Poetry Drawer: Asking Directions: Padlocks and Tattoos: Insomnia by Ben Macnair

Asking Directions

I took the Road less travelled by,
and I got completely lost.
Not even Google Maps could help me,
thanks a lot, Robert Frost.

Padlocks and Tattoos

There are hundreds of couples,
who paint their initials on a padlock,
and attach it to a bridge,
for strangers to see,
decades from now.
Some men have tattoos,
of a love they hoped would be forever,
but is now a reminder
of the one who was before
the one before.
Some people have no tattoos,
no unused padlocks on bridges in a big city,
but like EE Cummings
will keep their memories of love
Inside their hearts.

Insomnia

When sleeplessness pounds
like spooked black Horses,
and the Night-Mare rears her hooves
calling across a canyon,
the hooves are a drum on the ground,
and pointed teeth and fetlock
are the blur of a shutter speed,
shadows are the shapes of fear
the sky is tainted black,
and the pin pricks of stars
mark the surface of a dream,
wake up.

For the shadows are only trees,
knocking against the window,
insistent you pay them attention
and the spooked black horse is calm,
carrying the eternal foot-man
who holds your coat,
but smiles and waves,
saying it is not time, just yet.
You know it was either the rain,
or the pipes that woke you,
but somewhere, out there,
is a Spooked Black Horse,
and unanswered questions.

Ben Macnair is an award-winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter.

Poetry Drawer: Fun by Laura Stamps

Here’s a newsflash. Rachel
has lost her sense of smell.
(Okay, sometimes I refer
to myself in the third
person.) But it’s true. Can’t
smell a thing. Can’t. It’s
this head cold. Fighting,
fighting, fighting it. I am.
And winning. Kinda. And
yet, and yet. My nose.
Dead. Pretty much. What
a bummer! And my perfume.
White Linen. Estee Lauder.
Love it. I do. But now.
You know. I can’t smell it.
Can’t. So I stopped wearing
it. I mean. What’s the point?
And then, and then. I got an
idea. I could slather myself
with scented lotions. The
ones I never wear. They’re
nice. They are. Just not my
favourite. But now. You know.
I can’t smell them. Cool!
And Etsy. Did I tell you?
Saw a vintage Coach purse.
Yesterday. Super cute.
Mint condition. $300 value.
Got it for $25. I did. Yeah.
What can I say? I’m having
too much fun. Really. I am.

Laura Stamps is a poet and novelist and the author of over 60 books. Most recently: THE GOOD DOG (Prolific Pulse Press, 2023), ADDICTED TO DOG MAGAZINES (Impspired, 2023), and MY FRIEND TELLS ME SHE WANTS A DOG (Kittyfeather Press, 2023). She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize nomination and 7 Pushcart Prize nominations.

You can find more of Laura’s work here on Ink Pantry. 

Pantry Prose: Untitled by Mehreen Ahmed

Clouds trailed crisscrossed across a clear blue sky. A cotton candy man stood by a huge Ferris Wheel with his cart at a theme park showground. He watched the Ferris Wheel move slowly to a full circle. Maya Julian stepped forward with her five-year-old and joined the long queue to get on the Ferris Wheel. Tilting her neck, she put a hand across her forehead like a vizier to cover her eyes from the blazing sun. She felt that the wheel did not move much; almost too slow for the world to be defined from the top there. Her daughter, Saira, and her, perhaps didn’t look all that different from ants and moths, milling about haphazardly on the showground.

As Maya looked at the top, she didn’t see any trepidation in the children or the adults. All was shipshape. The candy man attended to the many children on the ground; adeptly adjusting the pinky floss around the candy stick, and handing them over the pink dandelions in a bouquet, as it were, with a benign smile.

Children couldn’t wait to mouth the pinky candy. However, the Ferris Wheel stopped moving for a while which no one else noticed except Maya, who felt nervous and felt she must alert the authorities for an alternate way to get those people down. They didn’t see it coming. They sat here without a concern. Maya gathered the reason for their placidness was perhaps they couldn’t see much from above.

