the ouroboros nestled in my throat. Now, I braid woodsmoke and thistle in my hair.
December 1, 2025 at 1:25 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
Read an #interview with 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗷𝗲 𝗞𝘂𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀 in the Fall issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity
Poems are a place where I don’t have to be afraid to make the reader feel uncomfortable or vulnerable along with me. I want to be holding hands with the reader as the floor gives out beneath us.
November 28, 2025 at 1:58 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"There is never / an ending to The End of the Affair, / to The Lover."

A poem by 𝗚𝗲𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝗻 𝗟𝗶 @georgia2newengland.bsky.social in the Fall 2025 issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity
​We are neither friend, nor enemy because those could be metaphor I might come to understand, something made by diction, by definition or perhaps by reference to a painting – But I am boiling water at temperatures too high for this tea, this bite of York peppermint. Is your yearning to regain control of my life why you text me again, conjuring
November 26, 2025 at 1:32 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
We stand against promoting and monetizing mediocrity at the expense of genuine talent and artistic freedom.

Read 𝙋𝙤𝙚𝙩𝙧𝙮 𝘾𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚: 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙁𝘼 𝙄𝙣𝙙𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙭 by 𝗗𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝗺𝗼 @danielnemo.bsky.social in the Fall issue.

#poetry #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #essays
What does it mean to be an artist today? What does it mean to be a poet? Amsterdam Review confronts the rise of the MFA industrial complex and the consequences of turning creativity into an institutionalized craft, in a call to remember that genuine art emerges from the unconscious, not from within the walls of academically sanctioned success.
November 24, 2025 at 2:35 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
Read 𝙊𝙛𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙡𝙤𝙪𝙙, a tale about the power of words in a digital world built to repress and forget.

#flashfiction by 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗲𝗹 𝗞. 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗶𝘀 in the Fall issue

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#writingcommunity
Raz Darden recrossed San Carlos Street carrying his lunch as he looked at the sign over his shop. “Antiques” was all it said and all it needed it to say. His niece, who lived on the other side of San Jose, always bugged him about making the sign read “Darden’s Antiques,” but he kept telling her the front of the building wasn’t long enough to support all the extra letters. Besides, he worried about having his name attached to the business for other reasons. He unlocked the front door, removed the handwritten “back in five minutes” sign, and walked to the counter. Raz took a glance at his dark, wrinkled face in the 19th-century mirror that hung on the far side of the shop. That, he thought, still needed to be removed.
November 19, 2025 at 1:54 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"is there a place in Dante's hell for the / algae that eat light / and beget this world one bone marrow / at a time"

A poem by 𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮 𝗶𝗿𝘂 in the Fall 2025 issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity
for your adoration, a woolly mammoth, intact with its last meal— all that unprocessed sugar, tucked in the ​cold wok of its belly, like your rage inside me, waiting as though waiting is a form of listening.
November 17, 2025 at 2:45 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Chop / ped / the beam / of sun / light / into burning blocks of wood / and piled them in the shape of a / p y r a m i d"

A poem by 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗲 𝗦𝗮𝗵𝗺𝘀 in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #poetrycommunity
Chop / ped / the beam / of sun / light into burning blocks of wood and piled them in the shape of a p y r a m i d and climbed to the top of its golden pinnacle e y e silently meditated on suffering and pain
November 14, 2025 at 2:03 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Here lives the ultimate wound: not exclusion but indifference, not anger but a shrug, the absence even of remembrance"

#nonfiction by 𝗚𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗼 𝗙𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗮 in the Fall issue

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#essays #philosophy #writingcommunity
Few admit it (it's a truth devoid of poetry), but the mere fact of falling in love is not very interesting. Circumstances vary, of course: but the moment before the shipwreck—the fleeting instant when you get to face something entirely different—is pretty much the same for anyone. The same goes for breaking up: we all tell stories about our loves, we share our feelings in order to know that we are not alone in being happy or suffering; and yet what does that accomplish? Each love is similar as is each abandonment, but no amount of facts can prepare us; and we will always think that our pain and pleasure are nobler, deeper, better: we recount our experiences, but deep down we tell each other that no one can ever understand this.
November 12, 2025 at 1:24 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"If / I were there I too would be nothing / But inside my body is a bearing were / One to arise."

