Lions fire from the ochre riverbed,
you stand in white among the sun trees,
you dress in linen sand,
burnt perfume and your red furs
linger on the river air,
you arise on a ladder of clear stones
to gather fragrant branches,
you silver thread the light on water.
I seek the dynasties of your silence,
a drop of my lamp oil falls
like a water bead on the shard of a mirror
resembling the cenotaph of a queen.

John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France.  His most recent chapbook, The Daymark, was published by Origami Poems Project. 

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

Back in Business

Time to sit on my porch,
read the newspaper.

The sun is well into
its spring U-turn,
sends warm rays of regret
for its winter absence.

A bee lands
on a breeze-tossed petal,
induces a golden butterfly
to join him.

Dogs no longer just walk
with their masters.
They seek out each other,
circling and sniffing.

A mockingbird
on a rooftop
advertises his wares
in borrowed song.

Windows open.
Chimneys are silent at last.

It’s the season
when my fancy demands
it be turned to something.
Not love, necessarily.
Lazing’s a good second choice.

Like Father, Like Son

A father, Frank
going straight after a long history
of drug offences –

and a son, Matt
out on bail
after a stash of cocaine
discovered in his car by cops –

that’s the family scene,
the one where Matt
sneaks in and out of the house

or stays up in his room,
eats his meals alone

and then,
when they do run into each other,
their tongues freeze up

but two pairs of hard angry eyes
make contact,

as they both look deep
into each other,
see the same festering hungers,
the same wretched desires,
the same pathetic appetites
that adulterate the family blood –

and they turn away in a shame
disguised as a superiority –

“he’s turning out
just like me,” thinks Frank –

“I’m turning out
just like him,” thinks Matt –

from the disgusted looks
on both their faces

you would never know
they just agreed on something.

These Fine Children

They are perfect,
middle of the night
sleeping,
middle of the day,
thumping volleyballs
across a net.
Their faces are
pure and lovely,
just like yours
at that age.
The photos
on your dresser
are a history
of how these
moments came to be:
your sly glance
through the
slightly ajar bedroom door,
your full face
at the parlour window.
God’s creation?
Maybe.
Your creation?
Is there any doubt.
At night,
alone at the kitchen table,
coffee and a cigarette,
a bottle of pain pills…
if only their father
were alive to see this.
For all their glory,
triumphs know
their place.

Flowers for a Friend

The river’s all dolled up,
with the sheen of skyscraper lights,
some stars sprinkled here and there –
the Hudson must be on its way
to someplace special.

Your face flashes out of all others
like a sudden appointment I’ve forgotten to miss,
and the sirens – God, the sirens –
it’s the sound of cops looking for something to do.

Someone (you?) says something.
It’s hard to tell in a crowd.
But I listen.
And I believe.

A woman’s selling flowers
that are so outrageously perfumed,
like they’ve been reading French novels
and wanted everyone to know.

I buy a bunch,
hand them to you.
You take them like you’re accepting
a bill you already know you can’t pay.
The river keeps going.
We don’t.
Not yet.

Passerby

You bring me pleasure.
Ironic that.
You could be a harpy,
a bigot, a child murderer,
for all I know.

You could be fool enough
to think that
a lovely face,
long straw-coloured hair,
a lithesome figure
in a fluttering blue cotton dress
is enough.
Let me tell you.
It is enough.

Yes, in my friends,
I want all the virtues.
But I look for beauty in my strangers.

Someone in the Fog

The fog is thick
but I can just make out a person
up ahead of me.
Not the features,
just the shape.
Not the way of living,
just the presence.
I see what must be a head
but not the knowledge.
And a torso
but no scars.
Limbs
but not what they bear up.
I’ve just reached an understanding
of who and what I am.
But with other people,
the fog rolls in.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Novus and Calliope. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Levitate, White Wall Review and Willow Review.

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

I have spent years
warding off evil from my chest.
I’m convinced that my heart —
once plump, pulping,
and dramatically impaled
by Cupid’s bow —
has since flattened
into a planchette.

I drag my planchette heart
across ouija boards —
and spell out your name
though I’ve buried you
a thousand times.
More incantations:
“R u here?”
“I still <3 u.”
“Gimme a sign.”

Not that you answer.
I swallow the sting
of my séance
being seen-zoned.

