Poetry Drawer: DO NOT CUT TREES by Maid Corbic

Everyone remembers the forest
leads to ruin
the world needs space
to be related to nature

Even though we are unmarried
hope still lies
in the sheath of fate
woven into threads of colour

Powerful axe swing
the tree falls and the fruit from it
causing global warming
due to human negligence

It is important that someone warms up
while humanity suffers
glaciers are also melting
accordingly, nature does not tolerate carelessness

Lots of floods and tears
in baby fat which
every day he just wants
real play and fun

Glaciers when they melt
general unrest is created
because panic reigns
in people and the world

So let’s take care of the trees
because every day is special
and let’s protect nature
she is everything to us

NEMOJTE SJECI DRVECA

Svi se sjecaju šume
vodi u propast
svijetu je potreban prostor
biti u vezi sa prirodom

Iako smo neoženjeni
nada i dalje leži
u korica sudbine
utkana u niti u boji

Snažan zamah sjekirom
drvo pada i plod sa njega
izaziva globalno zagrevanje
zbog ljudskog nemara

Bitno je da se neko zagreje
dok covecanstvo pati
gleceri se takode tope
shodno tome, priroda ne podnosi nemar

Puno poplava i suza
u bebinoj masti koja
svaki dan samo želi
prava igra i zabava

Gleceri kada se tope
stvara se opšti nemir
jer vlada panika
u ljudima i svijetu

Pa hajde da se pobrinemo za drvece
jer svaki dan je poseban
i cuvajmo prirodu
ona nam je sve


Maid Corbic, from Tuzla, is 24 years old. In his spare time he writes poetry that is repeatedly praised as well as rewarded. He also selflessly helps others around him, and he is moderator of the World Literature Forum WLFPH (World Literature Forum Peace and Humanity) for humanity and peace in the world. He is the world number 44 poet and 5 in the Balkans. He has over 10K of successes on Facebook.

Poetry Drawer: The Empty Forest: Her Seventieth: He’s the Champion of the World: Sitting by the Pool, Watching the Swimmer: A Year of Solitude: The Usual by John Grey

The Empty Forest

Your reflection is gone.
Mine is all that’s left
in these waters.

Your voice isn’t here either.
The woods are full of bird song,
a rustle or two in the brushes,
but nothing human.

In the house,
you’re merely missing.

But here,
in the forest,
you’re never coming back.

The grander the scale,
the greater your absence.

Her Seventieth

If lives grew vertical,
she’d be at

the highest point.
The burning candles

would celebrate this milestone
as if she were Hillary and Norgay

conquering Everest.
But a life’s ascent

is as brief as a prayer,
slopes downward for a time

before dipping precariously.
So she looks up

at the years lived already
and down at those to come.

She’s less Sir Edmund
and Tenzing

and more Florence Hillary
and Maureen Norgay.

Those two both have trouble
going up and down stairs.

He’s the Champion of the World

He’s shy they say
but I believe that’s just focus.
He ran a great race today.
His new book is in the stores
and garnering rave reviews.
And what of his concerto.
Or the flex of his upper-arm muscles.
And to think, a CEO at his age.
A leader in touch-downs,
a mountain climber par excellence.

He’s never been married.
But the task at hand is a wife.
Run, write, compose, work out,
rise to the top of the business world,
then catch the ball in fluid motion,
while pegging your way up Everest.
What’s not to love.

He gets anxious when he stops like this.
What if the world goes on without him?
The price for dalliance
is living like the rest of us.
Marge is just about to introduce him
to her daughter Sarah.
He nervously shakes hands.
Their eyes lock.
He’s doomed to lose his titles.

Sitting by the Pool, Watching the Swimmer

Twilight sets in but she’s still doing laps of the pool.
What was once smooth and blue is now vague and shadowy.
She’s pulling herself through water, kicking
her feet like flippers to double down on her intent.
Every afternoon, it’s thirty times up and back,
which is about a hundred swims in my reckoning
but just the one long marathon to her.
She conquers something that, to my mind,
is not in need of conquering.
But, then again, she writes no poetry.
And nor does she see the need.
She’s streamlined, perfectly built for gliding through water.
I’m romantic, contemplative, easily distracted from the real world.
I’d likely drown if I applied this elsewhere.

A Year of Solitude

Who said it would be okay?
And I will know it when the time comes?
And where it lands it will stick?
And maybe it is here already?