The candy man looked up a few times like Maya. A frown appeared on his forehead too, which Maya saw, and wondered if he also noted that there was a problem. If the situation went out of hand, people could be in fatal trouble. Her daughter pulled her towards the candy cart, and they both came out of the queue losing their place in it. On her way to the cart, she saw people—mainly children with an older sibling or an adult jostling in the bottom of the wheel as they dribbled out of the lower cabins of the Ferris Wheel touching the green grass beneath. 

The ones at the top hung precariously, oblivious to what was coming next. The sky couldn’t look clearer. The clouds spread out like a fishing net through which no fish could escape. Trapped inside the net—not until then, not really until it happened that someone dropped a net into the blue bowled ocean and trapped all these frantic fish inside it; the net teeming with all the fish out of water when life was pulled out of this oxygenated cosmic ocean into the outer. Until then calm prevailed.

Those sitting at the top, were clueless, enjoying a breezy morning—chirping and laughing spring birds. Maya trembled in the fresh air as she took her daughter to buy candy floss. The candy man continued to look at the Ferris Wheel.

“Are you thinking, what I am also thinking?” Maya asked.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I think that the wheel is broken. Those who are at the top, are all stuck.”

“Hmm, that’s exactly what I was thinking too.”

“What now?” Maya asked.

“Someone must tell the manager of this theme park, I reckon,” replied the candy man.

“Do you know where his office is? I’ll let him know.”

The candy man looked over his shoulder and pointed toward a building at the far end of the park. Maya squinted to follow his directions. Then she took her daughter’s hand and began to walk toward the management building while the decadent candy floss melted in her daughter’s mouth. Maya looked at her and smiled. She smiled back.

“Where’re we going Mammy?” she asked.

“To tell the manager to fix the Ferris Wheel?”

“Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“It isn’t working well, darling. ”

“Is it broken?” she asked.

“I think so,” Maya replied.

“Will they all die at the top?” the daughter asked.

“No, of course not, the manager will ensure that,” Maya said.

The daughter kept licking the candy cane to its bare bone until the stick was fully exposed. She looked at it and gave it a long-lasting lick, top to bottom. The manager’s building was far, but Maya persevered. She stepped up, determined to stop the disaster at the Ferris Wheel at any cost. At any cost? However, when she reached the building, she found a big padlock at its gate. She pushed it and pulled the lock but it did not open. Lights in one of the rooms were on. She looked up and she screamed; strikingly close, not quite far enough. She looked around for an object and found a rock. Maya did the unimaginable. She picked it up and hurled it aiming higher at the glass window. It rocketed through the glass. Shards fell and hit Maya on her forehead.“Oh” she uttered and sat down.

The daughter looked up at the window and shook Maya by the shoulder. Maya felt an urgency in the shake and looked up too. Her jaw fell. At the window, there was a man, not even a full man, maybe a half-man and half-elf. He—it looked like a statue with inky tears running down its cheeks. This was a make-believe theme park. A rock came flying out of nowhere; it transpired into a piece of paper as it landed with just one word written—ignis fatuus

“What does this mean?” the daughter asked. 

Maya replied, ‘Illusion,’ ‘foolish fire’. 

“Isn’t that what your name also means?” 

The daughter wanted to know from a breathless mother.

Multiple contests’ winner for short fiction, Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning Australian novelist born in Bangladesh. Her historical fiction, The Pacifist, is an audible bestseller. Included in The Best Asian Speculative Fiction Anthology, her works have also been acclaimed by Midwest Book Review, and DD Magazine, translated into German, Greek, and Bangla, her works have been reprinted, anthologized, selected as Editor’s Pick, Best ofs, and made the top 10 reads multiple times. Additionally, her works have been nominated for Pushcart, botN and James Tait. She has authored eight books and has been twice a reader and juror for international awards. Her recent publications are with Litro, Otoliths, Popshot Quarterly, and Alien Buddha.

