In the crook of Italy, the coffee capital of Illy and Hausbrandt, that dark rich brew of a city huddled in a demitasse cup – home of Italian ceramics, Istrian truffles and old world grandeur, Architecture comes with a mixed message: Mitteleuropa with mansard windows meets full-on Italian Liberty style where a gale force katabatic wind cups its resonance round open squares fresh off the mountains of Europe.
Trieste II
Those glory days of Belle époch posters, tariff lists and liners reminders of an eclectic era from the shipyards of old is where East meets West and everyone shouts ‘Trst je naš!’ Trieste is ours: a landscape in limbo – the last ring on the rail that held up the Iron Curtain – a deep-water port of Latin, Slavic and German cultures and everywhere the sea, the blue-dazed beauty of it, dazzling stars.
The big question now: Do you lean towards Ljubljana or run back to Rome? Which is it to be?
Swing by for a week and you might just stay forever.
Stopping for Lunch in Vipiteno
Twinned with Kitzbühel, the city boasts two names: Sterzing / Vipiteno – a place more Austrian than Italian snuggled by mountains in the province of Bolzano, South Tyrol.
Coming out of Café Mondschein where the menu is still in German, we walk beneath the Tower of Twelve known for its midday chimes.
A firebreak between two worlds with views into the hills.
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.
You can find more of Neil’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Vibrant colours and geometric prints burst from the curated and manicured environment. Fanciful flower stems and lucky turtles lovingly adorn a plain corner. Intricate patterns made with mathematical formulas. A randomly placed, colourful floor tile, next to a gumball machine catches her eye, and her mouth curls up on one side with a smirk, remembering times long ago.
Portraits, collages, stories, and whole histories are sewn into the quilts, with nimble fingers, yet they aren’t used on a bed or couch to curl under for warmth and security, they are presented on the wall as fine art, a fabric mosaic masterpiece.
Tiny chairs in primary colours and toddler tables are tucked in a children’s corner with blocks, Legos, a toy truck, and baby dolls so carefully packed, yet quiet and still, oddly waiting for a playful child to return? Mother’s apron is carefully sewn from burnt orange and gold cloth with a beautiful rosette decoration. The smock has pockets, like a pouch in the front, and ties with ribbons at the sides. Her lovely work shirt, soft and light to the touch with bright colours for the child’s eyes to admire. She wants to be present for them, sturdy, kind, creative and accepting, so when she can’t be there, they will remember the calm and warmth of the golden smock, like a shining sunset. It is her armour, her uniform that gives her courage and confidence to be better and wiser for them, for herself. She touches her fingertips to her chest where a miniature sun resides within, and she knows she is changing. She calls upon that sun to guide and nourish her motivations. When it sets, the moon’s silver glow shows the way until morning.
Kind Souls
Socks and shoes are soggy wet. Thunder rumbles and lightning flashes. It sounds like a tall oak snapped in half. Today I am uneasy, not knowing which way to go on almost every decision, so I try different directions to see what works. The first one didn’t seem right so I start over and try again in a safer place. I found a kind face, who took pity on me, and a nice helper who sewed thread onto my torn apron string with stiff, swift fingers. I feel my body is weak. I need wholesome food for nourishment and to settle the knot in my stomach. I had a bad night. Up intermittently, but never knew the time. I had sweats then a jolt of chill. I slept in late and wrong footed the day.
A river of water flows down the street. I am only half prepared. I have a large umbrella, found in the trunk from father, but I am dressed for a sunny summer day in a jumper and white sneakers! Can’t step in a puddle or they will be ruined, so I turn back for cover like an alley cat crouched in the doorway with big eyes looking out onto the world, hoping for kind souls to cross my path, not nasty boars with sharp tusks. The storm tricked me. Just when I thought it would let up, it struck again and rain came pouring down on the town, on the town, on the town.
