My friend tells me she wants a dog. But not a puppy. No. An adult dog. Seven years old. Maybe eight. Housetrained. Leash trained. Low energy. A lap dog. A companion. That’s what she wants. She needs. Companionship. A lonely little dog. To keep her company. Yes. Loneliness. That she knows. She’s been lonely far too long.
Panic Attack
My friend tells me she wants a dog. But in her group. You know. On Facebook. Chihuahua Lovers. That group. Today. It’s dental issues. Chihuahuas tend to have them. That’s what they say. Like losing teeth. All of them. Not a problem. I say. I take her to PetSmart. Show her dental treats. For tartar, plaque, gums, teeth. Okay then. She says. No worries.
Laura Stamps is the author of 51 novels, novellas, short story collections, and poetry books, including Dog Dazed (Kittyfeather Press, 2022), The Good Dog (Prolific Pulse Press 2023), and Addicted to Dog Magazines (Impspired, 2023). Recipient of a Pulitzer Prize nomination and 7 Pushcart Prize nominations.
You can find more of Laura’s work here on Ink Pantry
Eternal Father Bless our Land, This Land of Hope and Glory, guts and gut-wrenching stories May we be free not cheapened or weakened as we seek a life of seeds and flowers Keep us free from evil powers Be our light through countless hours Surround us like oceans do ships Give stability to all who make and made the trip From island to island Guard us with thy mighty hand Clasp hearts like the hands of our Grandparents and parents aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings We know your smile is more than stars winking, sunny days, and undisturbed rest On choppy seas we did and will not fret Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set; God, who made us mighty, make us mightier yet, Out of many one people, all are blessed to bless Out of many one people, all are blessed to bless God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet. Vision set like moulds and starting blocks as your will renders To our leaders, great defender Grant true wisdom from above May Justice, truth be ours forever, Jamaica, land we love, Jamaica and the land called home
Adrian McKenzie is a poet from Stoke-on-Trent, UK.
You can be the best: You can get the girl, You can make millions. Learn like lovers learn: Memorise this list then Memorise that list then Memorise the Stars in the sky. I will show you how to grow. These are the exact seeds you need to sow.
Cling to the Chaos
Water makes mortar. Mortar makes walls. Walls make houses. Houses make water. Water makes mortar.
Tough Men
Sometimes people die and Sometimes they do not. Life is the strangest game I Have ever played: You get wet then You dry yourself then You get wet again but Now the towel is wet so You just stand there dripping on the floor.
Dominik Slusarczyk is an artist who makes everything from music to painting. He was educated at The University of Nottingham where he got a degree in biochemistry. He lives in Bristol, England. His poetry has been published in ‘Dream Noir’, ‘Home Planet News’, and ‘Scars Publications’. Twitter/Instagram
I’d always loved flowers and you surrounded me with them. Those numerous bouquets would bring me joy, you said.
And now the heart of me is filled with your flowers, so many flowers scenting my face, engulfing me in a multi coloured glory of fragile petals.
And now
that you’ve left me for the last time I have flowers to spare and I think of you leaving me flowers
and now
I shall take them outside, let them follow you out and wait for the butterflies to visit my last dying bouquet.
Endless
Endless that’s how it seemed a childhood lasting forever, shining teenage years never to turn into grey adulthood surely and then middle age speeding up now and by then we knew. We knew not everyone made it, that life goes on but not for everyone. We knew it wouldn’t last. Nothing lasts forever.
Toby
Toby was a jug back in the day. He was of his time an old man then fashionably dressed. Now he’s ageless and more difficult to characterise. Animal, vegetable, mineral, alien, any or all of them however re-shaped however mishandled he still feels like Toby and still he’s of his time.
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes. Find Lynn on her website and Facebook
You can find more of Lynn’s work here on Ink Pantry.
