Nothing more foolish than a man chasing his hat…

Whoever he may
     have been, once, way back in the
long ago, the wind
     must have just come along, one
day, and absconded
     with his identity and his
social standing all
     together, leaving him far
from home and his friends,
     and only getting farther
with each passing day,
     like a drunk man chasing his
     hat off the edge of a cliff.

Kick me (for David Floyd)

Strange to find, that all
            this time, you’ve been riding the
      donkey that you’ve been
                    looking for (a kick me sign
      taped to your back, your glasses
                        on your head, (as usual)).

I am a lineman for the county…

Now this is some old
     school elevator music
says the guy riding
     up with me (each to our own
individual
     vertical destinies (with
no resting place for
     either one of us on this
shared journey to what-
     ever private fates await
us, respectively)),
     and it seems to be a sweet
and syrupy string
     arrangement of Glenn Campbell’s
Wichita Lineman,
     and we both just sort of Zen-
out and mumble the
     words to ourselves while watching
the floor number go
     up (and, apparently, old
school elevator
     music is not without its
     psychological effects).

Nothing and Everything

A fat, blue Buddha
moon is smiling and reflect-
                                      ing upon nothing
     and everything in the smooth
     glassy surface of an old
                         horse trough full of rainwater.

Rowing Myself Across the River Styx

While I was busy
     drinking pink champagne from the
silver slipper moon
     and snorting pixie dust off
the plastique tit of
     a fallen angel type, I
suddenly noticed
     my burial shroud didn’t
have any pockets
     (having been snatched up rather
unexpectedly
     by the deus ex machina
of fate from a some-
     what tense and precarious
moment like one of
     those Magic Claw toy machines
descending from the
     clouds) and, apparently, I
was gonna have to
     row myself in my own damn
     coffin across the river.

Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe and part-time sand wonderful woodland critters. Somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters. 

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

Sunflower Siblings

Each sunrise I measure myself
against the shadow by Braille
touch of warmth and cool along my stalk
forced to accept a bit of afternoon bask
stretching my head higher day by day
as I seek my namesake, my maker, my God
until I open my eyes, flourish
in multi-headed frenzy to grow,
to tower, to steal all the day’s sun
because October creeps against my roots,
and I must shine, must seed, must shiver
a lone offspring to journey year after year
against this iron sculpture, this metal
perfection perpetually blooming
under January icicles or July heat waves.

Silent…
now in November
after frost slowly
pulls its shroud
across my leaves,
my heads, my stalk
sucked hollow brown
until I bow to the ground
in drooping, withered pose
unlike the ever-frozen sculpture
that never feels sunshine
full on its face
or changes under December snows
or disappears
in park worker’s truck
bouncing … waving goodbye.

Then Silence

Fog on the pond –
a crow perches
on a blurry branch.
It caws a foghorn…
then silence.

Open Choices

The door opens
to choices –
come in,
see
for yourself
or walk past
imagination
intact.

Grandpa’s Gatherings

Grandpa’s house gathered
from street-corner-free piles
and last days of yard sales
shimmed up with barn wood,
covered with mismatched
cushions and thin bedspreads.

Flattened tin cans nailed
across cracks and holes
like a train lost without
its tracks to sit in rust.

Watched over by a black cat
clock with eyes panning
left, right, left, right
every second as its broken
stubby tail wags back and forth
like an accusing finger.

Moved out to the curb
a “free” sign hangs
around the clock cat’s neck
hoping its cuteness
finds a new home.

Car Body

Abandoned car
with hood,
doors and trunk
yawning wide
for eyes
to assess threat.

Abandoned car
with hood,
doors and trunk
closed tight
like a killer
refusing conversation.

More afraid
of the closed
than open.
Imagination
conjures theories
of opening a door
to a mummified head
bouncing out
like a deflated
basketball lolling
between my legs.
The trunk popped
in jack-in-the-box
surprise!
with a corpse
dangling from the lid.
The hood conceals
a severed arm
jammed between
bent fan blades;
its fingers trying
to crawl across
the motor.

I dare not spread
the weeds imprisoning
the undercarriage;
a leg bone splintered
mid-thigh hangs
toes in gallows foot
suspension.

