It’s red, more like maroon with sequin spaghetti straps somewhat form fitting, an inch up the knee, lace, tulle and blinged. “Kind of risque for an old broad,” Rick laughs.
Bought as a bargain, but not in the basement. Ten percent off, then another ten, then etcetera. A “steal,” as Aunt Betty would say.
So, I’m giving you warning, hon, three months before we sit side by side, at that wedding.
We did it as kids, thanks to our mother, who sewed the same skirts for us, but it’s now, four decades later.
Do not wear the same dress as me, sister dear.
I’ll take the clouds, most days
“Too many clouds, not enough bloodletting.” He read through my poetry, critiquing all I’d once written, mostly to him.
But I like the clouds. I can feel safe with them, conjuring them into all sorts of contortions.
Carousels, waterfalls; the cirrus are perfect for those wispy white whirl designs.
I’ll take the clouds most days. With them, I am comfortable, forsaking the opening of arteries or serving my heart up, with a side of my spleen.
The Ray days
Missing my Ray. Ray, the barista with the cherry stone eyes steaming my mocha hot filled with latte, with his wink and his wisdom surpassing just coffee.
Now it’s Renaldo. He’s old and he’s cranky and needs to go decaf.
But I need a Ray when it’s 5AM starting time and even the sparrows sleep late.
The ‘D’ in Dave
With the robin revival, it’s time to renew all those springtime festivities. Finally, frost leaves the trees.
As we visit the mom and pop sweet shop on Third Street, where that same letter ‘D’ on marquise, has been blacked out for years.
Dave deemed it “bad luck,” deciding to just let it be.
At that place, where they pipe in the ‘oldies’, we’d slurp on those frappes, cones and sundaes.
On our first visit back, today, 15th of March, we see that the ‘D’ was relit.
The new staff took care of it, saying Dave had passed on, but they’d still keep the same name and traditions
as ‘Dancing Queen’ played in the background.
I said “yes”
Kind of disheveled, but there’s still some fight left in them. Red over easy, in their partytime poses.
It’s been several weeks since they prettied my doorstep mid-day on Monday.
I jumped from the shower hoping that you were the sender.
From the fields, to the table top they adorned, all those days.
In their gestures of ”get well,” “I’m sorry,” or “Sue will you marry me?”
With yours, it was love and a morning proposal.
3 weeks and thriving, are your Valentines’ flowers.
When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and drawing. She volunteers in animal rescue, and tends to a cat colony in the neighborhood. She lives by a beach town, which provides much of the inspiration for her art. Some of her poems have appeared in Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Spillwords, Origami Poem Project, and other special places. Her latest collection is On the whims of the crosscurrents, published by Red Wolf Editions.
You can find more of Emalisa’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I think I’ll live a small life, not too long, not too short. I will do tiny things, tasks not worth observing. I will keep my head down close to the earth, watching seeds sprout in spring, and thanking all for the harvest, however big or small it might be.
As Days Go
Tomorrow needs no introduction. It is expected and waited upon. The sun rolls out its red carpet and walks its way across the sky trailing its long dress over flowers and coloured glass broken on asphalt.
Today is fine. I’ll take it. It’s what I have now, a sure thing until it ends. But, tomorrow, tomorrow… Who knows what it will bring?
Perhaps salvation, all promises fulfilled, Dreams run wild. Joy after joy.
Or maybe nothing more than the same. Or trouble. So much trouble we wish it had never came.
Conscripted
We are being taken. We are being shoved. We are being beaten. We are being loved.
We don’t know winning. In losing we prevail. One by one we get our medals: six feet, board and nails.
Thug World
When a neighbour is murdered a part of you dies. When a burglar takes you for all you’ve got part of the heart that was in you goes out the door with your stuff.
Hard times. Harder for others. Drugs flows in the streets and in veins. Love says we can all heal this. Love knows, but it’s not easy to explain.
Sirens. Blue lights flashing. At night it’s hard to sleep. Don’t watch the news on television. Don’t listen to updates on radio. Don’t scan headlines on your cellphone.
There’s nothing you can do but grieve, and you’ve done so much of that you need to take a break.
Vote when the time comes. Write letters to the power always. Try for something new, something different. Search your mind and heart. Tell the world what you have found.
Times Like These
You shouldn’t be sorry for yourself. You should be sorry for others. Yet the thought of those faces Sets you down the road to remembrance of times and places you once were, Horrors smaller than war.