Was it the sound of her footsteps?
Or waves lapping the shore?
Or the creaking of these floors?
Or the fluttering green leaves
of my backyard oasis?

Meanwhile,
there’s all this stuff I’ve been writing,
the pen, the paper, the overhead lamp,
the desk, the coffee,
in hope that the work, once completed,
will be an answer
to all or any of these questions.

But now, there’s me on one side,
the unknown on the other.
There’s what I know now
and the mystery of what I will become.

I’m home. It’s quiet.
Outside ploughs the soil with rain.
Dark clouds match it with headlights.
Blue curtains keep me separated.
Creation is the perfect foil to this weather.
And so is holding out
for the next thought that comes to mind.
Too bad, they’re getting harder and harder to think.

Yet what I hunger for doesn’t change.
That much life has taught me.
And, with each lesson, it gets worse.
For I’m all alone and marking my own papers.

The Usual

I often wonder
where I would be without the predictability,
so much more common than randomness,
as every scene feels like the one
I always come across
whether it’s children playing in the park
or a sale sign in a furniture store window.

Your “good morning” is like reading
the same page of as book that I read
yesterday and the day before.
And the taste of every vegetable on the tongue
never varies whether it’s boring spinach
or crunchy and invigorating raw carrots.

Yes, people fall from cliffs.
Or they win lotteries.
They’re shot in a case of mistaken identity.
Or they’re spotted by an agent,
turned into a movie star.

But mostly everyone who enters a room
leaves that room unchanged.
Each footstep is a continuation
and a preview of footsteps to come.
The words we say, we’ve spoken before.
The face in the mirror is unsurprised
by the face looking into it.

With so much sameness to back me up,
I feel secure
when odd things happen.
Like when I pause for a moment
when a car nearly hits me.
I can return to where it doesn’t.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.

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

Poetry Drawer: The Art of Leaving: Hold Your Breath To See If You Are Alive: The Dilemma After The Game Night: Golden Prohibition by Kushal Poddar

The Art of Leaving

Yes, some of us will never leave
the lane, smell of urine, bound
by bricks with smeared bloody handprints.
We will run behind your vehicle
leaving the place, watch it go holding
the last lamppost, and if we meet again
you have run a circle, you belong
to the ones who fail to don
the art of leaving. We shall nod, two
circles that should not have formed
the Venn Diagram. My child will
tug my hand, and you will become
another poster of a missing person
torn away by happenstance.

Hold Your Breath To See If You Are Alive

The late descent of the drop of rain
startles the beetle. One whole day
has dried away, and still leaf has been
holding the last spell. Sometimes you
hold your breath as long as you can.
For no reason. When you exhale no gale
stirs up the yard. The junked out coaches
shiver as if a new fixture is scheduled for them.

The Dilemma After The Game Night

Last night your team lost
to your team,
and you cannot celebrate
because it is unsafe.

Your new country now smells
of stale beers, and its streets
paved with plastic thin aluminium
reflect the sudden sun, and
wring out a groan.

Your old country echoes stale cheers,
and breakfast conversation
keeps the alive. People discuss
which players will leave
and join the country where you pretend
to mourn.

Golden Prohibition

My hand on your thigh
and yours on mine
draw a sign we have seen
on every prohibition.

No parking here. I know.
No swimming. No loud noise.
No littering.

Perhaps ours end a long fight.
Perhaps open a tired conversation
that will birth shattered mirrors.
Tonight, oh tonight, they’re ‘No War’.
We hold each other ‘s thumbs
and let the rest of our fingers wing
into deep azure.

Kushal Poddar is the author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ and ‘How To Burn Memories Using a Pocket Torch’ has nine books to his credit. He is a journalist, father of a four-year-old, illustrator, and an editor. His works have been translated into twelve languages and published across the globe.

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

Poetry Drawer: Moment Paused by Snigdha Agrawal

I pushed the glass door
it swung open
guy at the reception
greeted in a flourish
“Welcome Ma’am!
Could you wait a moment?”
I expressed dissatisfaction
“You confirmed the appointment
at eleven. So, why are you
making me wait?” I shouted
To assuage my feelings
he offered a cup of green tea
I accepted. Worked
Soothed nerves frayed

Ten…twenty…thirty minutes went by
angst inside kept rising like bile
was he testing my patience?
Casting off all niceties
sprung up and demanded
refund of the fees paid
That made him sit up
like Jack in the box
all attentive

“You see Ma’am we are short staffed. Some haven’t turned up. Please bear with us. Someone will soon give you a hair cut”.