While leaving a party this person put on their houndstooth coat and looked down at their shoes (paused), but the metronome of partygoers kept time a couple scooted past but even bumping the shoegaze personified did not interrupt their ESP conversation with the houndstooth doormat but to be honest that blankness was probably the pattern on the doormat cancelled the coat and, space case, suddenly stuck in the magnetic repulsion, their mind was erased and the silence was more of a bubble where ESP is impossible and psychology itself is meaningless the cosmological equivalent of a mental singularity forming at the Lagrange Point inside a quasar and the wormhole that expelled them was either a laugh in the kitchen or the slush stain on the doormat’s houndstooth offering a sliver of detail to the un-narrativity and imagine if they had not come back then the party-thrower would have had to put a guitar pedal under the person’s toes and run patch cables to the bedrooms and turned up the amp, turned down the stereo, called clear
Always something that needs to be kept from someone, and so I stay quiet
Always a truth I would tell you that might feel like a lie
A room filled with enemies or ex-lovers, a boat on fire in the middle of the ocean, my house at the edge of the flood
Find the room where I kissed you for the first time
Find the stretch of highway where the children were murdered, were buried by their father
Look in all directions and call whatever you see America
I am just beyond the edge of it, waiting
vines, tangled with frost
no fear because you’re pretty sure it’s a dream, this silence, this late afternoon room with the shadows of trees climbing the walls, dust caught in sunlight, child facedown on the bed you sit at the foot of, your oldest son, crying softly, dying, which is a weight left unspoken, air thick with the taste of metal, of sweat, of the fear you thought was missing, and you can’t get warm enough and you have no words
you wake up lost in an empty house
sound of ragged breathing
beneath the slow drift of sunlit clouds
and the heavy buzz of bees and the slamming of doors
wait until the rain has passed
until the smothering heat has returned
and why would you spend every second of every day being christ and what will you prove by ridding your lawn of all weeds?
sit in the car on a wednesday afternoon, ask your wife if there’s anything she wants to tell you and then pretend to believe her answer
remind yourself that poems are only clues
vallejo is dead and the world still continues
pollock’s bones cannot be broken any more
it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying
(the tools of the trade are the head and the heart)
the plague years, but not without warning
the false king, who lies about everything while the assassin waits patiently, because history takes time
these shallow graves are endings, yes, but only of their own stories
you grow up in a dying town in a bankrupt state
you understand empty fields and the claustrophobia of hills pushing in from all directions
you understand the suicides who leave no notes, because words are their own form of failure
because actions mean nothing without resolution
if all that’s left at the end of each day is silence, then let us laugh to pass the time
if time is all we have to truly call our own, then let us gather as much as we can
let us forever burn down the palaces of fools
the other prayer
or darker rooms or distant laughter or maybe just the bitter hum that trails behind the neverending stream of desperate days
rainsoaked flag at half-mast in the courtyard on some grey monday afternoon
man says it needs to burn
says he wants to cast a shadow, maybe just make a fist or pull a trigger
ends up in a field of ghosts
believes in the lesser mercies
bare trees and empty wires against a dead twilight sky
says he’s sick of this town says he’s sick of this state but his hands are nailed to the life he’s made
holds his children hostage
paints white circles on a white canvas and calls it art
says it’s a portrait of christ or an effigy of his father and he says there’s never anything out here but time to waste
says let’s just pull the goddamn house apart board by board and call it good
John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the continuous search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest poetry collections include A FLAG ON FIRE IS A SONG OF HOPE (2019 Scars Publications) and A DEAD MAN, EITHER WAY (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Evening came, and never passed through It clung to the valley like smoke The heat settled in and no earthly wind blew A layer of clouds swiftly broke.
People looked strange in the dim purple light Their pallor and features were gone They huddled on corners and waited for night But twilight just kept holding on.
Shadows had coiled like snakes on the street A river was ready to flood A figure crept close, wrapped in only a sheet Its footprints were outlined in blood.
When the mountains fell, nobody would scream The valley was buried in earth A slow waltz of ages moved past like a dream A dapple of sunlight gave birth.
Caught on a Face
I am caught on a face like a fool in the rain In daydreams I trace a delicate plane
Where the sky feels too near and wind howls from afar Where a glistening tear burns as bright as a star
The night air blows cold with a sparkling frost Her cheekbones look bold but her dark eyes are lost
As if sparked in the haze of a glittering moon Time explodes in a blaze that takes her too soon
Those mountains still stand while our lifetimes are brief A face healing and grand casts a shadow of grief.