The streets here have their own noises Gun shots, car crashes and sirens. The dead bloom on concrete and asphalt. The dead stay where they fall. Far off the damage is bigger, But you can’t stop seeing the damage at home.
Slow Down It’s Only the End of the World
Take your time. Slow down. It’s only the end of the world. Weigh each word. Write every sentence with care. The story is your life. It’s why you are here. You need to get it right before “The End” appears.
Joseph Farley edited Axe Factory for 24 years. His poetry books/chapbooks include Suckers, Longing for the Mother Tongue, and Her Eyes. His fiction books include a novel , Labor Day (Peasantry Press), and two collections of short stories: For the Birds (Cynic Press) and Farts and Daydreams (Dumpster Fire Press). His work has appeared in Schlock, Home Planet News Online, US 1 Worksheets, Mad Swirl, Horror Sleaze Trash, Ygdrasil, Penine Platform, Understanding Magazine, and other places.
I break open the hourglass release the silence of eons grain by grain. So slow the fall of passive echoes. Look what eons of defying gravity does! Losing touch of the shore.
The tectonics shift left shift right . . . squirm for air. Orchestrate a wave show. Horseshoe clouds now here, now gone.
Not knowing to belong or not to they build their own orbit. Like the rings of Saturn all ice and rocks buffering on a loop.
Daya Bhat has authored two books of poetry. Her free verse, short poetry and short fiction appear in a number of journals. You can find her art, poetry and musings on WordPress and Instagram.
When its arched brow rises from behind the country hill, snub-nosed, a grin for a grill, you remember you’re in second grade.
There’s Cindy’s old yellow dog feigning outrage at your passing van, his bark and lunge petering to that bored, panting trot. And there the synod of grammar schoolers wrestling lunchboxes into a line, reinventing the rituals, the hierarchies, the variations of elemental courtship.
There the oil-rosy puddles in rutted gravel, the soaked toes, knots of gossiping daffodils, tufts of too enthusiastic grass, the bristles smudged in sage and mustard along the far edge of fields.
When you top the hill you know you’ll see the bus swing a backward right in your mirror, right onto the main road, so you lean, small-palm the cracked leatherette, grasp the memory of cool steel framing the seat ahead, all your uncertain world still straddling the smeared window slid halfway down.
The same low sun stuns you when you glance back, forward, run your times-nines, wheel left and head for school.
Fifth Grade
As I flew into town that first time, leaning over the gull-winged sweep of the handlebars, the burn in my pudgy, mad-pumping thighs, told me I was fast, was free, was finally entering the my country ’tis of thee we’d all been singing, sweet land of weekend- playground liberty. That mile I’d never ridden was a hundred miles, the fresh fall breeze speed itself, as those fat tires snarled through dunes of shoulder gravel and eddies of falling leaves. When I jumped the curb onto the school’s front sidewalk town kids, exotic friends named Cindy, Billy, Darlene, and Gary, were already gathered, long unchaperoned, at ease, their pre-adolescences already underway, their slow turn toward my approach blasé as I came skidding into that newest of my old neighbourhoods of memory.
The Day I Got My Timing Down
It was in that phase of pure sarcasm, midteens, when guys work out an awkward stance,
work their pack’s patter ’til they maybe have it. I don’t really remember the day but
the single-moment wonder of hitting my first come-back just right by accident, then their free, true
laughter, my perfect follow-up, the never looking back. From there a career: from Senior Class Clown
to smooth talker in any crowd to flip teacher spinning lit to wordsmith chiseling chin-up come-backs
to the tin-clad sarcasms every life dishes out as it disarms or drops you or
leaves you hanging, slamming its clanging locker door in your gullible, stuttering face.
Kissed-Off
Lord knows I’m a voodoo chil’.
—Jimi Hendrix
Until that night a girl had only kissed me. Not I a girl. I was fifteen and for
over a year Jimi’d been telling me he was a voodoo chil’, yeah, and I wasn’t. No moon
had turned a fire red, and not one mountain lion had found me waitin’. Now
I was going with Sue, at whose Midwest harvest party I’d do the kissing. Nervous
and showing it, acting distractedly, voice shaking, our friends milling, I knew
it was a now-or-never situation, even though I’d never ever and didn’t really know. Giddy
and ridiculous, we slid into the stairwell, out of range of her parents in the kitchen,
the kids below: the outskirts of our infinity… We made eyes. We made small talk. But all I
could think about was making my move. (If only I’d had a Venus witch’s ring.) Then inching
my arm and small-talking her a little more, I aimed my face and kissed her! And oh, Lord,
the gypsy was right: amazing and no big deal at once. So we kissed again (Lord knows I
felt no pain) and for three months flew on as make-out fiends until she dropped me for my best friend
at her party for my sixteen-and- been-kissed birthday. And I fell downright dea-ea-ead.