Just then the power went out
plunging the salon in dark
Somewhere a chair scrapped
Someone screamed “bloddy hell! you nicked my neck”.

I felt wet
Buster was on my chest
on his hind legs
saliva dripping from his tongue
trying best to wake me up
with apologetic looks

had pooped
on the carpet

Snigdha Agrawal, a septuagenarian, is a writer at heart, still learning the art. Raised in a cosmopolitan environment, she has imbibed the best of the East and the West.  Educated in Loreto Institutions, under the tutelage of Irish Nuns, both at school and university level, her command over the English language is commendable.  She is a versatile writer, writing in all genres of poetry, prose, short stories and travelogues. An intrepid traveller, her travelogues can be accessed in her WordPress blog. She is a published author of four books of poetry and short stories. Her writings are widely published in online journals and anthologies. She lives in Bangalore (India).  

Poetry Drawer: Memories by Christopher Johnson

Sometimes I fear memories.
I don’t know why—
I fear that they will take me
Down shimmering halls where I don’t want to go,
Down slates of eternal and composite angst and worry and regret and sorrow,
Down impervious concrete tunnels of hardball unspoken thoughts and feelings,
Down forgotten psychic highways and byways,
Down regret-filled mosaics of images that
I know form part of me and will never depart.
Memories are rooms where you don’t want to go.
The memories are too painful.
They stir up too much.
A memory.
My grandmother had died.
My father and I were walking to the funeral home.
I was afraid.
I wanted to hold his hand, but I didn’t.
I thought of something. I had to express this
Fear.
I asked him what a dead body looked like.
I asked him what Grandmother’s body would looked like.
I had never seen a corpse
Before,
Except in movies.
My grandmother’s dead body:
What would it look like?
We were walking to the funeral home.
He looked down at me.
His eyes narrowed into slits.
He told me to just be quiet, please.
Please be quiet
While we were walking to the funeral home.
Memories.
They make me want to cry sometimes.
Even though I was only thirteen years old.
I remember the corpse well.
My grandmother was dressed in one of her old-fashioned dresses,
Dark blue with white polka dots.
Her skin was the pigment of white—extreme white—radical white.
Her skin was pale, serene.
Her clear blue eyes, which were like the sea—
Were closed.
I was absolutely fascinated.
I ignored my father.
I was angry with him.
It would take me a long time to get over the anger.
As I stood before Grandmother’s corpse,
I wanted to reach out and touch her,
To bid her farewell.
I was sad she was gone.
She had listened.
What more can one do?
I came close to leaning over and touching her.
But I did not.
She resembled a statue with alabaster skin,
And her face was marked by age-old wrinkles that spread
Like the rivers on a map of Europe.
There was something alive about her
As she lay there dead.
Her dead pale skin crawled over her inert body.
Memories.

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.

Poetry Drawer: The quire of the sheep: Poetry from the shepherd boy by Paweł Markiewicz

The quire of the sheep

We are calling for your soul
for a benevolent autumnal source
May the hoary times arrive
full of sunny gloom endlessly dream!

with a fancy
coming from tender sea
we are conjuring you dreamer
your mythical pearls

Come propitious birdies
from Olympus-mountlet!

Recite my songs
about the mellow dawn
about brave honest hoplite-like treasure!

Poetry from the shepherd boy

The Spartans were today
by vultures’ tone awakened
the august chasms
still nearby the autumn heart

light autumn wings
I am immortalizing them delicately
in the superbest vase
as well as in picture on the wall

in a temple of a wisdom
Athena’s in the isle
the muser evokes miracles
the helots dream very finely

the destines of perioikoi
are slumbering in an ancient grotto
unusual autumn-songs flying
they become the philosophic hoard

the atomists find thereby
the edenic afflatus
in hawk’s eyes and in wings
of the philosophic discharge

the natural philosophers are waking
in the balmy homesickness
the autumn loves all sophists
it donates notebooks to Wise Men

a whiff of the eschatology
the sceptics and stoics
are going strutting arm in arm
to the moony fire

to the purest best gleam
an apotheosis – a worship
become a sweaty salvation of heart
from Plato full of the starry impact

in the distant cave there is
an idyllic rainbow
the freed caveman
is drunken from an ambrosia

the troglodytes adjusted
by little dew such a laurel freedom
they delight in a poem
in the shooting star that falls dawn

in the pond of the Becoming and Faith
the meteorites down here
orderly word of being
for Aristotle more beautiful

he is being as a rambler led
into the path of musing stars

Tyrtaeus’ lyre is musing about
the experiential eudemonia

the morning daydream is picturesque
Be awake and becharmed when
the deduction with induction
seem to be fraternized!