Arshi Mortuza is a writer and educator residing in the Greater Toronto Area. She is the author of One Minute Past Midnight and Pressed Flower. Her work has been featured in numerous literary outlets worldwide.  

When the tomorrow
comes as a light at first,
and in the dark the darkness burns,
it explodes in flower loops
your soul.
Without seeing,
without waiting!
This autumn
shares fruit scent,
even though the type is pushing towards winter,
the leaves fall,
when the loops are ready to be born.
Without seeing,
without waiting!
I touch this autumn,
it burns my hand
and the day becomes sad.
When I smell
I feel a spring breeze.
Without seeing,
without waiting!

Nikollë Loka was born in Mirdita on March 25, 1960; graduated as a teacher at Luigj Gurakuqi University of Shkodra; master’s degree in pedagogy at the University of Tirana, doctorate in history of education at the University of Tirana. Author of ten poetic volumes in Albanian and three poetic volumes in Italian (two of which with co-authors); included in the anthology “La Poesie contemporaine albanaise”, “L’Hartmattan” publications, Paris 2024. In addition to Albanian, his poems have been published in Italian, English, French, German, Arabic, Romanian, Swedish and Macedonian. Winner of several literary awards in the country and abroad. Included in the Lexicon of Albanian writers 1501-2001, editions “Faik Konica”, Pristina 2003 and in the Encyclopedia of Italian language poets, “Aletti Editore” Rome 2021.

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

The Squirrel

I thought the squirrel had died inside the tree so I poked at it
with a stick. It didn’t move, so I poked inside the hollow
I thought it was trapped in, poked it again. Something grabbed my stick
tugged it with teeth and tiny hands, and so I pulled
the stick back out. Weeks later

three tiny tails snaked out of the hole next to the first squirrel’s
twisted and wrapped around their mother’s tail as though
they had to cling to her even out here. I never saw
their little faces, never saw anything but the tails
growing thicker and redder and fluffier with each day.
The mother would only come out at night
to gather food for them, I never saw her leave her post.
I spread crackers with peanut butter for her in the kitchen
carefully placing them just below her nest as an offering
a plea for forgiveness.

One morning, all four tails were gone. The hollow
gaped at me, abandoned, from my old birch tree.
I put more crackers in the garden, put them in the branches
near the hollow, chased stray cats from my yard and
kept the dog inside, but I never got to see those little squirrel children
never got to see who had made their first home in my yard.

The Mouse

My husband calls me into the kitchen to show me the mouse
that has fallen into the sink during the night. “I think it’s dead,” he says
just as it begins paddling half-heartedly in the water once more
one last, futile effort to find some purchase on the slick porcelain basin
one impossible final effort. Its eyes are dull, flat, black
minutes from the end. I reach down into the water,
pull the little creature up by its tail
take it outside. “Make sure it’s dead,” calls my husband from the house

not wanting to be a part of whatever I have planned. The mouse
struggles feebly in my hand. Its eyes don’t see me. I have never
seen eyes like that before, half goggled, oblivious
like two dull nail heads jammed into its face.
I carefully set it down in the garden, place its feet on the dirt
let go of its tail. “Please don’t come back,” I whisper
as it struggles for life, for balance
before springing off into the undergrowth.

“Please don’t come back.”

The Myth of Correspondence

To fully understand the pictures I have sent you
first, fill a bathtub with water and ice
get into the tub with all of your clothes on.
Only then should you shake these photographs out
of this careful assemblage of paper.

This is the only way you’ll be able to understand
the shades of weather that separate us, the only way
to separate yourself from your envelope
of tropical breezes and permanent sunshine.
I will speak to you through the ice bruising your skin
a frigid wraith clinging to you from too far away.

Tuesday

On a perfect day, I would be able to open my back door
find nothing but jungle waiting for me, sunshine filtered in through the leaves
of trees I’d never seen before, the calls of unfamiliar birds coming at me from all angles.
On a perfect day, I would hear snakes in the undergrowth,
monsters rustling just out of sight
hear the low rumble of a tiger or a jaguar breathing a warning shot
close by, perhaps as close as the cooling shade beneath my back porch.

But this is not a perfect day, and I have not been transported
to a random scene from a Kipling novel, have not been transported back in time
to march with Herodotus or Alexander through lush jungles untouched by civil war
am not looking for new species of birds with Audubon
or stumbling into and through the ruins of Machu Picchu with Bingham.
I am just digging holes in my own back yard for tulips and daffodils
wishing I could be anyone but me.