Français Firsts
—for Priscilla
After all your dainty tales from la rue du Tel-ou-Tel, so many elegant snippets de la Rive Comme Ci, Comme Ça—Oui, I am forever sheepish I never made it
to Par-ee (sauf une gare on the outskirts, eurailing toward Luxembourg, which was all but fermé for the Halloween weekend). But though now you could easily keep me
down on any farm, France in swah-sohn-canz? Oh là là! —my version of the proverbial semester abroad, and where un nouveau me must’ve definitively begun. Par exemple,
near Nice, absorbing the glowing Côte d’Azur then tour-busing by Monaco for Menton, out one route en corniche and back another, long before my paltry français could surface
fast enough to prattle with my teacher’s kids. But un début—and it would take me only four more largely lonely months to pass myself off as a less evident américain, with at least
a decent accent to show for it, my being the yoghurt-eating, knows-little sophisticate I’d become. It would be two decades before Starbucks blitzed very many Midwest cities,
so old Grenoble’s where the cafés and bistros, wines finer than Boone’s Farm, addicted me to a fresh perspective, to une idée de moi-même transcending tackle football, college fraternity,
and culture as country rock. Granted, all the exotic side-trips did make a difference: that disorienting week in Warsaw (still dictatorial), those goose-steppers in Chopin’s
park; the overnighter (avec les trois femmes!) to Italy; Geneva on weekends; Christmas on the Bodensee (which made me certain I’d learn German for my Überlingen girlfriend
before Italian for those gorgeous Florentines.) But en France? So seul? And working steadily on the concept of an inner life? It was la première fois that I knew I knew abnormally
nothing—and that I no longer wanted to. On the vigntième floor of my international dorm, some inside switch had somehow gotten flipped. Souddainement, ancient history was interesting,
the future a matter for my contemplation, my ignorance a currency I hoped to leave behind, exchanged for novels in two languages and grand prospects for actually using my mind. By winter
I could’ve stayed on through spring. And by spring, back home again and left to reconnoitre, I began that retrospective cataloguing that deepens one’s appreciation—such as how a shy, petite
‘teep’ from Japon and a bold, femme noire from La Côte d’Ivoire could intersect via moi via anglais; or how tinny, small-car traffic is more romantic in memory; or how geraniums are la plus rouges
à Chambéry, a few blues uniquely Mediterranean, and no whites colder than novembre over Mont Blanc. Or how some French are rich, canadien, but also poor, arabe, c’est à dire, algérien. And how
my world seemed now to be le monde.
D. R. James’s latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and journals. Recently retired from college teaching, James lives with his wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan, USA.
Periwinkle garden, flowers folded into a dumpling.
I sit on the bottom floor of a blessing before it builds and blooms, before its face has distinction, expression, perfect individuality.
Low ache of forming, wandering cold plains, over icy lakes through dead forests and caves.
Almost ripe, platelets connecting, composing a singular solid substance. Then
out of the egg and into the vast ocean, forward, shell collapsing, imploding, out free-riding, embodying a fully sufficient infant form.
Darkness
Darkness heavy as a hunter’s footsteps, as a sermon up the sleeve, offered like a ripe strawberry covered in ants.
Darkness like the green on a last slice of bread or the dome of pollution that mutes Earth from the zodiac hymns.
Darkness that binds thumbtacks to the temples, smokes weed everyday through a mousehole piece of glass, dirty as a campfire after the fire or a marriage after infidelity.
Darkness as a shell, hardness masquerading as strength, terrors of complexities, moral confusion and the allotment of grief that mushrooms in tiny pockets here, here, until all greenery is overcome with fungi and poisonous fruit.
Darkness that says ‘I have a right, for my heart is broken more than any other heart has been broken, and then there is the boredom!’
Darkness that holds no peace, no joy in just breathing, makes up myths and ceremonies to blast out the darkness, flaking at the core.
Darkness I am done with your engulfing disease, your canopy wings, trickery, making me believe there is rest and safety in your shade. I lay down my fossils and my weeping.
Darkness sticks out its tongue, builds idols and wins the air. Darkness, I blow you over and when I am blown over, I will offer no resistance.
