A fluffy cat standing at the top of the wooden stairs Grey hair, black- headed sphere, Five claws on each front paws, eight on rear. Relishing the evening sea With white, long moustaches, rolling glee. She lifts her pink yogurt ears To hear- Her unblinking yellow, black- stripes, Smoky eyes, that reply To the wise, to rise, to say goodbyes.
Monobina Nath is a poetess living in Kolkata, India, and also a third year student of English honours in Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College. Poems published in the anthology Chrysanthemum, newspaper International Times, Meghalaya Times, Indian Periodical. Magazines- Evepoetry, Setu Bilingual, TechTouchTalk, Spillwords Press, Ode to a Poetess and various e-magazines. Monobina’s work was selected in the National Bilingual Poetry Competition in 2021.
the vine, it grows like autumn slumber, heroes died along the way
weakness is my fallen glowing, just like villains kept at bay
trick-or-treat the youthful sending, Pleiades owes the warmth come May
velvet houses are my queue unknowing, sway and sway the birds away
Another Dream, Another Chance
An angel fare, my modern scream—a day within a day I lost myself and found you there—within the wild fray
Hope! The return of desperate prayer—luck, anointment, haze Another dream, another chance—one more along the way
Slant Rhyme With Me
Won’t you stay and slant- rhyme with me? Sometimes—lost in omni-pain—I bleed right up the wall, then get doused in stain. Call it what you will, it’s all the same—at times I need what’s in the mud, and all you seized. What’s left in me? Maybe I just need a moment tomorrow to breathe, but not today— today is for slant rhyme. Won’t you stay and slant-rhyme with me?
Joe Albanese is a writer from South Jersey. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in 12 countries. Joe is the author of Benevolent King, Caina, Candy Apple Red, For the Blood is the Life, Smash and Grab, and a poetry collection, Cocktails with a Dead Man.
you taste of cinnamon and fish when you wish to be romantic- and the ciphers of our thoughts make ringlets with their noughts immersed in magic- like mithril mail around me stove dark forest, pink flesh sea touchings tantric- make reality and myths converge in elven riffs of music, so we dance it- symbols to the scenes of conflict, mavericks in dreams that now sit- listening to these pots and kettles blackening on the fire of rhetoric and murderous mettles- before we both retire to our own script.
The Blood That Makes Us Black
imagine yourself, in a photo-fit picture with every nothing that’s new- minus in health, quoting icons and scripture under the whole black and blue.
optimum dreams turn out fake in the mirror facing what’s been like fallen heroes- in so many scenes like a ghost who is giver passing on wisdom, who knows-
the blood that makes us black of two from one, is schooled by fungus fortunes and faiths old hat to be sold on- like tamed-trained gangs, making golden dunes.
In Maid’s Water
we’ve left the well-footed road, the rutted and rebutted road of shadows cast by towered glass.
opened closed curtains for fusty moths, chanted white spells with Wiccan’s goths; left pictured rooms and halls- become un-scriptured hills and squalls-
in maid’s water pouring down her erect chalk man, like a wild gypsy, love tipsy partisan, smelling of cinnabar and his cigar, swirling like whirling clouds while the changed wind howls.
Minds and Musk
so now we both came to this same branch and bough- no one else commutes from different roots.
me carrying Celtic stones with runes on skin over bones- and you, in streams on evicted land trashed ancients panned- our truth dreams under star light crossing beams.
in here, there is no mask of present building out the past with gilded Shard’s of steel and glass shutting out who shall not pass. the tree of life breathes a rebel destiny believes- we are minds and musk no more husks and dust.