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.

Books From The Pantry: Immigrant Journey by Jim Conwell reviewed by Neil Leadbeater

After a background in Fine Art, Jim Conwell worked for over thirty-six years in the field of mental health as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist. He has had poems published in magazines in the UK, Ireland, Australia and North America and his work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize. He lives in London, England.

Conwell’s poems in Immigrant Journey (Dempsey & Windle 2024) cover difficult ground. The child of Irish immigrants, they concern his personal experience of the class system in England, attendance at a Catholic primary school and a ‘sink-hole’ (his words) Secondary Modern, his difficult relationship with a non-communicative father and his struggle to try to live a different life. In an extended Afterword which gives some background to the collection, Conwell says he was ‘part of the Counter-Culture’ that, ‘fuelled by hallucinogenic insight,’ thought they were ‘remaking the world.’ His father was furious with him. The feeling was mutual. ‘Our worlds simply didn’t touch. Except in conflict. I was thirty before my father and I began to seek to repair some of the damage we had wrought but then he died suddenly. I feel unbearable shame when I see myself as I think my father saw me and when I think how hopeless the relationship we made together was.’

Cast in the style of a memoir, these confessional poems inhabit bleak territory. If I were asked to find one word to describe the over-arching theme of this collection, it would be ‘dislocation.’ It begins with the uprooting from one’s homeland, the difficulty of fitting in with the class system and the conflict between Conwell and his father. In ‘Like a Fist’ Conwell gives us a flavour of his unflinching, plain-speaking style of writing:

My father was a tall man
And I the child in his shadow.
There was something dark about him
Like a loaded fist.
Or teeth scattering suddenly on lino
With a mouth that tastes of blood.

There is a dislocation from Catholicism, a faith which Conwell describes as ‘demanding absolute adherence to rigid beliefs and practices; an unquestioned routine in rural Ireland but challenged by modern, urban life.’ In ‘Catechism’ ‘God is a sniper. / Always behind you…/ He might just decide, on the cusp / of any moment, to pick you off.’ In ‘Dislocations’ Conwell is ready to ‘live with the truth that life is a whole series of dislocations’ but then, not being able to live with that premise, he tells us that he tries to find connections between one thing and another but comes to the conclusion that the only connection is ‘grief and mourning’ neither of which are welcome at his door. As a noun ‘dislocation’ is viewed as a disturbance from a proper, original, or usual place or state. It is also a word that we use to describe an injury or disability caused when the normal position of a joint or other part of the body is disturbed. To Conwell, the whole of life seems to be out of joint, mentally, physically and spiritually.

Some of his finest poems are those which speak for others who find themselves, like him, heavy-laden. Here, to end with, is his poem titled ‘Incident in the Park’:

A woman is sitting on a park bench.
And from the pram near her
come the murderous
and desperate screams of her baby.

Next to her sits
the baby’s guardian angel.
And he tells her no, she cannot leave the child there.

Someone will come shortly, she pleads.
Someone who may know what to do.
But the angel is unbending.
If nothing else binds you, he says,
then let it be guilt.

This is a powerful collection. Reading it is like being punched in the gut. Its honesty will leave you reeling.

Poetry Drawer: Dogs Don’t Need Aniseed Like I Didn’t Need Poems by Jenny Middleton

The night our dog gorged herself
      on boiled sweets and lost
all interest in the scent of meat —
      chewing and chewing the aniseed
flavoured candy papers into a ball
      and eying me with the glazed resoluteness
of an addict

I saw myself
   when I didn’t write —
too full and crushing the poems
    that found me into the street’s shadows
even as their journeys were rising
    beneath my feet —

or else I stuffed them inside letting
     their verses sing in and out
of my other thoughts — their sounds glowing —
     licking the space between
meaning and feeling
    to thinner and thinner slivers

until I finally let them tumble away
     from me like beetles flicking
through wet grass and into the throats
     of magnolias, useless and rolling
in the stickiness of scent.