Diane Webster lives in western Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and elsewhere. Her haiku/senryu have appeared in failed haiku, Kokako, Enchanted Garden Haiku. Five micro-chaps have been published by Origami Poetry Press. Diane has been nominated for Best of the Net and three times for a Pushcart. Diane retired in 2022 after 40 years in the newspaper industry. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

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

Sleepy Whale 339

Unshed tears to cry
Rich silk stockings strafe
Beer burnished carafe
Green silk butterfly
Steel skies Fire Fly
Ghost woman epitaph
Hobbling a paragraph
Faintly urine scented, passerby
Blue dusk twilight
Sabastian’s bark
Dark lady fair man’s, plight
Yellowstone national Park
Mottle affairs moonlight
Old sloppy eyes patriarch
Gloaming grey midnight
Such is life in a spark

Sleepy Whale 340

Woman’s receding hair
Good for nothing me
Ghost woman’s ecstasy
Night after night nightmare
All night playing solitaire
Alabaster silent Poetry
Butt of old Cigar absurdity
Old man’s stare was unfair
Dark lady and fair man’s Street Organ
Steely sea Iron Bay
Snot green, running gorgon
Dark maze betrays
North of Morgan
Sewage breath decay

Sleepy Whale 341

Mottle affairs at work
Sleepy Whale’s ink
Unshed tears eyes pink
Milk oozing Jerk
Rich silk stockings lurk
Sabastian’s rink
Sheeting sea tide Brink
Ghost woman’s quirk
Crying at a yarn
Grave yard dead cheap
Wine dark Red Barn
Lace fringed Bar-keep
Weasel rats, darn
Knock-kneed sheep

Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years; now he paints with words too. 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, True Chili, LKMNDS and Elevation.

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

Paper Lanterns

There is a room without windows.
a man cracks the glass doors
a woman drops a pearl earring.

My father’s face rises from my sleep.
He tries to say something but his silent
words turn into paper lanterns.

In the portico, autumn sunlight pools turn
into squares, a crimson splash, a riot
of colour in the trees.

The chaos and noise make a kind of sense,
a few streetlamps cut the twilight,
the city outside is geometric and bare.

Inside the shadows spilling into a rectangle
are we wormholes to the other planets?
No one speaks above whisper.

There is no clear path, clear surface,
not all footprints echo, nor shout
I stand before myself before a broken mirror.

Auburn Moments

I love cupid’s bow lips, rumpled forehead
and untamed hair.

I love watching the butterflies’ yellow wings
on peonies and red roses.

I love dancing in the open courtyards
of Meenakshi Temple.

I love to visualize his bare flesh and bones
traced into anonymity.

I love to see brushstrokes of the starry night
creating smudges on the surface.

I love to compare border and boundaries
with windows and willows.

I love to soak in the golden evening rays
painting my moments auburn.

Whiteout

There was silence all around and then the growing sound.
I went down and found my dining
hall was flooded with snow.
Pure white spontaneity.

The Patio door was damaged, allowing icy wind
inside the hallway.
Frosty fronds simmered in the windowpane.

Ice crystals were suspended in the ceiling.
All my tables, chairs, sofas, bookshelf, floors were covered
with white sheets

From this hallway I couldn’t tell
if the swirling sweep of snow broke my walls
outside the window.

I imagined walking into a kind of ground
strode many times,
and searching for inklings you could have left behind.

I remembered you always wanted to write
a few lines for your existence
in this muffled, mounted whiteout.

In your absence
my world remained frozen forever.
It’s white all around.

Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 33 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry is published across more than one hundred fifty journals and anthologies globally. His poems are translated in 18 languages and published in 17 countries. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021 and Best of the Net for poetry in 2025. He has been conferred First Jayanta Mahapatra National Award on literature in 2024 for his significant contribution in Indian English Writing. His poems were included in the Penguin Book of poems on Indian Cities. Some credits- The Madrid Review, The Poppy Road Review, Amethyst Review, Ink, Sweat & Tears, One Art Journal, Poetry Breakfast, Shot Glass Journal, Indian Literature and elsewhere.

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

Eternal Spring

I walk through the park’s greenery,
blink at the limpid cool of the water
in the sudden burst of sun,
as if it were the first time.

I cut through an alleyway,
pass terraced cottages,
walk under the arch,
up the city’s incline,
as if I have never ever done so.

As I press on, the streets open up,
and suck me in,
as if I have never, in the glare,
ever seen their mishmash filmy coloured blur.

The sun chilled in the still evening air,
I retrace my steps through the bustling market,
down the alleyway,
across the park, glance at its trees,
sweeping green and glistening pond.
I let myself be swallowed within its virginal embrace,
and the thousand other times,
as if I have never, through the tears and the sin,
and bewildered staring eyes,
ever strolled through the park,
fresh and full in the bountiful newness of spring.

