ODE TO THE CURATOR

Wherever you hang paintings,
the walls are willing.

And every heavy sculpture
the floorboards are eager to hold up.

Wherever you put them,
all are there to please you.

If works of art were lovers,
you’d be the one they kiss.

BANQUET

I have an urge for everything forbidden
from the lick of an ice-cream sundae
to the blessed, unspoken parts of you.
Sweet-bread and flesh.
Lush tomatoes and the pleasure of your tongue.
Peach juice dripping and saliva captured
in a bright pink curl.
Honey and salt from the jar, from skin.

What if…
now there’s an unforgiving beast
that never saw a feast
it didn’t turn its back on.
So many kept apart over the years.
Opportunities sealed off.
Possibilities banished.
More regret than a heart can hold.

But forget the tempting foods
and let’s concentrate on you.
The pleasures of the table have their place
but the bedroom is a banquet for the soul.
You are ripe
And I’m feeling adventurous.
Now’s not the time to be tentative.
Remember, safe means unfulfilled
in my language.

FAMILY GALLERY

I keep the bastard
locked up in a photograph
just for old time’s sake.
The eyes glare.
The nose rises,
mouth jerks sideways,
in a snarl.

I get like him some times.
I feel what he felt –
that life can be a wretched,
cruel and debilitating way to live.
So I understand
why he preferred a more honest reaction
than a smile
when the camera clicked.

But I have a marriage to sustain,
friendships to maintain,
a job to hold down,
and an obligation not to burden
other people in the world
with my gloom and anguish.

So I keep the bastard
locked up in a photograph.
As a warning.
As a stand-in even.

ALGEBRA

as wobbly as wounded soldiers
we headed back to campus,
smelling of smuggled beers,
as prepared as we ever were
for our afternoon class

me knotting fingers, you burping,
we took algebra at its word,
with A the finger divided by B
the furrowed brow equaling
X the endearing mind multiplied
by Y the blurred vision times Z –

when the value of Z is Zzzzzzzzzzz

THE BOXER

He spent twenty years
of his life
trying to knock some guy
to the canvas.

Now he’s
brain-damaged,
his ears ring
constantly,
and he doesn’t even
know his own name.

He won fights
and he lost fights.
And he lost
the fights he won.

A HOMELESS MORNING

Morning holds on to its darkness
for as long as it can,
resisting the early efforts
of the sun to burn off shadow.
In six a.m. catacombs,
the homeless rise warily,
their territory about to
undergo its daily transformation
into the site of an invasion.
They cling to the pockets of black,
alleys, doorways, subway corridors,
the last shreds of shelter.
But eventually, commuters
hit the sidewalk like armies.
Hands reach out, begging for change.
Faces hide from the light.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, New English Review and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”, ”Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.

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

A New Day Is Born

A silvered whisper caressed an old deer
path in a woodland then faded into shadows as
the night was transformed into the morning as
the sun edging slowly over the mountain
shinned its golden rays onto meadows where
softly flowing streams awaited. Then far way in
an ocean, the last greyish ray of moonlight
skipped across the incoming tide filled with
briny whispers as an apricot-coloured thread
draped over the sand dunes, unraveling time as
it approached. Then the tiny flame of morning,
flickered into being, and dreams were
swallowed up by a yawn.

The Night’s Beginning

As the evening neared, I listened to the lonely
frogs croaking in a tiny pond: They seemed to
be serenading the moon. As the day slowly
whispered into shadows, and the night began its
dark tour of duty to protect the hours from
crumbling, I retired for the evening.

Stars, those tiny sparkling lanterns, were
penetrating the sky. The breeze was balmy and
soft, the country road silent, and night birds
were singing softly. As the clock chimed twelve,
the day vanished into the night and the moon
became a mere glowing silver orb bouncing
against the crimson horizon.

I watched the last hours of the day vanishing
into silence, as the stars gazing from millions of
light years away, were splashing in the sky. I
waited for the night’s long hours to cover me,
and as my breath mellowed, I faded into sleep,
and memories turned into dreams.

So Much Forgotten

Fading visions of borrowed prayers, forgotten
truths, and the faint quivering images of all my
yesterdays floated inside luminous clouds like
butterflies flitting in the breeze. Then as they
merged with lonely songs of night birds, stars,
flickering like Chinese lanterns, dimly glowed
through dreams of whispering voices, and
everything vanished into the past.