You can find more of Mehreen’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Poetry Drawer: The Disagreeable Ocean Between Us: The Stag in the Lake: A New Pattern: Inhouse Mail: Greasy by Holly Day

The Disagreeable Ocean Between Us

I wonder if my son, when he’s out getting the paper or a cup of coffee
if he stops and talks to squirrels or rabbits or dogs
like he did when he was little, like I always did with him
if he stops to chirp at sparrows, throw them bits of donut
or if he’s forgotten to notice these things, he just sips his coffee
thinks of grown-up things.

And I wonder if, when he’s out with friends late at night
coming back from the bar and laughing too loud for the quiet surroundings
if he points out the startled frogs that leap across their path
to huddle in the damp, dewy grass, trapped by footfalls on one side,
heavy traffic on the other?
Does he stop walking, stoop down by the grass
carefully pick up the frightened frogs and set them safely
on the other side of the sidewalk, where they can disappear
into the taller, dark growth of garden plants and hedges?
Or are these things invisible to him now, as they seem to be
to so many other adults I know?

And I wonder, if, among his friends
there is just one girl who sees him
almost stop to greet a squirrel
or rescue a frog
or toss a surreptitious pocket cracker to a lone speckled pigeon
and knows that she is not alone in her own love for this world
sees that same love hidden
in the eyes of this boy I used to know?

The Stag in the Lake

The stag stumbled out onto the lake in the middle of the night
fell through the thin crust of ice halfway across. He must have floundered
for hours out there, cut a path through the lake until the ice grew too thick
for his hoofs to crush through. He might have made it if it had been daytime
the sun might have kept him alert enough to make it to the far shore,
where he could have stumbled out, shook himself, jumped
and leapt to the beach until he was warm enough
to run through my parents’ yard to some safe spot in the forest next door.

But because it was night, he may have lost time swimming around in circles
thrashing against the same patch of ice again and again in an attempt
to reach a far shore he could not see, the flashing lights of passing cars
bouncing off the water as late-night traffic thundered down the nearby freeway.
Sometime during his struggle, he gave up and just froze in place
one foreleg stretched out on the ice, a pair of broad antlers
preventing his head from sinking below the ice.

There was a good month where one could walk out onto the ice
right up to the frozen stag, stare straight into its glassy, black eyes
touch it if you wanted to—I never did. My dad talked about taking a hacksaw out
cutting the antlers off and making something out of them, some kind of
outsider wall art, but in the end decided against disturbing the animal’s corpse
mostly because my son started crying about the poor deer, that poor deer.

It disappeared overnight during a freak thaw, slipped free from the ice
and carried away by some sudden current from the nearby spring.
My son was convinced that the deer had finally gotten free
and run away, swam to safety to the other side of the lake
and because I’m not a monster, I told him he was probably right.

A New Pattern

I feel the knots and scratches on my husband’s back
and I can’t stop touching them, tracing them with my fingertips
in a mimicry of romantic caressing. They don’t feel like
fingernail scratches, don’t feel like anything
but random bumps. “You should start putting lotion on your skin,”
I blurt out, wanting him to turn over so I can see his back
get a look at these marks I keep feeling, reassure myself.
“I can do it for you, if you’d like.”

“I bumped into a machine at work,” says my husband
a little irritably, he’s try to get me to cum
and I’m obviously distracted.
“You can take a look at them later.”

I close my eyes and tell myself that the reason I married this man
was because I didn’t have to worry about the things
bumping around in the back of my head, I force myself
to completely succumb to trust. I do trust him.
There are too many leaves in this book of mine
dedicated to past betrayals, heartbreak, denial, surprise
that being in this place, with this man,
is an unexpected happy ending, almost too good to be true.

Inhouse Mail

I’d find his letters to my mother in the most unexpected places
shoved under the mattress in their bedroom,
tucked between the desk and the wall
as if it had slipped and gotten stuck there,
sometimes, just lying out on the kitchen table, as if opened and read
just minutes before. I couldn’t help read them, because I was a kid
and I just read everything, I was a snoop.

From those letters,
I learned that all of their hand-holding in public,
the proclamations of love,
it was all a lie. It was a fantastic performance.