The sun tried to come out again and clear up the mess. Plans dashed and confusion came over me again. My mind went to a sick child at home and my parents worry for me being alone. They tell me to leave early and come home. They do not understand this place. My husband says to stay, do my work, take the journey, but the tone in his voice sounds impatient that I am hesitating and checking in. Communication is strained. Which way should I go? I am happy to be here on this quest with these characters in the play. They are trying to figure out the puzzle too.
It is calm now and a little boy bends down into a puddle and splashes water with his hand, so does father. Rose pink glasses catch the setting sunlight at the dinner table and it provides hope tomorrow will be a better day.
Low Country
Driving carefully through the storm. Lines of swollen clouds like black and grey ribbons. Take me home angels. Don’t let me go off course. Follow the map as it guides me through the countryside. Dark trees with green buds. I saw a mare standing over her foal as protection in the rain. The thunder scares me but I have to drive straight through it to get to the other side. A fire smouldered in the rain and filled my nostrils with smoke from an old brick chimney, years ago in a northern village. Large black crows swoop from the pine tree tops. I am embarrassed that I left early, but I know myself. I know what I came to do. I accomplished it and I am ready to go home, even though I could sense in his voice he was disappointed in me, not achieving the miracle. Broken rooftops and cottages sag by the roadside. There are some white picket fences that are kept with care. Lone scary cypress and Tuscan orange grass sprout up like an Italian countryside, yet the pines and thunder clouds remind me I’m in the low country. Ditches are swelled with water in this ghost town. Rusted tin awnings and decaying black iron balconies are on my view as I creep around the storm toward home, home, home. Safety of city lights, places I know and the tender faces I love, love, love.
Plucked Pebble
Round like a gumdrop or lozenge Old and wrinkled and yellowed with time, like cracked and chipping wallpaper. If it had a smell it would be one of lingering cigarette smoke, or dust. I’m not sure why I picked this pebble. It was in a sunny spot on the ground. It is golden in colour, like a warm beach. Smooth like a bathtub but hard, like a bone. My two-year old daughter presses her fingers to my collarbone or to my wrist and says, “Bones in there.” It’s a tiny thing, just a nothing from the dirt. Yet, I picked it and study it like it is special. Doesn’t it feel nice to be picked, as special? To be regarded with care? To spend time with this nothing pebble? Then, I vow to spend this quality time with the people I love, with myself. Take time to understand the ugly and beautiful. That is where connection is knitted. I haven’t said a word, yet I understand this pebble. It will sink to the bottom of the creek if I toss it there. Probably, no one on Earth will hold it or look at it so closely ever again. Then, make the most out of this immediate time. This moment matters. All moments matter. If this pebble has meaning, then zoom out and everything in my eyesight has meaning and significance. Everything and everyone special to me, is worthy of notice.
Dana Zullo is an educator and mother in Georgia. Her poems have been published in Paprika Southern and Literary Yard. Her artist biographies are seen in printmaking guides at Crown Point Press. She received artist residencies at South Porch Artists in SC and Dairy Hollow, AR. She also creates floral art with the Ichiyo School of Ikebana and previously taught art in the Peace Corps in Ghana. Inspired by personal development, motherhood, and the natural world, her writing and designs are found on Instagram.
In practice, are you a proactive nationalist? Are you a happy, patriotic person- Who is bursting with intense emotions of patriotism? Are you a man with socialist ideology? Do you think like a conservative or a democratic man? Alternatively, do you take pride in the culture and- religion you were raised in from birth?
Apart from our identity as a social being, You might also identify yourself in a different orchestra. What do you believe your true self to be? Oh Humanity! full of rain-soaked nature, What do you say about your real identity?
Is our absolute identity based on— being nationalist, democratic, religious, or culturalist? Or are these the identities that are imposed on us- To align the structural power with the demands of the wider society.
We are happy to identify ourselves with the relative identity— that is created within the limited reality of the cosmos. While —The Absolute Identity —We Have, May haven’t been unleashed yet. Be it in the fertile land of policy making, Or- ‘Social Contract’. This is the real seed of every chaos we harvest
Our true identity is, of course, our personality. And, It is defined by the quality of our ‘Soul Thoughts’. But the absolute identity we might have, Lies within the quality of our—’Soul Awareness’.