James has published five collections of poetry, and over 1850 poems in scores of national and international publications, such as The Ink Pantry, Sparks of Calliope, Nebo, Miller’s Pond, Penwood Review,  Front Porch, London Grip, Minetta, The American Aesthetic, El Porto, Badlands Journal, Sparks of Calliope, and hundreds of others. He was twice nominated for The Best of The Net award, and four times for a Pushcart award, and was the featured poet, of the month in literary magazines, eleven times.  He earned his doctorate from BYU and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University.

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

Great Blue Heron

The great blue heron is a complex fantastic mystery to me,
More grey than blue, with awkward elongated neck,
Standing in the conical pond like a statue,
Completely motionless, moving nary a muscle.
The pond is grey the colour of a battleship
And stands dark and still on what was once a golf course.
As I stare, the pond turns ever darker and more impenetrable.
The pond is Hardyesque—dangerous pond
In which Eustacia Vye came to the end of her tragic days.
The great blue heron reminds me of a pterodactyl,
Flying through the air of millennia past.
The bird finally stirs, slowly spreads its question wings,
Gradually lifts the weight of its body,
Which rests on skinny pickle wings.
The great blue heron spreads those wings,
And the creature lifts and careens
Toward the cluttered gray skies and
Skims against the low-hanging clouds and
Flies into the reality that sits on me.
It flies on, up—unhurried, unrushed, elegant,
Grotesque, impervious, and beautiful.

Stronghold

I remember like a blazing star the driving to and hiking through Cochise Stronghold in
          southeastern Arizona, driving down a woebegone gravel bumpy road that
          appeared to collide with the Dragoon Mountains but the turned left and dove
          deeper.

Into the Stronghold, which as the name says was where in the mid-1800s was where the chief
         Cochise the Chiricahua Apaches lived and defied the U.S. government and
         the U.S. cavalry.

The hiking trail into the Stronghold is rugged but not impossible, climbs steadily and then
          passes magnificent colossal boulders that stand like the ghosts of Apache families.

If you let your imagination run wild, you imagine the boulders running free like the
        spirits of Apache families frozen in time.

The enormous boulders lean against one another, supporting one another, standing tall,
         conjuring apparitions of the past—
A past that was both bucolic and tragic.

Never before have I felt a place so strong, so evocative, so powerful, so spiritual, so all-
        encompassing, so annihilating.

The ghosts of the Chiricahua still inhabit these boulder environs, these rock esplanades,
         still inhabit these precious and mysterious and lost canyons.

Still The People ride their pale horses and wave their mystery baskets from the strands of
         the cacti that line the floor of the canyon.

Still the Spirits of the Chiricahua follow us and surround us as we steadily climb the trail
         to an outlook that reaches all the way to Tombstone.

We pass a dammed-up pool where cattle slake their thirst.

We pass cacti that stand guard like lookouts on the side of the living breathing mountain.

It is a place that is dangerously silent, a place in which spirits and dreams float like
         weapons, their invisibility something palpable.

Lying on night in the Yates’s potent hot tub, we face the eastern wall of the Dragoon
          Mountains that capture the rays of the moon and shine like an enormous
          radioactive wall, shimmering and shaking and seducing our spirits

The moon is resplendent, alive, sly, awake,

Lighting the side of the cliff so that the infinite rocks glow, shine with extraordinary and
        mystical brightness, as if the boulders themselves burned with an internal light.

And we, gazing, captivated by the cliff, and the glaring mystic-rock, know that the inner
         light of past is glaring at us through the eyes of Cochise.

Christopher Johnson is a writer based in the Chicago area. He’s done a lot of different stuff in his life. He’s been a merchant seaman, a high school English teacher, a corporate communications writer, a textbook editor, an educational consultant, and a free-lance writer. He’s published short stories, articles, and essays in The Progressive, Snowy Egret, Earth Island Journal, Chicago Wilderness, American Forests, Chicago Life, Across the Margin, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Blue Lake Review, The Literary Yard, Scarlet Leaf Review, Spillwords Press, Fiction on the Web, Sweet Tree Review, and other journals and magazines. In 2006, the University of New Hampshire Press published his first book, This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains. His second book, which he co-authored with a prominent New Hampshire forester named David Govatski, was Forests for the People: The Story of America’s Eastern National Forests, published by Island Press in 2013.

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

Last Cup of Tea

I still remember your hands,
thin as winter branches,
holding that porcelain teacup,
fingers trembling, but stubborn,
never letting go.

Steam rose between us,
a soft whisp of jasmine,
twisting with words unsaid,
your eyes watering from the heat—
or maybe something else.

You asked me to sit awhile,
though silence did the talking.
The world seemed smaller,
shrinking to the pattern of leaves
on that old cracked saucer.