Years later, when my sister started drafting her suicide notes
she also would leave them in unexpected places,
half-written under her mattress, balled up in the trash can in our bedroom
folded up and stashed with her homework, shoved in the bottom of her purse.
Having learned already to accept all smiles and outward signs of happiness
as lies, the subsequent drafts never surprised me,

and, like the evolution of letters that led to my parents’ divorce,
the evolution of suicide notes into that last one
spread out on the coffee table, waiting for me
when I got home from school
barely needed reading, I already knew what it said.

Greasy

He goes out to the bar just so he can tell real women
all of the things that are wrong with them, point out
the dirt under their nails, their dried-out hair
the way half their lipstick is worn off after a couple of beers.
Because most women are conditioned to take such comments
as helpful instead of insulting, they just nod and smile
wonder why they aren’t even good enough
for this lonely slob at the bar.

When he gets bored of judging human women, he goes back home
to his apartment full of quiet sex dolls, all posed
in front of the television, which he left on for them
considerately. He doesn’t even bother getting a beer
when he comes home—he doesn’t need beer
to talk to these ladies. They already understand him
they already and always know just what he wants.

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Analog SF, Cardinal Sins, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, Hugo House in Washington, and The Muse Writers Center in Virginia.

Books From The Pantry: The Greatest Forgiveness of All: Worcestershire Young Writer Competition Anthology 2023

This anthology, organised by Kevin Brooke, Worcestershire Literary Festival Young Writer Ambassador, was created from the entries for the Festival’s Young Writer Competition 2023 which in turn was generously supported by The Story Knights and Worcester Arts Council. Competition entrants were asked to submit stories of up to 300 words on the theme of forgiveness. There were three categories of entrants: Senior Years 1-12, Intermediate Years 7-9 and Junior Years 3-6. The judges were Professor Rod Griffiths, Polly Stretton and Dr. Tony Judge and the winning entries for each category were announced at the festival launch event on 11th June 2023. The anthology comprises 2 entries from the 10-12 category, 6 entries from the 7-9 category and 41 entries from the 3-6 category.

Hidden in the title is the notion that forgiveness is the greatest healer of all. This notion is made more explicit in the stories that make up this anthology. Particularly impressive is the way in which many of them reveal a level of maturity, insight and wisdom which some of us only reach later on in life. I am thinking here of the need we all have to not only forgive others but also, crucially, to forgive ourselves.

The stories cover a wide range of themes: everything from precious objects broken in the home, hurtful relationships at school, our lack of understanding of others, our disrespect for the environment and for each other’s feelings. Jealousy, envy and selfishness are the main culprits and these are explored imaginatively through the medium of the school playground, animals (horses, bears, dinosaurs, cats and mice) and even, in one case, planets in outer space.

In reality, forgiveness is not always the end of the matter. These young writers know that life is not as neat as that. As one writer puts it: ‘Her words of forgiveness didn’t mean it hadn’t happened, it’s just a cut that’s turned into a scar.’ All, however, speak to us in some way of the power of forgiveness and also of the importance of friendship, especially of friendship restored.

The Greatest Forgiveness of All is available here from Black Pear Press.

Neil Leadbeater was born and brought up in Wolverhampton, England. He was educated at Repton and is an English graduate from the University of London. He now resides in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad. His publications include Librettos for the Black Madonna (White Adder Press, 2011); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, 2014), Finding the River Horse (Littoral Press, 2017), Punching Cork Stoppers (Original Plus, 2018) River Hoard (Cyberwit.net, Allahabad, India, 2019), Reading Between the Lines (Littoral Press, 2020) and Journeys in Europe (co-authored with Monica Manolachi) (Editura Bifrost , Bucharest, Romania, 2022). His work has been translated into several languages. He is a member of the Federation of Writers Scotland and he is a regular reviewer for several journals including Quill & Parchment (USA), The Halo-Halo Review (USA), Write Out Loud (UK) and The Poet (UK). His many and varied interests embrace most aspects of the arts and, on winter evenings, he enjoys the challenge of getting to grips with ancient, medieval and modern languages.