Mouse Trap

The little mice watch me from their prison of tin and plexiglass
inside the live mouse trap I baited the night before. Four little mice
with pointed noses and trembling whiskers
eyes black and bulging against their dark brown fur.
I wonder how I must appear to them, this giant thing
that they spend their days avoiding, rushing from one dark corner
to another at the sound of my footsteps, and now
there’s nowhere left to go, they wandered into this baited box
and now I have them in my curious grasp.

I tap on the little plexiglass window and they
rush to the corners of the box,
cram themselves into the entrance chute, their thin black tails
twitching and curling, hanging out in the open. I imagine
what it would be like to keep them as pets, these stinky little mice
what it would be like to train these wild mice to live in a cage
to eat only when food is offered, and only what I alone offer them
if eventually, they would learn to anticipate my arrival
at the door of their cage with joy, or if
they would always be just as terrified of me as this?

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Talking River, 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 Indiana Writers Center.

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

unchanged

it never really changes

that scratchy transistor
still sounds the same
to the ears of the past
hidden under the cover
of a late night wish

and you refuse to believe
that the cornstalks
are any shorter
that the dirt is drier
than it was last summer

and meanwhile the snow piles up
and regardless of month
you remember peering out the windshield
from your backseat vantage
listening to your mother swerve the wheel
cussing the march and the gravel

and all of this is the same
as yesterday
as tomorrow
when you believed the last gasp
was the ending word

but now that frozen moment
is less than a footnote
on your approaching obsolescence
or so it would seem
as you sit here
refusing to recognize the moment
for all it is

Timeline

We were told
all of this before
as we reveled in the
static existence that
permeated the pavement,
and every day
meant something,
except for the ones
left in the background;
signposts that always said:
Try Again,
and we did,
because what else
is there to do
when all you’ve got
is everything,
but all you see
is nothing?

We were told
all of this before,
but things like that
rarely matter
when today is
the only day,
and what has changed
but a dented perspective,
and you had this pocketknife,
and that was enough
in the hazy moment.

We were told
all of this before,
crunching earth that advised
walk slowly, walk steady,
so we ran,
and one day
we’ll rest.

Retrospect on the Wind

There were late night moments
of ritualistic abandon,
throwing everything to the fire;
caution being the first to go.

We’d see the twinkling darkened windows
from a vantage of impossible distance,
never knowing what was
on the other side of that black glass,
only that it had to be something grander
than the place from which we came.

Things would burn down,
ashes collecting at the bottom
of a rusted-out fifty-five-gallon drum,
and all within a radius breathed in
the noxious odour of something
that never should have been.

A single struggling streetlight
told the shadowy tale of
every other busted out arc sodium dream,
and we believed all those soundless words
with an innocent fervor never to be matched.

Sometimes in the still midnight of now,
you can hear a wind shoot through trees,
even a lone coyote calling to the gathering,
but just beneath all of that,
you might hear all the things
we never said.

At the Core

There’s a quiet spot
deep inside of nothing,
underneath everything,

hiding, waiting to be found;
a centre to be exhumed,
but only from within,

and that’s the trick, isn’t it?:
to dig out the intention
from underneath the extensions,

to explode from a
position of implosion.
There is a quiet spot,

and it’s there, breathing, waiting,
knowing that time is irrelevant,
that the wind never fails;

believing that calm will come,
and it’s only to be found
beyond the next breath.

how it is

to all extant
you see a sideways world
turning in some
unimaginable cycle
unpredictable and disturbing

you watch from your
suspiciously rounded corner
an acknowledgement of nothing
a promise of everything

and yet
the circles swirl
the world knows
and you’ll remain in the dark
seeing through pinholes
and pretending they’re stars

your perception an image
from a coffee can camera
of yesterday’s embellishment
undulating and roiling and nauseous

but that’s only what happened
yesterday
and tomorrow is less than a dream
and today’s already half in a book
that’s already begun
to smoulder in the wet flames
of anything that ever
seemed to make sense

James Benger is the author of several books of poetry and prose. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Writers Place, and on the Riverfront Readings Committee, and is the founder of the 365 Poems in 365 Days online workshop. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and children.