The night our dog gorged herself
      on boiled sweets and lost
all interest in the scent of meat —
      chewing and chewing the aniseed
flavoured candy papers into a ball
      and eying me with the glazed resoluteness
of an addict

I saw myself
   when I didn’t write —
too full and crushing the poems
    that found me into the street’s shadows
even as their journeys were rising
    beneath my feet —

or else I stuffed them inside letting
     their verses sing in and out
of my other thoughts — their sounds glowing —
     licking the space between
meaning and feeling
    to thinner and thinner slivers

until I finally let them tumble away
     from me like beetles flicking
through wet grass and into the throats
     of magnolias, useless and rolling
in the stickiness of scent.

Jenny is a working mum and writes whenever she can amid the fun and chaos of family life. Her poetry is published in several printed anthologies, magazines and online poetry sites. Jenny lives in London with her husband, two children and two very lovely, crazy cats. You can read more of her poems at her website

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

Poetry Drawer: Feeding the Meter by Jerome Berglund 

She posts notices around town, throughout local papers, appeals for help in the investigation, promises a reward for any information leading to recovery, or apprehension of the party responsible for disappearance. Language civil, urgent, pleading. All couched in iambic pentameter. From the milling crowds, through blinds, across different sundry streets the whole of Olympus stares back at her pitifully, eyes grim with knowledge, mute to a person.

see something
say nothing
unwaxed floss
lips’ crude
stitching

Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Many haiku, haiga and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, Kingfisher, and Presence. His first full-length collections of poetry Bathtub Poems and Funny Pages were just released by Setu and Meat For Tea press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Yavanika.

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

Poetry Drawer: Unfamiliar things: A pedestrian animal: The courtyard: London, Toronto: Time before motion by DS Maolalai

Unfamiliar things

it’s tough – walking dublin
with my wife now.
every turn a memory;
some other woman’s place.
like the breaking of eggs
open badly at breakfast
and watching the yellow
as it fries into white.

we get coffee one morning –
I’ve had coffee before. I drink
a lot of coffee – often on dates.
or movies. ones I’ve seen
and other ones
which someone didn’t feel
like watching.
or parks. jesus, or parks.

her hands get cold –
she doesn’t wear gloves
and likes to put her hands
in my pocket. I don’t think
anyone’s done that. or wait –
no; someone did.
does it with someone else now.
or not. doesn’t matter. we all move

and this is what comes
out of traveling, seeing
such unfamiliar things. everything
becomes familiar. going to spain
and getting a different mcdonalds.
this burger a little like that one.

A pedestrian animal

sitting out Wednesday
on a North Dublin balcony.
watching pedestrians
as they walk early quarantine.

it’s remarkable sitting; no-one ever
looks up – not in the whole time
that I’m watching. invisible,
being here, sitting so
high. you could be walking
beneath falling pianos
or under the most marvellous
architecture. mankind, I’m afraid,

is a pedestrian animal. very ground level
like dogs around
corners. I watch all the movement,
the steadiness
of legs. the natural gait
of the very best rowers. all minds
on ahead, not around.

The courtyard

life given colour
like blood in spat toothpaste.
the windows around me
all shining white squares
as a lantern string hung
through a garden for chinese
new year. flitting thin skins
across bonnets
of cars, all gauze
and hung willow-
branch curtains;
the occasional silhouette
standing behind them.
moving about,
struggling with a blindcord.

London, Toronto

I do wonder sometimes
what old loves
are doing. it’s weakness –
please pardon
a taste for nostalgia.

sometimes worry
I’ll see them
in the street
or in coffee shops,
though of course
most are elsewhere,
and are beautiful
as elsewhere always
is. that is to say

not very beautiful.
London, Toronto –
warts on the lip
of a landscape. I finish this poem,
check errors and alter
some language. go into
the sitting room
to talk to you.
you are in there,
beautiful as here.

Time before motion

time before motion
and time after
motion. this –
each moment
a wonderful
moment. a car parked
in neutral – the clutch
like small rocks
under pressures,
waiting for ice
to grow hot. a cat
crouched at the edge
of a countertop –
coil spring and ball-
legged intention.
the language you find
at beginnings
of novels – the stretching
of arms into poetry,
before obligations and plot.
like dreams. the leg,
clicking down
like machinery brought
to motion. the bird
on a fencepost
and startled – the instant it falls
on its wings.

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has nominated twelve times for Best of the Net, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and has been released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022).

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

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