Rajendra Ojha (Nayan) is a Nepalese poet, philosopher, social researcher, social worker, and EU-certified trainer. He also served as a citizen diplomat for three months under the ‘Ministry of Population and Environment’ in 2018 in Switzerland for the diplomatic program of the Minamata Convention, which was held in Geneva, Switzerland. Poems and philosophical writings of Rajendra Ojha have been published in various national as well as international literary journals from Nepal, the U.S.A., India, China, Russia, Spain, Myanmar, and Pakistan in both Nepalese and English. He has also published two anthologies, ‘Through the World’ (a collection of experimental poems) and ‘Words of Tiger’ (a collection of philosophical and psychological poems), in 2011 and 2019, respectively. Mr. Rajendra Ojha has been honoured by two major prestigious awards named ‘Asia’s Outstanding Internship Solution Provider Award 2020/21’ and ‘Dadasaheb Phalke Television Award 2023’ respectively for his work as a ‘Social Researcher’ as well as a ‘Social Worker’ (activities related to social responsibility), respectively, in 2021 and 2023.
Here is a private hut staring at me, twigs & branches over the top— naked & alone.
I respond to an old 60s doo-wop song: In the Still of the Night Fred Parris and The Satins.
Storms are written in narratives, old ears closed to a full hearing. I’m but a shelter cringing. In age, nightmare pre-warned redemption. Let’s call it the Jesus factor, not LGBT symbols in Biden’s world. I lost my way close to the end. Here is this shelter in heaven poetry imagined spaces prematurely still not all the words fit, in childhood in abuse lack of reason for bruises rough hills, carp that didn’t bite, and Schwinn bike rides flat tires, chains fall off, spokes collapse— this thunder, those storms.
Find me a thumbnail image of myself in centuries of dust. Stand weakened by nature of change glossed over, sealed. Archives. Old men, like a luxurious battery, die hard, but with years, they too, fade away.
California Summer
Coastal warm breeze off Santa Monica, California the sun turns salt shaker upside down and it rains white smog, a humid mist. No thunder, no lightening, nothing else to do except for sashay forward into liquid and swim into eternal days like this.
Four Leaf Clover
I found your life smiling inside a four-leaf clover. Here you hibernate in sin. You were dancing in the orange fields of the sun. You lock into your history, your past, withdrawal, taste honeycomb, then cow salt lick. All your life, you have danced in your soft shoes. Find free lottery tickets in the pockets of poor men and strangers. Numbers rhyme like winners, but they are just losers. Positive numbers tug like grey blankets, poor horses coming in 1st. Private angry walls; desperate is the night. You control intellect, josser men. You take them in, push them out, circle them with silliness. Everything turns indigo blue in grief. I hear your voice, fragmented words in thunder. An actress buried in degrees of lousy weather and blindness. I leave you alone, wander the prairie path by myself. Pray for wildflowers, the simple types. No one cares. Purple colours, false colours, hibiscus on guard, lilacs are freedom seekers, now no howls in death. You are the cookie crumble of my dreams. Three marriages in the past. I hear you knocking my walls down, heaven stars creating dreams. Once beautiful in the rainbow sun, my face, even snow now cast in banners, blank, fire, and flames. I cycle a self-absorbed nest of words.
Casket of Love
This moon, clinging to a cloudless sky, offers the light by which we love. In this park, grass knees high, tickling bare feet, offers the place we pass pleasant smiles. Sir Winston Churchill would have saluted the stately manner this fog lifts, marching in time across this pond layering its ghostly body over us cuddled by the water’s edge, as if we are burdened by this sealed casket called love. Frogs in the marsh, crickets beneath the crocuses trumpet the last farewell. A flock of Canadian geese flies overhead in military V formation. Yet how lively your lips tremble against my skin in a manner no sane soldier dare deny.