Poetry Drawer: Ribbon by Sayani Mukherjee

My mind’s a ribbon blue
Black hued parsley green
Ivy lead open
My further glance into
My Casanova smile
Delicacy lasts long
Old enough to fly
My cookies know that shape
Criss cross suburban South
Too ordinary for living
A motel of sky scrapers
Munich to Vienna
Topples into
Swimming nothing
My hats are over there
Hibiscus orange
Playing with fire
Rituals of ordinary ordinance
That shape still plunges
My mind’s a ribbon blue.

You can find more work by Sayani here on Ink Pantry.

Poetry Drawer: Birthright Profane: Opal Ball-Dress: Mustang Chalice: Sonnet CCIII: Descending Love by Terry Brinkman

Birthright Profane

Drawn up the limit of ten
Swelling caves in silk hose she often leaves then
Insulting to any lady double-envelops white
Chastise her horse-wimping vain
Unbuttoned her gauntlet with laughter
She flogs no such thing insane
Little poor girl by the rock rafter
Ghost woman’s birthright’s profane
Soft cling aristocrat ever-after

Opal Ball-Dress

Her pal wears an Opal Ball-dress to write
Improper overtures coming from him
Writing with Tortoiseshell Pens
Cracks between shutters brings in light
Frost- bound coachman arrived at midnight
Drawn up the limit of ten
Swelling caves in her silk hose happens often
Insulting to any lady double-envelops white

Mustang Chalice

Ramparts of the horizon yearning strange phenomenon
Peaceful sleepy tenor watchful eye of Arithmetic
Wild horse Red River swollen thundering high
Sheep-Headers sleeping at breeds Sage Palace
Tormenting monstrous rocks and cactus horrify
Thundered past ears laid-back Mustang Chalice
Yearning of her heart, Pine Fringed Pie

Sonnet CCIII

Rocky ramparts Red-Walled with Seasoned Brick
Rolling ridges giant cliffs steely skies lost in the sun
Hair flying down her skeleton
Vague loneliness with the scarlet walking stick
Fragrant sage memories of haunting sweet Arsenic
Expostulated sentimental simpleton
Ramparts of the horizon yearning strange phenomenon
Peaceful sleepy tenor ever watchful eye of Arithmetic
Wild horse Red swollen thundering river high
Sheep-Headers sleeping at breeds Sage Palace
Tormenting monstrous rocks and cactus horrify
Yearning for her heart Pine Fringed Pie
Thundered past ears laid-back Mustang Chalice

Descending Love

Descend that’s love light at your peril
Were bout under the same Sun and Moon?
English watering place by moonlight her voice floating out
Gnawing petticoats twisted into the water
Spring cleaning worst moral pub
Wild ferns howled bay sleeping sky
She hangs like a cat to its claws
She cries true love soul dissolves
Delight in love’s rake
Her young mouth laughs at her gift
Pink articulated lips storm of a kiss
When a poet loves in unassail reason
UN shivered enraptured God’s eyes weep a ton
Love’s time fool an ever fixed mark
Sun or Moon Roses by a bee will sting

Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years; now he paints with words too. Poems in Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed. Winamop, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, Adelaide Magazine, Variant, the Writing Disorder, Ink Pantry, In Parentheses, Ariel Chat, New Ulster, Glove, and in Pamp-le-mousse, North Dakota Quarterly, Barzakh, Urban Arts, Wingless Dreamer, True Chili, LKMNDS and Elevation.

You can find more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry

Poetry Drawer: Lora from Prishtina: For the years that have fled: Visit: Blindness: Delayed Meeting: You Ran Away Lora: In the Theater of Tragedy: One Day: Lora in Adriatic: Lora in the Rain: Valentine’s Day: Lora: When the Poet Loves by Lan Qyqalla

Lora from Prishtina

The Goddess descends into memories
Lora took into her arms
the blessed silence
an eye she gave to love
a song to the sun
to evil she gave the smile
her lips enchanted me
embracing the dream of the poet…

Again with Lora of Prishtina
we often meet on the boulevard
looking at the shadows of the rocks
beauty walks courageous
in love as the meteor of words
rain with arrows in sight
her lips put ash on my tongue
where the unspoken word slopes
the missing halt
during the white sleep
Lora of Prishtina –
gives a song to the sun.