The Head in his Fedora Hat
a lonely man, cigarette, rain and music is a poem moving, not knowing- a caravan, whose journey does not expect to go back and explain how everyone’s ruts have the same blood and vein.
the head in his fedora hat bows to no one’s grip, brim tilted into the borderless plain so his outlaw wit can confess and remain a storyteller, that hobo fella listening like a barfly for a while and slow-winged butterfly whose smile they can’t close the shutters on or stop talking about when he walks out and is gone.
whisky and tequila and a woman, who loves to feel ya inside and outside her
when ya move and live as one, brings you closer in simplistic unmaterialistic grooved muse Babylon.
this is so, when he stands with hopes head, arms and legs all a flow in her Galadriel glow with mithril breath kisses condensing sensed wishes of reality and dream felt and seen under that fedora hat inhaling smoke as he sang and spoke stranger fella storyteller.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. He is also the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
You can find more of Strider’s work here on Ink Pantry.
My soul is not kindred, it is imaginary Like Jesus in the concentric circle of dots It is not solar exclusive, stare at anything too long and you go blind The page-turning and sage burning has me unlearning the words I once hoarded
Like what for? Who for? No amount of beauty or love sustains the flower Abstract concepts do not grow the grass; that is sun and water That is the son and daughter who eat your dreams in front of your face Not I, I spot a spy in my circle and show him the use of a circular saw
Show him how stable a table can be with three legs No horses but the fields get plowed, no need to be proud The process is enough, the work is the reward
Attempt Two
Making water and fire out of firewater This is reverse engineering quite literally Impoverishing myself as to engorge rapidly
What is really worth my while and what’s just worth it for a while, I don’t know I have permanent solutions for temporary problems Medical grade solvent for the slightest stain
The crystalline Sistine slipping off my lips like the Listerine Let’s talk real standards, don’t talk to me about how many publications you have How many books in pending: tell me how many friends you’ve lost How much blood (in pints) you’ve spilled, how much do your parents resent you?
John Maurer is a 26-year-old writer from Pittsburgh that writes fiction, poetry, and everything in-between, but his work always strives to portray that what is true is beautiful. He has been previously published in Claudius Speaks, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Thought Catalog, and more than sixty others.
Far from Romantic, the rain untangles our first embrace.
A downpour circumvents desire when she tells me “I have to go”
while she attempts covering her hair with the poem I wrote her, undone in an instant.
“My hair, my makeup” she shrieks, getting into a cab without me as if I’m culpable.
Left stranded, I’m a relic of romance,
a knight sans armour dishonored.
My mighty sword hidden, my would be queen long gone, & castle torched to ashes.
In Between Sleep
Been drinking all day, though its not yet night in a crowded bar with no room to doubt angels I talked to that might just exist giving me warnings to seek enough light to make peace with myself I’m still without all that I lost, to forget or dismiss. Sleep eludes, escorts faces of the past to relive mistakes I can’t walk out of with certain pleasures that grow vague each day. Can’t say how much longer this long game lasts I’ve played my hand both in loss and in love I have one more drink see the time and laugh leaving the bar a drunk walking dark streets humming blues songs of death promising sleep.
Watching
The watch strapped to her wrist could be from another century. As she steps out of a car into the forever that will be the rest of my day…
spent wondering why I did not ask for the time to hear her voice, signal logistics, and checkpoint to the eternity I’ll need to forget her.
Partnered To Lost Time
Vanity submits truth, saw her eyes again predisposed to mirror.
With few ambitions like the rainbow after touching sky.
She studies her face while I wait as if Godot made promise.
We have reservations at a pricey restaurant waiting to extort us both.
Finally, she comes out asking how she looks glorious, I say.
Unconvinced she returns to mirror two or three more times.
Dating a narcissist partners you to lost time the young ones are the worst.
With that said, I’ll take what I can steal even borrow.
For the miracle of her walking across the room.
Only to me which is all I see if I don’t really look.
Too Early For Brunch
Huevos rancheros in a brand new place more Anglo than Mexican yet quite good maybe its the beer or tequila shots That tamper my mood seeking to erase All I took for granted, misunderstood over a love that once burned scalding hot which had tapered to a chill in the air. Hard long looks of doubt and mistrust and long drives at night just to get away. Only to return while all too aware it was a mistake swallowing disgust. Till we ended it, I guess I’m OK but that’s a lie I tell myself again drunk in a tourist trap at eleven am.