And Again Dust

The driveway, pummelled by relentless heavy tyres,
yields up ghosts.
Below today’s shifting tarmac
lies another age’s stone-embedded off-white mortar,
crumbling, I brush up, with dislodged pebbles,
ready for rubbishing.

It collapses into elemental dust
workmen once made pebble-dashed solid,
curling into faces and clothes.
White smoke drifts into my nostrils, and throat,
chokes.

The disintegration of their works,
the funeral pyre of that moment vanishing into air
recreates their animation, and sweat,
constructing into firm matter
a time and space
from the fumy grains they had at hand.

All Her Dreams

That’s where they said goodbye,
and the gangway he walked down,
never turning round.

They stood close, she said,
he didn’t stir,
till she gave him his cheek-kissed adieu.
He turned, ticket in hand,
joined the long, long queue
travelling to distant lands.

He never looked back.
She left,
the busy, busy world of journeys,
and trysts,
to others.

She said goodbye,
to nestling lovers’ bye-byes
and, their swift welcome back.
She’s missed that train.

Alan Hardy has for many years run an English language school for foreign students (in UK). He’s been published in such magazines as Ink Sweat & Tears, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Envoi, Iota, Poetry Salzburg, The Interpreter’s House, Littoral, Orbis, South, Pulsar, Lothlorien, 100subtexts, Fixator, Chewers, Fevers of the mind, Suburban Witchcraft and others. Poetry pamphlets Wasted Leaves (1996) and I Went with Her (2007). Though he has just recently started submitting again (after a little pause), he has always kept writing (and reading) poems.

Here, where tracks trail
sand, the high-giant mountains
tower. Arid bearers, shielding a shore.

I travel with arrows, a thinker in charge
but, when I’m not sure what to think
and the heavy heart carries away,
on heavy legs, then is when I bless

an unparaphrasable water fall, catching
my quicksandy morning, steering at
shadows in a Pacific green,

folding bright with blues. And when I up
my mind to the Fan Palms, then
the water-wind charts bolt back, like
tidemarks on soft skin — well, you

want to figure, what I deserve?
A collection of cornered cities, perfect
clouds on a boardwalk,

a precious day ahead. Without hesitation,
I park at back-alley-songs, but some
times the still dark determines delay,
free are shades never.

A pelican pair dance their angle.
The long run, I’d love to lack form. Must be
the melancholy for places, I didn’t age.

Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to linguistics & teaching, her love for art & water to poetry. She is a curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review, and runs workshops & open-mics for several writing networks. Find her poems: Kate Copeland Instagram & TER, WildfireWords, Gleam, Metphrastics, Hedgehog Press [a.o.]; her audio-poetry-book Caterpillar Tracks will go public in autumn, thanks to WildfireWords.

There she was, with a smile and a bonnet,
with ribbons, bows, flowers and flourishes.
She sat with poise, expecting a sonnet.
I felt obliged to honour her wishes.
But words were difficult to find and write,
as beauty easily leaves me awestruck.
So, I chose to enter a dream despite
friends who blame my reveries as aw, shucks.
What they don’t understand is a woman
dressed in only a smile and a bonnet
gorgeous, alluring, has an effect that can
distract a man from writing a sonnet.
While female nakedness is a delight,
it may cause a poet to be contrite.

Barry Vitcov lives in Ashland, Oregon with his wife and exceptionally brilliant standard poodle. He has had three books published by Finishing Line Press, a collection of poetry, “Where I Live Some of the Time” in February 2021; a collection of short stories, “The Wilbur Stories & More” in June 2022; and a chapbook collection of poems “Structures” in May 2024. FLP will be publishing his novella “The Boy with Six Fingers” in February 2025.

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

Coming out of the deep freeze

I’m stuck, your cluttered hands doing
the uncultured work as the sun goes down.
What you take as my vow
is just the fissures they allow.
Would you take this sky to be one waking up or one closing down?
You shine like a perfect instrument in a dentist’s tray,
So far away from any surgeon’s table
Where they root around root canals
Looking banal at any cavities to be found.
Tonight will be a murder mystery
but it will have no casualties.
I would love to love you till you stay,
But I can’t do anything but worship the skin that’s leaving today.
The air only holds a typecast moon
twinkling over my biggest truth:
I will lose you.

It’s only a matter of
when and why
how and who
Questions appear before the answers
if you know the screenwriter as well as I do.
Your shy rehearsed lines,
Your bandaged-up body like miniature Russian dolls.
I’ll pull apart the different strands of you
and find where the real woman lies.
Is she stranded between the clock hands that can never find its final hour,
just existing,
Ticking along unaware of the cost of all this lost time?
Please come beneath me,
under those warm arches.
You will never be understood.
Time’s arrow marches forward.
That’s a lie.
I am as lost as the hours we invested in.
It’s all true.
You’re no longer that beacon of hope you were when I first met you,
but you’re still as hungry as when you gave me that first devouring look.
You switch this off somehow
But tell me now:
What will it take from me to bring this back to life?