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 298 YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 45 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 7 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 453 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member of Illinois State Poetry Society: Remember to consider me for Best of the Net or Pushcart nomination!
You can find more of Michael’s work here on Ink Pantry.
You’re expert at skimming the pond’s dank surface.
Whatever it is you feed on I can’t see so I don’t miss.
You squeeze so much colour into such a small frame.
And, so instinctive, your wings beat without bothering your brain.
THE CONTRACT
On an overhead wire, a flock of crows pauses between roadkill feasts.
There’s a contract between these black birds and the speeding vehicles below.
It’s all there in strips of white-lined asphalt.
Cars and trucks don’t brake for anything.
Squirrels, raccoons, possums, sign their names in blood.
No worry where the crows’ next meal is coming from. So many fast cars. So few smart animals.
THE DATING GAME IS FOR THE BIRDS
I’ll be an eagle for a while, soaring on the thermals, ready to dive down and grab the mousey one in my talons. No, I’ll be the vulture, feasting on the dead ones, or preferably, the ones that just think they’re dead. I tried being a cute bird, a chickadee with an appealing song but who wants to be fed seed out of a gentle palm or fly away at the first sign of movement. So bird of prey it is, a hawk because it’s what they’re used to, a condor because they’re rare, an owl because the hunting’s better at night. I’ve tried being a parrot. But “I love you” never sounds sincere when someone has to teach it to me.
WHY THERE MUST BE A GARDEN
Without a garden, there are no peonies garlanding my back doorstep, no deep fragrance to set off a nostril swoon, no soft white petals for touch to reassert itself in gentleness, no spritely stem to feed off earth and sky, yet recognize in me a seeding, watering, fertilizing parent. Without a garden, the beauty is all wild. And, as much as I love wild beauty, (and you know who you are) I am always up for a modicum of taming.
A COUPLE PARKING
Parked high on Bishop Hill, we look down more than at each other. for we’re confused as to what we’re doing together but the sights are ever-present, unimpaired.
There seems no reason why light should make a downtown beautiful, turn its suburbs into stars, its traffic to passing comets.
We’ve seen it all in daytime, unlovely, nondescript. And yet, at night, it takes on the chimera we had hoped for in each other.
Better to be fooled by the eye than the heart I suppose. As lovers, we make little progress. But as witnesses, we prosper.
MANHATTAN FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS
I watch, the city dazzle from afar. No warriors. Only lights. No one in a panic. No loud deafening noises. Just shapes. A work of modern art crossed with an ancient fresco. Nobody trying to get the better of another. No politicians. No cops. No laws either except for those of architecture and, in the city’s upper strata, astronomy. No slaves to the clock. Or savage tongues. Or wealth. Or poverty. No one ignoring somebody who needs them. No subway smoke. No theatre crowds. No priests either. Everything’s celestial without their help.
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, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Here I am, on the deck of a ship. It’s 1933, and the passengers who surround me are waving, frantically. I’m afraid that their arms will fall off and I will be called to provide emergency services. I’m a doctor.
At least I harbour the delusion that I am. Actually, I dropped out of med school before the end of my first term.
Those who have come to see us off are also waving, and smiling so broadly that their faces threaten to split open. You could almost forget that we’re in the Depression, and that so many people are suffering. From the deck of the ship we cannot see the bread lines which stretch from New York City to Hoboken and into the City of Brotherly Love.
But people are always suffering, said the Buddha, It’s the essence of life.
I see myself as from afar, as if part of me were a bird, a seagull, flying above the harbour elegant in its flight, sharp-eyed
The part of me that is the seagull wonders if the other parts are edible as my body seems to be unravelling My skin flies off in pointillist bits and my organs and the fat surrounding them stretch into streamers like those hung in a social hall at a birthday party or an anniversary
I am unravelling in other ways as well My life story is no longer my autobiography Who was I? It takes an effort to answer that question so I don’t try
There’s no centre to all these floating streamers. No connective tissue wires them together I remember “connective tissue” and many other technical terms falling from the lips of my beloved teacher, Dr. Gall Bladder, who was one of the first female professors of medicine in the world, following only a Frenchwoman and a Bulgarian She was celebrated, her story appearing in newspapers and magazines with stunning black-and-white photos. She became so full of herself that her organs and muscles swelled to four times their normal size.