I watched as you sipped,
pausing for breath, for memory,
for the weight of the past
pressed into the lines of your palms,
folded away in every quiet sigh.

When you set the cup down,
it made the smallest sound,
a final note on an unfinished song,
and I wondered how it is
that some endings can break
without ever making a noise.

Now the house sits empty,
the teacup still on the table,
waiting for a hand that won’t return,
and the scent of jasmine lingers,
traveling from room to room.

The Empty Chair

In the garden, a chair leans back,
peeling paint, splinters of memory,
a forgotten book resting on the arm,
its pages curled like waiting.

Wind plays through untended herbs,
thyme and basil spreading wild,
their fragrance sweet and uncontained,
like stories spun from the air itself.

A cat circles, then stops,
ears flickering, tail suspended—
an unheard call drifts through the trees,
carried away with autumn’s yellowed breath.

Dusk settles in folds of orange,
clouds unraveling like loose yarn—
shadows stretch and take their places,
the chair holding secrets or simply nothing.

Blueprints

They never finished building that house—
a foundation poured and left to set,
weeds threading through cracked concrete,
framing rooms that will never hold warmth.

I walk there sometimes, over brittle beams,
counting empty windows like ghosts,
each one a chance to see out or in,
each one a choice never made.

A rusted ladder leans like a prayer,
reaching for rafters that embrace the sky,
where stars pin blueprints of what could be,
etched in constellations no architect planned.

Once, a bird nested in the hollowed walls,
bringing twigs to cradle new life,
and I wondered how she trusted the wind,
how she believed in beginnings without endings.

I trace the outlines with my fingertips,
a ghost in a half-made dream,
feeling both loss and something deeper—
a strange grace in the unfinished,
where hope clings like ivy,
never quite letting go.

Jeffery Allen Tobin is a political scientist and researcher based in South Florida. His extensive body of work primarily explores U.S. foreign policy, democracy, national security, and migration. He has been writing poetry and prose for more than 30 years.

SUNRISE ECHO

Below the horizon the sun
reaches up to touch the clouds
once grey now brilliant
orange and red sands
splashing against the sky.

Then calm, fading
back to grey as the sun
emerges from below
in a hemisphere orb
scaring darkness
into stretched shadows
longing to merge again.

But patience…

Beneath gathers,
extends over the ground
toward a coaxing moon;
the sun descends with red
scratches on jet contrails,
and orange-cloud pools
flow into the night ocean,
echo in abandoned shell.

BRIDGE MUSINGS

I want to be an old wooden bridge
with slats missing, broken in dangling
pairs in mid-air dive suspension.

I want to creak or crack warnings
that never materialize
or maybe they might.
Creaks and cracks tickle my joy.

I might sacrifice a slat
to test a hiker’s reactions.
Oh, crap! They hung on.
Whoo hoo! You’re gone.
Bye, bye. It’s never my fault.

I’m an old wooden bridge;
I can do what I want!

GRASS MUSIC

A field of brown grass
sways in the wind; many girl
concert-goers near swoon
close to the rock-star singer.

Final wisps of smolder
smoke spiral into the sky;
dreams dissipate
after the blaze burnoff.

Last night’s snowfall
splotches the field
in black-and-white motif;
Holstein cow ghosts rest
in herd mentality awaiting
milking time in the barn.

Spring rain tamps ash
into the ground quenching
thirst for green sprouts
to slice upwards separate
then clumps conjoining
into a field renewed;
daughters and mothers
sway to the music transmitted
in wind rustling through
air floating across the field.

FENCE GAMES

Down the wooden fence line
rails hold hands as posts
yell to the fence across the field,
“Red Rover, Red Rover, send
Lucy right over!”

RAINBOW BIRD

Two birds glide
through the waterfall’s
mist arcing
rainbow colours
separating one side
from the other.
Birds soar
through the droplets
beaded on feathers
shimmering iridescent
reflections.