Rp Verlaine, a retired English teacher living in New York City, has an MFA in creative writing from City College. He has several collections of poetry including Femme Fatales, Movie Starlets & Rockers (2018), and Lies From The Autobiography 1-3 (2018-2020).
labyrinths shift and awaken buried truths— i walk dark twisted paths
broken days broken by beauty
coloured weeds growing through cracked grey sidewalks— do you even take notice?
the haunting truth
when life is good, i think: i will die someday and i am afraid
Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, zines, and online publications. He has published 12 chapbooks. He runs Between Shadows Press.
Glazing and glistening grey clouds clot and rust over the city Like dreams pouring from the steel mills and Spilling their detritus. Red-black smoke thickens like scabs, Suffocating lives and dreams. This was where I worked one summer because my old man Told me to. Me, all tender behind the ears, Naked white and barely shaving, Nineteen years old and totally innocent of the ways of the World. The shoes I wore were Steel-plated in the toes to prevent my little footsies from being Crushed, Should gravity bring a beam or a box or a barrel barrelling down. Furnaces burn the incense of hell, Red with angry scourging heat, As fierce and frantic fires melt the ore And birth it into steel for buildings, for furniture, for cars, for staplers, for lamps, for file cabinets, For glowering skyscrapers, For bridges, for trucks, for catwalks. Me, afraid that the furnace-sparks will Light me up and burn me and Ruin my day, As I try my best to coagulate from the world of innocence to the world of experience. A world built on steel, Hard, impervious, tough, Cold to the touch. Steel spans and chokes the globe– The hard edge of a hard civilization. Will no one say I care, And whisper somewhere beneath this conglomeration That things are not as they gleam?
Christopher Johnson is a writer based in the Chicago area. 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 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.
The wind is still screaming against the windowpanes- radio-statics pitched a little too high and wavering like wildflower-dandelions in yesterday’s storm, and I wonder whose screams got carried away by the wind before they could echo into their own hands (and maybe they’re all lost forever- too entangled in wind-shrieks to be pulled back; maybe the music will be left unheard)
I heard that birds have hollow bones- a necessary equipment for flight-life, you see, & so maybe they hollowed out their hearts and the secrets left in-between scattered bones, and I wonder if the wind was just a quirky-collector of life- maybe she picked up the trash and flew into her own flight, Filling her hollow body with secrets of another, maybe she was in search of a new ‘her’
Love, I must leave, we’re covered in lichen, the kind found fogging a graveyard address that draws you close to decipher the writing
of praises for people we never knew. Love, I must leave, I’ve trodden on tombstones and questioned if eulogies are ever true.
Love, I must leave, the letters are burning and someone should summon the fire brigade to quench old flames and stop them returning
in the gowns of girls they impersonate. Love, I must leave, the mist has just thickened, the clock has just struck, it’s almost too late.
Don’t wave goodbye, don’t try to figure me. Love, I must leave, to rewrite a history.
Outside Of History
After many a summer time must have a stop: an empty stage and a canopy hung starless. Aldous Huxley’s dying and Kennedy’s been shot; the United States are watching Dallas.
He asks his wife to tip the boy two dollars for delivery of the oxygen tank; there’s an infinite succession of tomorrows that Huxley is attempting to outflank.
The worn out stoic, the literary gent; something of a saint or bodhisattva, undertaking a brave new experiment to illuminate the world that lies thereafter.
Idolaters venerate the sacred ground of some Golden Age or Utopia; only outside of history is goodness found and mankind is a martyr to myopia.
The Western world murders a scarecrow saviour and confabulates a Cuban connection; a fine day to sneak underneath the radar and disappear through the doors of perception.
Fortified by pain relief and LSD, he floats upon the pleasure dome waves. There’s no heaven or hell, just eternity. Yet perhaps there is an entity that saves?
Not Mohammed, Jehovah, Krishna or Buddha, nor these nightmarish machinations; not these temples and schemes for a perfect future, just this emptiness enhanced by medication.