Resilience
Violet-hue star of mighty purity, a fixed point, directly overhead, anointing, a release from the symbiotic purgatory-fold, from the loop fire enduring coil and the billowing dead land once before me.
I will build a bonfire and dance under this eight-billion-year-old star, no longer held hostage by what I know, inevitable observations, time turned to stone, locked in one position, dammed to have no meaning, no longer trapped in a rippling tremble, continuous and static state.
I will lean into this bright gathering, translating the bursting floral mastery of endless constellations, keeping my height, keeping my mind, ready to engage in a divine exchange, discourse.
Declaration
The declaration came, ground-breaking, significant to every aspect of my nature. At stake is the stability of my core symbolism, the root and the fruit combined.
What matters is this day to walk the wooden floors, replenish my joy in the simple things of duty and care, opening to the embrace of alternate thought patterns, pursuing the paradox, digging out its core for a braver scenario to catch and be malleable with, kneading and knowing the vision will form, overtake and dissolve superfluous dreams and attachments until it pulses like an embryo forming, being formed readying for exposure.
Fish
I saw a fish in sleep beneath a curly wave dreaming in a prophet-trance, its lips and fins relaxed, no resistance against the water’s sway. Some say the fish was dead, but I could see its eyes enflamed, travelling deep in a vision unnamed into crevices of underwater caves, finding peace in a pitch-black reverie. I cupped that fish inside my hand and still it did not move, continuing its placid ephemeral journey, now journeying into the sky, able to breathe, transitioning into flight and becoming intimate with the sun’s heat like never before. That fish was so far gone into a state of transcendence as I released it back into its salty wet home, kissing it forehead first. I felt it absorb my love under its scales, floating away from me, silver and white. Tranquil, in steady rapture, I watched it vanish as it rolled across and under the oceans’ blanket, as though it never was.
Chain
The chain is cracked, only a small tug will break it and the wall will let down its curtain, the leech will release its hold, find a new host or none at all.
I empty my heat on the bed toss with disorder, too slow on my feet. But even so, I am carving a future I can get behind, lift myself onto a plateau that has many plateaus above it, sure of my growing strength. It is possible to keep my internal promises, not like before when the dirty current rippled through me like a disease, threatening, consuming my substance and storages.
Can I say the chain is rusted, dissolving, no access to its binding power? I go for walks. I am grateful for the open door, one step forward.
Child
The child twists a ringlet, runs to the shops to buy candy, rides her bike by the river and assembles a dream-world, bigger world than her whole reality. The child found worship in her heart for God and love for an infant raccoon alone under a tree, talked to herself incessantly, and often, she talked to God, and to his son, Jesus. She went to school, but chalked it up to unimportant servitude, felt joyful and free, plucking the autumn leaves, engaging with the neighbour’s dog. The child was wild, swinging from willow branches, throwing stones, skipping stones, toes always at the edge of the unsettled river. Cats were her guardians, confidants and kin. Church was boredom, except for the one place where the light was let in, that place took over her full imagination as she travelled through and into an instinctual reverie. The child loved her family, was allowed every independence, was ostracized by the other children for her crocheted clothes and the colour of her flaming hair. Some called her witch, others, an atrocity, and the grown-ups, beautiful. The child rode horses when she got older, wrote down the songs of clouds and the names of the crows that would follow her, converse with her from the school bus window. The child found her belonging in her own head, with the animals, and sometimes, she remembers, walking silently, holding the hand of a great angel.
Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Five times nominated for Best of the Net, 2015/2017/2018, she has over 1300 poems published in over 500 international journals. She has 25 published books of poetry, 12 collections and 6 chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay.
Collaborating with Allison Grayhurst on the lyrics, Vancouver-based singer/songwriter/musician Diane Barbarash has transformed eight of Allison Grayhurst’s poems into songs, creating a full album entitled River – Songs from the poetry of Allison Grayhurst, released 2017.
Some of the places her work has appeared in include Parabola (Alone & Together print issue summer 2012); SUFI Journal (Featured Poet in Issue #95, Sacred Space); Elephant Journal; Literary Orphans; Blue Fifth Review; The American Aesthetic; The Brooklyn Voice; Five2One; Agave Magazine; JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, Drunk Monkeys; Now Then Manchester; South Florida Arts Journal; Gris-Gris; Buddhist Poetry Review; The Muse – An International Journal of Poetry, Storm Cellar, morphrog (sister publication of Frogmore Papers); New Binary Press Anthology; Straylight Literary Magazine (print); Chicago Record Magazine, The Milo Review; Foliate Oak Literary Magazine; The Antigonish Review; Dalhousie Review; The New Quarterly; Wascana Review; Poetry Nottingham International; The Cape Rock; Ayris; Journal of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry; The Toronto Quarterly; Existere; Fogged Clarity, Boston Poetry Magazine; Decanto; White Wall Review.