Mitchel Montagna has worked as a special education teacher, radio journalist, and corporate communicator. He is married and lives in Florida, U.S.A.
medias res smash cut in for punchline set-up never explained
deer and hound look startlingly similar splayed disemboweled by side of road
just leave cardboard stay in collar – puppeteer’s hand
assemblies should be fool proof… they had to add stickers
darting flame reflected appears to battle itself carnival glass
Only Illusions
one windmill rests exhausted, lifeless out of breath, bushed
walls press in close quarters become trash compactor
in the stage directions, bolded: everything goes wrong!
old school squib discharges none of painted noise for him… real, loud, messy
morning dew fog over rolling plains car with hood up
Summer Sky
roads closed ahead under construction recalculating rerouting
beside lavatory just grateful to be seated
rabbit tracks are diminutive – look hard
The prayer plant… Is flowering?! …The prayer plant is flowering!!
squirrel on high bar don’t tell him because has no wings is not flying
Jerome Berglund has many haiku, senryu and tanka exhibited and forthcoming online and in print, most recently in the Asahi Shimbun, Bear Creek Haiku, Bamboo Hut, Black and White Haiga, Blōō Outlier Journal, Bones, Bottle Rockets, Cold Moon Journal, Contemporary Haibun Online, Daily Haiga, Failed Haiku, Frogpond, Haiku Dialogue, Haiku Seed, Ink Pantry, Japan Society, Modern Haiku, Poetry Pea, Ribbons, Scarlet Dragonfly, Seashores, Time Haiku, Triya, Tsuri-dōrō, Under the Basho, Wales Haiku Journal, and the Zen Space.
You can find more of Jerome’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I’m on a half-lit street where feral cats chase rats from Norway
and a pawnshop window is hawking stuff I recognise
and sirens roar somewhere off stage
and alleys smell of piss and cheap whiskey
and I hear voices but don’t see faces
and the bar’s so dark there’s no seeing from the outside –
I feel at risk and I’m loving it.
Our Guru
He was more of an impediment than a teacher. A leech if you must know. Not a guide. And an expert only in helping himself to the contents of a fridge. Of course, in his own head, he was the master. But, in my kitchen, he was no more than a free-loading brother-in-law.
“But he has nowhere else to go,” my wife implored. “There is always Katmandu,” I replied. For someone so thin, he could eat like a hyena. For someone so hairy, I had to wonder why my blades went missing. And the constant presence of him sitting in the lotus position in the centre of our parlour was off-putting.
A coffee table would have been far more attuned to the rest of the furniture. “I am a parent of your mind and soul,” he told me. I prefer that my parents be older than I am.
He stayed with us for six months, by which time even my wife had had enough. He never offered to help with the bills. And he had long since transcended household chores. She advised him to move some place where his eastern wisdom would be more appreciated.
He liked to quote from the Upanishad, how the word “guru” is split into gu, meaning darkness, and ru, which dispels it. If only I were a guru myself. I could have dispelled him on the spot and how the darkness would have lifted.
I’m Corralled by an Uncle at a Family Gathering
The unfunny bounce off my ears. Sad jokes scatter across the ground like beer cans.
No uncle, I’m not embarrassed. Nor am I the snooty one in the family. I like a laugh as much as the next man… as long as that man is not my father’s brother.
I’ve heard folks say that comedy is tragedy plus time. Your tragedy still has years to run.
Spring Rain
So it’s drizzling. It doesn’t bother me. The trees lap it up Why shouldn’t I? Warblers sing through it. Egrets shrug the droplets off in style. To the waxwings, it’s a bath that keeps on giving.
The weather can’t dampen mating season. For the male crane, courting season is short. Every dip of the neck is doubling important. The strut, the dance, the fanning of feathers, has consequences for all the cranes to come. Same for the female. She hunkers down in that low-key rainfall, to watch the show, succumb if the performance meets her approval.
Early spring is where life struggles forward and death falls back on wintry habits. March winds blow into April. Boughs dribble water into up-and-coming buds. My face is cold. My clothes are damp. Nothing here for comfort. But the spirit is appeased.
The Abandoned Lover
She’s terrified of wind yet there she is on her porch steps, trembling, shivering, as a blast of northern air whips against her body.
She’s afraid of water, yet she dresses all in white, walks out into the pond as mute as the swans.
Ice is even worse, It could crack at any time. But there she goes, barefoot, ignoring the danger signs, crossing the winter surface one chill at a time.
She’s fearful the snow will bury her but she waits beneath the overhanging ledge. Or that the hungry wolves will carry her off. Yet she walks slowly in the direction of their howls.
She doesn’t want to die. But it’s the weather of impending doom. And she’s a woman after her own heart. That’s where the culpability lies.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Leaves On Pages and Memory Outside The Head, and Guest of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