A poem by 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘆 @seanthomasd.bsky.social in the Fall 2025 issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity
GS with lines from Alejandra Pizarnik's Paths of the Mirror and a Distant Autumn Something from the blood the way Y Or X shapes and shifts as if above The body is a cartography for all Who is not other. Who will be the one to Turn away or be the one to look And bear witness for the body on The ground, torn apart—​inocencia
November 10, 2025 at 2:17 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
#writingcommunity #opensubs #poetry #fiction #translations #essays #visualarts #litmag 🇳🇱
We're open! October 1 to December 31 - POETRY TRANSLATIONS FICTION ESSAYS VISUAL ARTS - www.amsterdamreview.org Send us the words that come to you, not those you go after.
November 7, 2025 at 3:54 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
A woman watches her niece build a terrarium, recreating life behind glass. A meditation on care, control, and the fragile spaces we try to keep alive as everything around us leans toward collapse.

#flashfiction by @suzyeynon.bsky.social in the Fall issue

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#writingcommunity
My eight-year-old niece visits and we spend the afternoon in the backyard, digging. She plunders with her hands, fingertips stabbing summer-dry dirt. I’ve forgotten, again, to buy her a shovel but she has a brittle plastic bucket I unearthed from the garage. She asks for things, one after the other. Do I have a glass jar? With a lid? Rocks? I fetch a jar from the kitchen, fast so that I don’t lose her within the square of the window. We kneel over grass, patchy in late August, and pick out pebbles. We find a lichen fallen from a branch which looks like a little tree once she places it in the jar. She yanks a maple leaf down and shreds it in one hand. She’s creating a scene behind glass. She’s making it for me so I thank her.
November 5, 2025 at 1:29 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Creation is a meeting point, / without it there is nothing— / For meaning is a quest in time."

A poem by 𝗗𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝗺𝗼​ @danielnemo.bsky.social in the Fall 2025 issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity
​​They say a dimple made its way from town to town across the world it saw as from behind a jammed window that won’t open—it passed as light through small apertures. But everybody was so busy with themselves they couldn’t see it. No one needed saving anymore.
November 3, 2025 at 1:43 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Perhaps in the distance waves sweep across the sand, or someone walks barefoot on the floor above. "

A poem by 𝗡𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝗭𝘂́𝗻̃𝗶𝗴𝗮​ (transl. 𝗠𝗲𝗴 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿) in the Fall 2025 issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity #translation
I don’t know how to write this; another month in his quicksand palm, where I lie freely, or would if I could. I think of summer’s end, of my grandmother teaching my mother to dry figs in the sun, and me sitting by the window wishing literature would die or kill me or both. I didn’t understand then that pistols aren’t loaded with words. It doesn’t matter. The sand exfoliates my pores and crystalizes on my eyelashes.
October 31, 2025 at 3:52 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Belief gave way / to grief, its purgatories. Who will look out for you / after you are grief enough / to believe in?"

A poem by 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲𝗮 𝗗𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗺𝗮𝗻 @chelsdingman.bsky.social in the Fall 2025 issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity
At dusk, the dusk holds the days apart. I am also other than I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness, Simone Weil wrote at the onset of WWII. Still, this almost-hour. Its snows. All that I still have to lose. What grain, what glacier, what child, what plain did I hand my emptiness that I would feel full? Still, I don’t understand why
October 29, 2025 at 1:28 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
A man reckons with the wreckage of his life—his marriage, his father’s illness, and his own lack of sense of purpose—in stream-of-consciousness prose that unfolds with lucidity and chaos.