Diane Webster‘s work has appeared in Old Red Kimono, North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Diane has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

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

The longing. The Pindaric ode

You – such a dreamery born from Dionysian odes
like tender day in Your winds – enchanted butterflies
as the Golden Fleece – bewitched in my meek fantasy
august paradise lost is thus found and so dreamy
You lotus-like butterfly you – above volcanos
with wing-bewitchment immortalized in the times
I want to be such you and eternal thankful eyes
a plethora of feelings shines in tender myths lands

I would be magnificent and gorgeous like some ghosts
I will daydream over the soft foggy mournful morns
I long for tenderness of a mayhap dreamy dew
amaranthine but golden muse told me: Let’s go!
dearest butterfly Your blood is like an ambrosia
Your soul seems to be a pretty light eudemonia
Your tender garden is at morning star so moony
Your thoughts are dazzling moonglow awoken from fantasy

I yearn in winter for eternal Horace’s feelings
created born in springtide from the Ovidian songs
I am going to go to Pythia – temple in summer
a naiad becomes for Artemis’ sake muse in fall

The Elegy to Orpheus

Your lute became supernaturally amaranthine.
Its melody belonged to marvel of realm full muses.
The tender Gods love you – Orpheus and your musing charm.
And your homeland – worshipped each your dreamy song and ballads.

Soft birds and dazzling animals – they overwatched at morns,
with each magnificent, amusing and marvellous gig.
Thus. Your amazing-dreamed eagles loved too – the singing
– envoys of the weal from edenic Olympic mountains.

The venom of viper had in itself somewhat pearly.
It was such tear of Orpheus – overwhelmingly clean.
Eurydice – the queen of muses on foggy days died.
She – in eternal habitat-wizardry of Hades.

You have desired to retrieve her – the immortal being
and to bring unto earth full of moony spell and the pearls.
Hades and Hermes were enchanted from your dreameries.
Eurydice adored in odes, in homeland of shadow.

You perished simply rent like the gentle stolen Golden Fleece,
by angry, mythological creatures – troublemakers.
On seat of death originated wonderful oracle.
Its meaning was very juridic as well as dreaming.

If Eurydice thought in eternity about you,
the lea of Thrace would come into leaf so picturesquely.
The meek, lovely, small fawn says – the world I love you too.
A butterfly carries repose of Gods amazingly.

Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is poet who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku as well as long poems. Paweł has published his poetries in many magazines. He writes in English and German.

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

I am no phoenix

I am no phoenix,
whose resurrections can boast an infinitude.
My heavily bombarded system
has not attained any hardihood.
Frayed are the nerves
that have not been forged with steel,
and no brakes have been installed
on my constant tears.

I am no serpent,
who can slough her aged skin.
I cherish every wrinkle
that maps my plighted years.
I spew no poison at foes
or peers.
And I still nurse my deep-rooted fears.

Cartoons

“My life is a children’s cartoon,”
he used to reiterate in a vehement voice,
a bachelor whose name I fail to recall.

I think of his statement as an appropriate metaphor
for my own complicated discourse,
with Tom and Jerry
as an adequate trope
for my domestic turmoil,
with Remi and Heidi,
whom I used to adore,
as tales of the orphaned,
but who would grow into a world
as callous as a whore.

Don’t bury my candles

Don’t bury my candles
in the dunes of your sand.
They’re bound to scorch
your barefooted feats,
your roaming beasts,
your scarcities.

Don’t suffocate my candles
with the debris of your sands.
They’re bound to flare up
in your fitful sleep
to contaminate your dreams
and submerge the residue of your sanities.

Don’t enshroud my candles
with the palls of your sand.
They’re bound to leave holes
in your troubled discourse
in your diffident pauses.

Dr Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a PhD on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.

Susie’s first book (adapted for film), Classic Adaptations, includes Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

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

Amnesia

a hollow, deep, and wide,
Amnesia took all bit by,
no latest in my thoughts,
sounds bloom like delicate petals,
never do they depart,
but chase and cherish tranquility.

Twilight

Star clusters under pool of visions
Side by side at twilight, murmurs under 
Sparks cloud their route, gusts push back
Waves in their calm basin, space grows

Beneath

Here, where earth and art intertwine,
a mosaic of blues, greens, and reds, 
light moves through them, alive.

Golden spires, sharp and towering, pierce
the sky, casting shadows that dance along 
green surrounding trees. On another side,
long, slender stalks of deep blue glass emerge 
from the soil, stretching in thin, elegant lines

Beneath the vast glass dome, 
flowers bloom in pink and violet, 
mingling with the orange and red
tendrils that curl and arc, wild and free,
where boundaries blur and blend. 

Here, where I stand beneath a canopy
of glass, a man demonstrates an ancient craft
of glassmaking, as a searing, molten orb 
turns to a sculpted form, glowing with
the intense heat of its transformation.

Jennifer Choi is a passionate high school student whose love for poetry began at an early age. She finds inspiration in exploring themes of identity, love, and the complexities of the human experience through her writing. Jennifer aspires to connect with others through her poetry and hopes to contribute her voice to the literary community.