Ray Miller is a Socialist, Aston Villa supporter, and faithful husband. Life’s been a disappointment.
You can find more of Ray’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Walking in early light, wetlands a short drive from home, where, like the rest of the world, all is quietly closing due to this ravening plague, part of my way parallel to a usually busy highway. I think of another road, traffic-choked, in my distant past. Figuring the year I last drove it those miles ago, I reach back, meet my younger self who casts several glances at my now thin hair, assessing the ruin.
His surprise at where I live now sweetened knowing how long he shall last, he thinks the nearby gas fields recently discovered that he read about must be the reason: employment. All he has known so far is an expectation of work. I paraphrase how, why, I landed here, both linked to my late education, love, work, try to explain about these three life effects felt by most. Stunned, even excited, by where his life leads, he now wants to hear of my health, journey. Happiness.
He knows about the Spanish ‘flu, read that, too, seems more fascinated than horror-stricken by brief news of today’s scourge, but he is young. His skin fascinates me. I tell him everybody would be relieved if this present canker’s naked statistics we absorb like poison, minus the personal misery, grief, and despair, doesn’t exceed that post-WW1 mortality rate. He mentions being concerned for nothing about the nukes, thinks self-isolation, overrun intensive-care facilities, the end of sport, non-electric entertainment, connection – this propels his interest into overdrive – sounds like a fantastic movie script. He loves dystopian themes. I tell him there are more coming. I know from inside knowledge he prefers damaging news told straight, yet want to protect him, protect hope, that lifeblood. Is he too young to be thinking of worldwide virulence?
I cross the highway listening for the odd vehicle, move deeper into the salutary peace of the natural world, but see few birds. Even they seem to have shut up shop, except for a lone pelican, its exquisite wake. Cheer up, my young companion urges, slowing for me, you did so much, although it sounds like you stuffed up a lot. Ah, the chirpy ignorance of youth. How should this end? Endings trouble me.
Hitchhiker’s Paradise
A haphazard reader as a boy I wanted to drive a bus, then to embrace glory representing my country at sport, then again, in my youth, to become an actor via some miracle. Time on my side until I took my eyes off it, I read among a crazy assortment of books including atlases, one by a British writer of American crime about driving through every state during the nineteen-fifties. Exploring America’s vast geographical and cultural gallimaufry became a forlorn wish as time turned against me. Another wish is to remember that writer’s name, find an old second-hand copy of his travel book online.
I read Kerouac, a different spaced-out hedonistic glory, imagining myself a hitchhiker resembling young Paul Newman in The Long Hot Summer, cool On the Road like Sal Paradise in Big Sur where punctuation took a vacation. The comfort of books became a de facto method of feeling the sun on my face until an opportunity to visit America as a volunteer worker opened up. Falling ill en route, unable to immediately honour my contract, I was sacked a couple of weeks after arriving. The driver of my short-lived employers, dumping me at a motel for one pre-paid night, pissed off by my treatment, asked what I would do now that I was recovering. Not sure, I replied. Ever think of hitchhiking? he said. You’d meet people. Americans are better than this.
A short walk from the motel, unsure of the direction my thumb hankered towards after experiencing the unexpected, I plunged into the wonderful relief freedom affords, this adventure’s distillation having taken years like a fine malt whiskey, unplanned yet not so. Travelling the other way, a tall black guy, perhaps a basketballer standing, torso visible through a sunroof, pointed to a car braked some distance beyond me. Hefting my pack, a small tent stowed, risking what? my long-lulled nerves? I lumbered on shaky legs into time stilled forever in memory now, somewhere in upstate N.Y., heading north, I guessed correctly, heart a skittering mouse as I disappeared into America’s pulsing hinterland.
Ian C Smith’s work has been published in Antipodes, BBC Radio 4 Sounds,The Dalhousie Review, Griffith Review, San Pedro River Review, Southword, The Stony Thursday Book, & Two Thirds North. His seventh book, wonder sadness madness joy, is published by Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.