For the years that have fled

Last night with Lora
we followed love
in the Garmia Valley
in the chest we spread the song
of Romeo and Julia.

In Garmia was afraid
of the fire of love. In the chest
we enumerate the hours
years that have fled to freshness
singing the melody of the forgotten poet
in the love of the ivory castle
on the “Green Path”,
Lora and I.

Visit

Unexpectedly the gate looks on the screen
on the keyboard taps the verse from his mind
the shadow is measured in tumultuous ecstasy
sparkle lit in mature age
in delusion you appear to me as a vision.

Lora walks into the heart of the verse
proudly stands in front of Naim’s bust
then goes to the waiting spa
where we were yesterday
embracing my dream with open arms
pouring earthquake into the alight tinder.

Blindness

blind yourself
I do not want you
having a look at the sea
I do not want you
to see the colour
in the ocean of your eyes
I want to drown
in your grace
to have you
my love.

This wish
in light
of birth
to perish
to infinity!

Delayed Meeting

Delayed meeting with Lora
in the Poetic Autumn
I continued the trip
in the Penelope Oasis
we look in the mirror of our eyes
among the waves of love
between dream and reality
between autumn and winter
between sun and sky
between birth and sunset
between maturity and childhood
between withered leaves
and the yellow petals
with the turmoil of fire
and thrill of heart …!

Delayed meeting with Lora
in the green spring
in the depths of your eyes
near the volcano
where awakening bites forgetfulness
in the late autumn
in the garden of heaven
stretched on the edge of the road
we met late
in the arms of Love.

You Ran Away Lora

You ran away so fast Lora
in the dark night of the modernism
before the next summer comes
in the smoke and alcohol basin
killed on the trail of mistrust.

Lora plays Satan’s dance
on the holy night of heaven
love drowns in the oasis
in the intoxication of the rain plague
becoming the postpartum of the broken age.

You did not wait for the promised summer
on the bed of roses
in the run of old time
of a dirty time whose name you do not know
I look at the rain as a rope in the faint face
and ask for the way out of love.

You ran away so fast Lora
you have remained the metaphor of the virgin paths
endless poetry of the poet’s longing
novel that starts with a real landscape
melted love in the spring of absences.

In the Theater of Tragedy

Hamlet is shouting on the stage
in the backstage
Romeo and Juliet
burn in the fire of love
caress the stains of the cloth
left from Kanun’s time
the intrigues of friends with empty souls
in the museum of memories
in the imagination of Eros in Prishtina.

Juliet
curses Hamlet beyond the scene
that he had penetrated her thoughts
she is seeking the paradise in poetry
why is Romeo lying
about fiery love
I do not have a covenant or ask for the breakup
Juliet feels that he speaks with his heart.

Romeo blesses the love
that remained like a wound
from the years that have passed
trots in the lit cup
the bedbed curses
at the table…

One Day
(Requiem for the poet)

You will not see the poet
standing
in Edi Café 2*
nor will you intercept
intrigues and contemplations
he will not order espresso
the table will be empty
as the memories that evoke
alcoholic beverages…
and a toast of friendship.

The poet blessed by hatred
does not withdraw
the words blossom with rose perfume
and cry for the memories in solitude
do not believe in dreams and magic
to give the world love
and the lyrics will need calligraphy

The poet burns in an ironic smile
the storm and the sky evoke a memory
every word in the fire of words
a world you do not know
Queen with beautiful eyes.

You will not see me
in the coffee shop
nor the streets of Prishtina
the atmosphere steps on your footsteps’ traces,
some quiet storms
strikes like the lightning in the sky without clouds
how many stars are lit
you are crystal in the heart and you know
memories of a distant time bring me
farewell and a voice
that babbles lyrics as a hymn…
we give life the spiritual dough
all the dreams we’ve written
the love we sang in each letter
we the unloving lovers!