#flashfiction by 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗼 𝗢𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗼𝘀 in the Fall 2025 issue

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#writingcommunity #fiction
My wife emailed how it was going; we are separated but not legally separated, because I wrecked her car and kept getting wrecked at home and then wrecked our marriage by getting wrecked at 11:09 a.m. on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, walking away from the house then all stoic after weepy to replace the empty bottles of beer she got me to drink at home so I wouldn't have to go out to get blitzed on my own, then buying the new booze, pushing all that luck away by walking into some afternoon bar like I needed a break from a terrible day, sitting down alone at first, but then next to some blue dress girl: red hair, hot freckle face, asking me what my story was, talking to me as I drank more, buying me a drink now, offering me a ride home even though I say I can walk
October 27, 2025 at 2:25 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"I am combing soft fingers through the grass / to temper my hide. I tried to build it slowly"

Two poems by 𝗝𝗼 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗿 in the Fall 2025 issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity
Where the body builds what it cannot keep, there is a cottage swaying ever closer to the sea. I made my way there like a mutt pointed to the scent of old wounds—back a taut line shuffling close to the earth. On the air: salt & smoke. With each breath, the door sweeps open at its seam
October 24, 2025 at 1:47 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Desire is reinforced, not just by the sensory pleasure of the food, but by cultural approval and addictive mechanisms that trigger reward pathways"

Us v. World Revisited, an essay by 𝗗𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝗺𝗼 in the Fall 2025 issue

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#biodiversity #veganism #animalethics #essays
Us v. World Revisited
October 22, 2025 at 12:53 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"To the barn they followed the rain and claimed it as home, thick / in the middle of trees and streams."

A poem by 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻𝘆 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀𝗵𝘂 in the Fall 2025 issue

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#poetry #poetrycommunity
Whoever wants wisdom can have it, said the barn owl, who did not have wisdom, but who’d heard it spoken by the woodworm that infested the barn rafters. From the peak of the barn’s hip roof, the woodworm claimed not to have wisdom but to have seen it recently whilst watching the rain fall upon the ocean in the sunlight, driving shoals of mackerel to flood the nearby harbour where there had been no fish for months.
October 20, 2025 at 2:48 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
"Oh desire, oh desperate need, oh the run from what could only be worse if kept / stagnant by inertia"

A poem by 𝗦𝗮𝗿𝗮 𝗕𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘁 in the Fall 2025 issue

bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #poetrycommunity
​I get why the mountain stream had such appeal, and in the summer of 1896 must have felt breathless. A run to the pines, dripping icicles, orgies and orgies of men. And by poverty, driven, and long beards. California. Itinerants.
October 17, 2025 at 1:14 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
Read 𝙋𝙤𝙚𝙩𝙧𝙮 𝘾𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚: 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙁𝘼 𝙄𝙣𝙙𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙭 by 𝗗𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝗺𝗼 in the Fall issue of 𝐀𝐦𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐦 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰

#poetry #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #essays
What does it mean to be an artist today? What does it mean to be a poet? Amsterdam Review confronts the rise of the MFA industrial complex and the consequences of turning creativity into an institutionalized craft, in a call to remember that genuine art emerges from the unconscious, not from within the walls of academically sanctioned success.
October 14, 2025 at 1:52 PM
amsterdamreview.bsky.social
Our Fall 2025 issue is OUT NOW!

Featuring an #interview with Keetje Kuipers and works by Sean Thomas Dougherty, Suzy Eynon, Jason Bentsman, Chelsea Dingman, and many more.

Read here: bit.ly/AmsterdamReview

#poetry #fiction #translations #finearts #amsterdam 🇳🇱
Amsterdam Review Fall 2025 issue is OUT NOW! Featuring an #interview with Keetje Kuipers and works by Sean Thomas Dougherty, Suzy Eynon, Jason Bentsman, Chelsea Dingman, and many more.
October 9, 2025 at 2:49 PM