There I go in transit between America and Europe between being myself and being someone else sailing across the sea
Now the streamers have flown together, reunited but only for the purpose of having me appear as a man in this wood-panelled nautical bar
The bartender is jolly as he juggles three bottles of the finest Scotch and the male passengers thunderously applaud
Without warning, Dr. Gall Bladder appears I had no idea that she was a passenger on this ship as, later in the evening, I would be surprised to find that she would be sharing my cabin However, I am delighted, as she makes me feel nostalgic
She strides up to the bar and issues a challenge: she will arm wrestle any woman brave enough to come forward After she easily defeats the five who respond she challenges the men, all of whom she destroys Their faces turn red as they briefly struggle They are like small insects being pinned down by a praying mantis
Finally the bartender tires of Dr. Bladder’s bullying and hits her on the head with one of the bottles of Scotch but it has no effect. There’s a clang, like metal against metal. Dr. Gall Bladder glares at him and he flees from the room locks himself in his cabin and stacks all the furniture against the door
Dr. Gall Bladder leaps over the bar and resumes his duties Her mixed drinks are incredibly potent and delicious as she concocts them from intergalactic recipes
In my stateroom Dr. Gall Bladder wastes no time in fucking my brains out Afterwords I must sleep deeply for 18 hours until she wakes me to repeat the act After that session, I must sleep even longer When I awake, I ponder whether one can actually be “fucked to death” It does seem more likely when your lover is an alien whose organs and muscles have now swollen to six times their normal size
As I ponder, she says, “I may have something wrong with my kidneys, perhaps because of their enlargement but, at an opportune moment, when I feel ready, I will heal myself.”
I ask, “Can you heal me? The elements of my body have developed a dangerous tendency to fly apart into colourful streamers that eventually fall into banks of blackened snow to be corrupted beyond redemption”
“Heal you?” she says. “What do you think I’ve been doing for the last several days?”
I feel an odd sensation. I look down at my dick—it is about two feet long. Previously it was about three inches, maybe not even that “What the hell?” I say.
She says, “That’s something we are able to do on my planet.”
“Can you do this for other humans?” I ask, imagining this as a source of immense income we can share.
“No,” she says. “I can only accomplish this for men whom I love and who love me in return.”
“I’ve always been infatuated,” I say, “but I’m not sure that I love you.”
“If there were a God,” she says, “she would not have made you humans so greedy. Greed will destroy your species. But, before that happens, I will have transported you to my planet, where we will live in peace for eternity.”
“You’ve been reading too much dime-store science-fiction,” I say.
“Maybe,” she says, “Much of it, I’ve written. That’s how I got myself through med school. Let’s go back to bed, where I won’t be able to read or write.”
“No, no!” I cry. “I need a break. You’ve exhausted me. I need a day off, maybe three.”
“Ok,” she says, “Let’s go to the bar.”
“We can’t go to the bar,” I say sorrowfully. “We’re banned.”
“Banned? Why would we be banned? After all, I’m an eminent doctor who has cured thousands of people of the most heinous diseases.”
“Nevertheless, you broke three men’s arms wrestling them. You were as vicious as a weasel. Do you think that that’s the behaviour of a compassionate doctor?”
“That’s a ridiculous question,” she says.
Mitch Grabois has been married for almost fifty years to a woman half Sicilian, half Midwest American farmer. They have three granddaughters. They live in the high desert adjoining the Colorado Rocky Mountains. They often miss the ocean. Mitch practices Zen Buddhism, which is not a religion, but a science of mind (according to the Dalai Lama). He has books available onAmazon.
You can find more of Mitch’s workhere on Ink Pantry.