Freshen

There’s no drive here to make me sane
Or let me sleep,
There are no fingernails vacant enough to descale this pipe life dream,
hanging by a thread on a three-network plan out of reach.
A teenager taunting and dangling a young kid over the bannisters as we speak
The teachers aren’t listening
as the wardens take their payments and don’t dare to catch him.
Pastel paints at the start of a new week.

Before medicine alley

Trying to be grown up whilst the toys are all broken
And the truth is hidden under the guise of ‘I’m just joking’.
My face buried under the weight of a shop-bought angel cake:
Watch it being sliced so delicately,
watch it being wasted on the deities who shun my confectionary
with their dietary legalese.
Still, I’ll drink this substitute dry,
leather lips like hissing possums
running rings around athletic tracks of the academy’s playing pitch
A coach who looks in my eyes, and begs them not to crack under the lines
To jeopardize his personal record timing prize

There’ll be no more deterrents to the most natural of highs.

Whale Watching

In the writers room
Concocting alibis far too sweet for the likes of me,
can you hold that wavering pen and write what I see?
I fear pen and paper is a method I can no longer feel
I feel that breathing is a trick that’s no longer real.
I’ll turn as white as the scrunched-up paper in your hand,
Your dress hung like ribbons,
concealing the only part of you that’s really here.
What are the objectives?
These cloudy mists we write of the hand of a lost judge
passing judgement on a criminal syndicate of which we are all part of

What I hear from the side of the road
is moving parts of engines all about to explode.
To make it blow
What would you do for me?
I like my sanctuary,
my writers retreat,
My baseless study when I can study from a distance
What makes you you
What makes me me
It’s a banana skin slip of possibilities
You were always the type to blot my lipstick,
Pout my courage, purge my skin,
to commit this sin
You’d have to be truly loveless
We’re not there yet.
Now I want to blot you out,
pure ammunition for the page,
A poet’s imitation of a child in fear.

If life is a stage that what does that make us, my dear?
Maybe the cleaners?
I think we’re more than that, but you’ll just sit there
inventing reasons to clean up someone else’s mess.
Let them deal with that themselves
You think of all the lonesome cries for help no one has listened to yet.
Leave the milk turning sour on the shelf
You think we’re Van Gogh’s ear cauterized in a tin of Heinz beans.
Beautiful spirits frail and weak yet to be seen
I think we are as doomed as the great zombies of Nicholson Street
I think we are the beat of a national anthem for a country that doesn’t exist
Paper and glue,
We have no rhythm.
Hang a wall high
stick it back together again.
Draw a border with
a start
a middle
an end.

It was signed by a list of men who hold declarations with no ambition
Under the covers they will make amends.
To have sex with their ghosts you just need to use that well fostered imagination.
You just need to close your eyes and forget about the reality of the situation
You just need to remember that every devastation for them had already happened,
You hold a match that had already been lit
Where do you throw the useless flint
Where do you put its ruthless glint?

Foreign continents, new constituents
Bed-pan parliaments,
Writing for a living,
kissing Euripides on his scarlet cheek.
He falls under the curtain in the Aegean sea,
I see seals on tour in Aberdeen.
The boat driver sold me the fantasy of whales
Well, I blub a tale.

“Have you written all that?”
“Yes”
Exhale.
More power in dead writers than a west coast gale.

 Lily Thomson lives in Edinburgh. Her work explores themes of identity, alienation, travel and intimacy, and has been published in Five on the Fifth, The Honest Ulsterman, Agora and One Hand Clapping amongst others. She is a previous winner of the Sophia Jex Blake essay prize.

Hangovers

A world-wide experience–
Perhaps cave dwellers
quaffed remedies like mastodon blood
for the pain of sloshing down boozes.
The Roman poet Pliny–ate fried canaries,
raw owls eggs – but died of fumes from Pompeii.
Birds may be the key – the Assyrians
in the time of the cruel Sennacherib,
who was certainly a drunk, chewed
ground bird beaks mixed with myrrh.
In medieval times, maybe even the monks
slurped raw eels and cracked bitter almonds.
Placidly the Chinese sipped green tea – and still do.
Maybe the worst, Mongolians recovered with pickled sheep’s eyes.
But the Japanese only pickled savoury plums.
The good old Wild West – Prairie oysters, raw egg yolks
Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, salt, and pepper.
A football player I knew slugged down five yolks daily
before he was thrown off the team.
You might want to avoid Puerto Rican bars,
cuz of their preventive deodorant—
lemon slices under armpits.
Bloody Marys are quite common now,
but Hemingway downed Bloody Beer.
I’m sure there are many more, maybe you have a favourite?