Keith Hoerner (BS, MFA) lives, teaches, and pushes words around in Southern Illinois, USA. He is frequently featured in lit journals (75+ to date, including decomP, Fiction Kitchen Berlin, and Litro—to name just a few). He is founding editor of the Webby Award recognized Dribble Drabble Review, and his memoir, The Day the Sky Broke Open, is a recent Best Book and American Writing Award Finalist. A collection of short fiction and poetry, entitled Balancing on the Sharp Edges of Crescent Moons, publishes later this year.
You can find more of Keith’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Ten inches of wet Heart-attack snow Sits in the driveway. When we first came to Golden Pines My shovel was a shield Of pride and pleasure, unwilling To give in to the years, Eager to break out of restive days.
But Golden Pines does not want The 80-year-old guys shoveling snow, So, on this third day, I lounge in pajamas at noon, Working from my easy chair On paper tasks of little consequence, Saved up for such a time.
The snowplow has cleared the driveway now And we can get to the store, Past sooted, graying mounds that will remind me Of Pennsylvania. Later this afternoon I may try to Widen the path a bit.
For Jeremy at Fifteen
The life of a friend, a teammate, Ended Suddenly, inexplicably: You honoured him by playing hard, By standing for him In the chancel, All of you, your uniforms Still damp from trying, As if you did not already know Of the fragileness of life.
Closing up the Cottage
1) September 2020 Our daughter came back up To help close the cottage. We sat down and watched her Wash the refrigerator.
82-year-old bones ache From cleaning, packing, lifting, Awaiting the subtle vibrations Of two days on the road.
We stood one cold morning By the side of The Third Connecticut Lake Wondering which would be The penultimate trip north.
Back at Golden Pines We are trying this morning To remember where and how We store things for the winter, The TV, the toaster, Computer, coffee maker.
2) September 1986 My dad’s last summer on the pond I flew up Labor Day To help close up, drive them home. The airport bus Only came as far as Dover. Somehow they managed to get there, Him wandering around the restaurant, Agitated, My mother with the Caregiver’s exhausted sadness. The restaurant is still there, Different name, different owners: I pass by that place And still feel An unbidden welling up, How one thing comes To stand for another.
Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.
You can find more of Robert’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Fore Coppers for a Bluebird Fasting at her house means drinking only beer Well worth the money buying her gear Picking your pocket like a Blackbird Mozart’s Twelfth Mass moody as absurd Two out of Eighty can’t hear With a second to spare, herds of deer Muttered facial expressions heard
Herds of Deer
Without care, herds of deer He muttered expressions heard Brushing swathe of might Too weak on his pins to go all the way Whale with a harpoon hairpin light Last words on the cross to pray His creation Lord of light Chairs upside down in the field
Sonnet CCCXXVIII
At day break maze of dark will be gone Unable to read chalk scrawled back door tonight Her joust of life at first light Human shell’s crucified shirts chiffon Dishonours of their flesh at the Pentagon Outcast man’s high mined appetite Weak wasting hand confessional Fahrenheit Quacking Soul’s utter triviality fawn Spiritual eager anticipation to fly Solemnities slightly ironical glee Hymn to heavenly beauty horrify Church yard behind the tree our favorite place to pee White Biscuit tin’s pie Last swig of the pint to be
Eyes of a Raccoon
White Ivory fur sea cold eyes of a raccoon Deep looms of sea’s moon on Halloween Making friends without half trying Limp as a wet rag nobbling his beer Blue Trousers and a white alabaster shirt Red nose rag old sloppy eyes guzzler Like holding water in her hand not his The moon sets before the clock strikes twelve
Kiss of a Queen
Pink articulated lips, kiss of a Queen Double dark increasing vaster Moon Stood pale silent by a Bee was stung at noon Said over her shoulder drinking perfect caffeine English steams of coffee from her canteen Tide sheeting the lows of the Green Lagoon Ivory fur, sea cold eyes of a raccoon Deep velvet of sea’s moon light on Halloween
Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. Has Five Amazon E- Books. 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, LKMNDS and Milk Carton Press.
You can find more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry.