*Edi kaffe in Prishtina

Lora in Adriatic

The plains swing
the unsung serenade
the text sinks into the water of the lake
the sounds of love cover the mountain
the eyes dissolve the exuberant magic.

The ring of the lake shines in the Adriatic
The lake wears the ring on the finger
The rays of the sun caress the face
Lora’s lips bite the words
curdled on the eyebrow
“For me you are unique, oh Lan”
and the lake trambles.

The lips redden in the drunkness of the kiss
Lora squeezes the fingers to her chest
the adder bite at the neck and at the nape
the chest whiteness shakes on the lake
the whips of excitement like the oak sap
Lora loses the trace in the longing of waiting
the cherry melts in the language of love.

Lora in the Rain
 
Lora was jealous in the rain
why it washed Lan’s
hair, lips
neck and eyes
imagined
in crazy
love?

Lora melts in eternity
sighs in words
stuttering took
and glimpses gave.
 
Lora stops the nomad time
Lan nihilist
in the burning rain
both faces
Prishtina’s fiery kiss

The rain makes Lora jealous
she gives
the kiss of the tear
to the rock in the dark.

Lora kneads her breasts
in the longing of love
Lan feels time
in the frozen sea
of wishes
 
Lora and Lan
tease each other in the galaxy.

Valentine’s Day
 
Lora
embroidered Valentine’s Day
on the map of love
Egnatia-Naisus street
and in passing I also took
the honey flavour
from the hot ashes
of the extinguished fire.

Lora
like a blonde ladybug in the meteorite
nobody whispers
on the map of love
and the star twister out of exhausted longing
in the timeless feeling
brought the freshness of age
the kiss of the mountain like Hera from Olympus
departed in the endless today
night.

Lora
frozen in heat
slightly heated to the bosom of love
“I’m very cold
Lan takes me with him
tonight
I do not want flowers
a white rose
to have for Valentine’s Day! “

Lora

Lora
we wander through time
like snakes in the bushes
Lora and I
in the ecstasy of the painting
I gave her Mona Lisa’s smile
I drank water from Lora’s bosom
and I lost myself in adolescent dreams,

I gave Lora a life
I gave the sky a kiss
the sun seemed to be silent
and left a free way to darkness
the rainbow lightens my way
fiery I take the stars to the bosom
I hug the sun
to feel its tenderness.

Lora is silent
and she silently speaks
in her blonde hair
I touch the love
embers in the lap
white frost
Lora left traces

Lora is asleep
with the fiery stars
tickling her lips
in the corrugated crown
the sounds of silence
I put her crown
and I read under her eyelids
the novel I will write
Lora with her bosom as virgin snow
lures the Talmudists’ years
Lora
crystalline meteor.

When the Poet Loves

When the poet loves
the moon becomes pregnant
with the autumn pollen
the stars laugh with Pitagora’s theorem
the sun receives rays of love
tsunami become the poet’s words
Lora is immersed in the block of salt.

When the poet sings
adorns the world
with the smell of love
he gives the mountains
Beethoven’s symphony
the rivers are enjoying
Mtika’s work
the sea of poet’s feelings
and Lora falls asleep
on the wedding stone
a living metaphor
in infinite verses.

Lan Qyqalla graduated from the Faculty of Philology in the branch of Albanian language and literature in Prishtina, from Republika of Kosovo. He is a Professor, poet, writer and editor of the prestigious international magazine ORFEU, as well as a television presenter.