But if you’re a lush, a souse, a binger,
no matter– none of them work.
So you’re sitting at your special bar
or home with your favourite elixirs.
You know, you know, damn well you know–
The best and only cure is to cork the bottle.
Good luck!

History of Spanking

Mrs. Furness, my second grade teacher,
long dead now, told my mother,
“If I believed in geniuses, he is one.”
Made me her pet, skinny me, buck teeth,
owl glasses, unruly cowlick,
left in charge of the class
when Mrs. F. went to the Ladies Room.

Watched over her desk, stopped
kids from messing around.
Janie did, despite my protests,
stuck out her tongue.
Class clown, tipped over
the inkwell on all the papers,
fled to her desk just in time.

“Who did this!.” screeched Mrs. F.
“Who did this!,” spit my name.

I was mute. Janie and the class
prayed I would not tattle.

What would the kids do?
Push me off the monkey bars?
Flip me off the Teeter-Totter?
Refuse to play?
Billy once spit on Stuart.

Mrs. F., arms akimbo, glared:
“Either you tell who
or I call your Father.”
Terror squeaked out, ”Janie.”

She dragged her up front,
flashed her ruler, whipped her,
ripped her dress,
sent her to the office,
the class yelled, cried, glared.

It is said: Spare the rod, spoil the child.
And they spanked, switched
and whipped, even beat
until Dr. Spock—the Dr. Seuss for butts—
said: Wrong thing to do.

In Texas, they allow paddling again.
Triumphant Mrs. F., arms akimbo,
smiles down from above.

Late Night Martini Talk

In 1981, a noted editor,
martini under a small lamp,
yawned, turned the manuscript over,
snapped off the light,
Took the last sip, tongued the olive,
went to bed, after signing
the letter informing
Gabriel Marquez his story
submitted to the New Yorker
would not be accepted.

Marquez won the Nobel Prize in ’82.
I suspect that same editor
is now quietly sipping a martini
by that same lamp, intoning,“I fucking
rejected, Gabriel Marquez,”
nodding, “I fucking…”

My story was rejected by said mag
last year. I suspect martinis ahead
for another poor fool.

Legions of Angels

Though many think Him deranged,
insane—healed lepers, walked on water,
dispelled demons, raised his friend
from the dead, then, the same for Him,
most would not call Jesus a liar.
Intimate with attending angels ,
famished and broken in the desert
when they rushed to minister to Him

He responded to Pilate—
If He asked the Father,
God would send forth
twelve legions of angels,
(approximately 5,000 x 12 = 60,000),
to rescue Him right then and there,
eschew the blood and pain and death
of the old rugged Cross—
was He scared or out of His mind?

Instead, if He spoke Truth—
indeed, when released to return,
He will be joined by those angelic Beings—
horses charging from the sky,
brandishing swords and fire.
Understand the difference
between Truth and falsehood,
between reality and illusion
and know that a great cloud of witnesses
will burst forth with legions and legions
of angels and others—soon.

Cornucopia

You can’t slip and fall on sunshine.
Wagon trains never go East.
Weeds don’t know they’re weeds.
I didn’t know flowers went to Heaven.
Nailing my heart to the roof of my mind.
Bull in a china shop and you are the china.
Shoving toothpicks into the cuticle of your soul.
Sludge of a different colour.
My life is so much thinner than thick.
I was annoyed at the moon.
There is no punctuation in dreams.
Eventually it is naked and sags.
The comedic timing of an owl.
Everything has a penultimate day,
even The End Of The World.

Vern Fein is a retired teacher and community organiser of outreaches to those in need who has decided to write now because Vern has the time and strong inclination to do so. Vern has published a number of poems and short non-fiction pieces.

Lions fire from the ochre riverbed,
you stand in white among the sun trees,
you dress in linen sand,
burnt perfume and your red furs
linger on the river air,
you arise on a ladder of clear stones
to gather fragrant branches,
you silver thread the light on water.
I seek the dynasties of your silence,
a drop of my lamp oil falls
like a water bead on the shard of a mirror
resembling the cenotaph of a queen.

John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France.  His most recent chapbook, The Daymark, was published by Origami Poems Project. 

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