PUBLISHED BOOKS:

  • “Autumn of love in Pristina” Collection of poems, 2022 Pristina
    “Parfumul iubirii” (Scent of love) Bucharest, 2020
  • “Lora” poetic collection in Turkish, translated and adapted by Kopi Kyçyku, Istanbul 2022
  • “A l`ombre des muses” (“In the shadow of the muse”) French, L’Harmattan Publishing House, Paris, 2018 December 24
  • “Nymph of a wounded heart” stories, in 2013 in Pristina
  • “Tears – sea of pain” Albanian poem, in Pristina, in 2016
  • “Tears-sea of pain” was translated into Romanian, published in Bucharest 2016
  • “LORA” Albanian poem, in 2017 in Pristina
  • “Passport of love” Bucharest, 2018,
  • “Lora mon amour” French, Bucharest, 2018 and
  • “Passport of love” English, published in Bucharest 2018
  • “Whiteness in Whiteness” School monograph, 1995
  • “Gani Xhafolli – prince of children’s literature” Mongrafi, 2018 co-author with Reshat Sahitaj
  • “Autumn of love in Pristina”Albanian SHB PRESS LIBERTY, poetry, Pristina
  • “Automne d’amour a Prishtina”. Translated into French Prof. Ismail Ismail, French, L’Harmattan Publishing House, Paris, 2023, Review by Francophone critic Laurent Griso
  • “Kärlekens höst i Pristina”, Swedish, Malmo Sweden, translated by Prof. Ismjal Jashanica
  • “Toamna dragostei la Pristina” Romanian, Bucharest translated by Baki Ymeri
  • “Pristine’de ask sombari” Turkish, translated by Akademik Kopi Kyçyku
  • “The chart of the soul” stories and novels, Prishtina, 2022

PRIZES

  • – In the International Competition for poetry in Torre Meliso in Italy, he received the 1st Prize of Albanian, on May 2017
  • – In 2017, he received the CREATIVE AWARD OF THE YEAR in Fushë-Kosovo
  • – In 2018, the Association of Albanian Writers in Macedonia gives the AWARD OF THE YEAR “Under the shadow of the maple” to Skopje, for the best poetic book
  • – A poet has been selected to participate in the International Festival in Tunisia, on November 20-25, 2018
  • – He is the Director of the Association of Writers “Naim Frashëri” in Fushë-Kosovo,
  • – Member of the presidency of the ASSOCIATION OF WRITERS OF KOSOVO,
  • – Editor-in-Chief at “Orfeu” Magazine and Web ORFEU.AL
  • – Member of the Editorial Board of the Magazine of World Historians based in Switzerland
  • – Vice-President of the Union of Albanian Writers and Critics
  • – He works as a Professor of Albanian Language and Literature at the Gymnasium.
  • He lives and works in Pristina.

Poetry Drawer: The Teacup by Sam Szanto

In the attic she finds a box.
Underneath an epidermis of newsprint
lies a blue-and-white china teacup,
part of the set used by her grandma
every week they went to see her.

The china, thin and determined,
pulls her into a warm room
and seats her at a groaning table.

Every cup has a saucer,
every plate has a doily,
silver sugar tongs rest
on white cloth
though no one takes sugar
in the tea poured from the squat pot
on top of milk.
On a birthday, the grandchildren
are given sugar lumps
and pretend they are horses.

They can start
when Grandma sits.
The plates are passed, achingly slowly,
sandwiches first. Egg and cress,
ham and English mustard,
soggy cheese and tomato,
too much marg,
bread cut into triangles,
crusts removed.

Then the homemade cakes are paraded:
a Victoria sponge oozing cream,
a dark ginger cake,
scones bursting with fruit.

The woman sees herself drop a saucer,
Grandma picking up the pieces
as if her fingers are tweezers,
the saucer never to be replaced.

She looks in the box again,
finding nothing.

Sam Szanto lives in Durham. Her poetry pamphlet, ‘Splashing Pink’ was published by Hedgehog Press and is a Poetry Book Society Winter 2023 Choice. Her pamphlet ‘This Was Your Mother’ won the 2023 Dreich Slims Contest and will be published soon. She won the Charroux Poetry Prize and the First Writer International Poetry Prize, and her poetry has been placed in journals including ‘Northern Gravy’ and ‘The North’. She was awarded an MA with distinction from the Poetry School / Newcastle University in 2023. Find her on Twitter/X Instagram and on her website.