Faces I’d Rather Stay Unfamiliar

Pass me on streets disturbed,
anguished, or sunk
in unpayable debts of
yesterdays or tomorrow’s
that begin with light
and end with dark
voids lacking the velvet
softness of dreams
of the unfamiliar
shadings of hope.

But today I see
a man on a mild
and pleasant day
wearing several sweaters,
shirts, and pants.

His smile so genuine
I wanted to buy him
a suitcase.

Two corner boys higher
than a trapeze artist
decide to play him for sport,
shouting: hey old timer
what you gonna do
when it gets cold?

With the friendliest
of smiles, he stops
thinks, then answers
I’ll put on some more clothes.

This Idiot and a Half

Almost caught me stepping 
out of my apartment
building in the middle
of the day on some kind
of motorized scooter
on the goddamned sidewalk.
You asshole! I yelled
He looked back, but kept on
going down the block
into the street and gone.

Had his bike hit me
I would have been in
the hospital with something broken
maybe more than one thing.

Some men dream of blondes built
like starlets, yet delicate
as a baby’s breath.

Others dream of enough gold
to remake the entire world
with their name everywhere.

Or they want to be president,
but really mean dictator.

Me, I’ve simple tastes
I’d like to catch one of these
motorbike idiots
speeding on sidewalks
and stiff arm them into tomorrow
with their bodies going one way
and their bikes another.

Then just leave them there
opened mouthed and confused.
Not a lot to ask for,
but failing that I’ll take the blonde
and a few gold ducats.

5:35 am

Daylight is an hour away,
so I finish the last
of five poems,
go to the kitchen and find
sausage and eggs,
then check the mail
and discover none.
It’s now 5:47 am, still dark.
I seldom drink coffee before 6.
I read the poems and wait.
It’s the exciting life
of a poet in New York city.

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).

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

Up there a helicopter herds cows to safety
while the hills are dowsed by tiny firefighters;
down here I pour boiling water on an ants’ nest
and scan the rivulets to slaughter survivors.

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.

One morning,
Banging issued from down the hall.
Our professor opened the door, said,
“Could you please do that another time?”
A voice, some worker’s, said,
“When the hell am I supposed to do it, then?”
Our professor’s face blanched, then reddened.

But the banging ceased.

The lecture resumed,
The excitement over.

S.F. Wright lives and teaches in New Jersey. His work has appeared in Hobart, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, and Elm Leaves Journal, among other places. His short story collection, The English Teacher, is forthcoming from Cerasus Poetry.

This marching, these banners, remind me of Tot,
gently spoken, dreadlocked, who once offered
to construct a house for our kids in the tree
at the end of our garden. He’d protested at
the Newbury bypass, built and inhabited
his own tree-house, so we figured he’d take
just a few days or so. He laboured all summer,
hampered somewhat by a refusal to hammer
nails into wood because of the pain that caused
the tree, and a penchant for stopping and staring
at the world from his heightened aspect.
He dropped dead last year, only 57,
a heart attack busking outside the train station.
His partner crowd-funded to pay for the wake
and that would have met his approval.
It was unlike him to exit so quickly, she said,
but he’d never have stood for a bypass.

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.

Fashion

Our grandson, starting high school,
Wants to be sure he has the right book bag.
I think back to the salt & pepper sports coat
In which I went off to college,
Random flecks of this and that
Against a background I recall
As a vaguely purplish blue.
Mortifying.
I paid to have the pleats
Removed from gray flannel slacks,
That useless belt and buckle
Appended to the back.
(This was 1955,
As you perhaps have guessed.)
When I finally got myself
A proper muted brown
Herringbone jacket,
It was from the wrong store.

Recognitions

At his college
The reunion was commencement day,
Steps in different directions:
The newly degreed and their kin
Exchange congratulations,
With old alums,
A pleasantness instinctive, spontaneous,
Someone’s plan.

At his fraternity,
Rife with the debris of
Last exams, last parties,
They found his class picture,
An off-hand, unsought kindness.
Rows of young men
With dark, severe hair, dated,
Is this you?

At the banquet
He recognized people
Who did not recognize him,
Which had also been the case
In nineteen fifty-nine.

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.

From the Pound Cantos: CENTO XXIV

This is Mitteleuropa. Guns are a
merchandise. Have special privi-
lege. No retail tax or any of the
other taxes, no broken contracts.
Everything in its place, & nothing
left over. Let things remain as they
are. A perennial extension of fran-
chise to continue one’s labours. The

words rattle. Surely we have heard
this before. The bodies so flamed
in the air, took flame. Flames
flowed into sea. For three days
now as if snow cloud over the sea.
& for three days, & none after.

A line from Margaret Atwood

This talk of films made in the early
21st century, as if it was so very
long ago, is making me thirsty. But
then I’m more concerned with some

different points of view, working on
something done a century earlier,
1913, de Chirico’s The Uncertainty of
the Poet, with its strange foreground,

a bunch of bananas, poised against the
shadowy background porticos. So much
was going on in it: but now, with a 90°
rotation & the use of much erasure I’ve

reduced it to unlinked islands of activity.
Have kept its focus — though with the
certainty of a poet have retitled my piece
A Last Banana for Giorgio de Chirico.

geographies: Chorley

Sometimes the Bolton &
Preston Line of the Lanca-
shire & Yorkshire Railway
Company goes swimming

in the Chor. Sometimes,
when the rain is heavy, the
reverse can occur. Neither
bears the other any ill will.

Cursive script

I sit
in a chair
in a room lit
only by the
lost light
of late
evening

eating
dried fruit
from a mini-
pack made
of a dull
paper that
stamps its own
taste upon the
contents

& think about
moving
to a house in
the country
where the words
don’t have to
be summoned

but come
of their own
accord when
they’re ready
to be
milked.

Mark Young’s first published poetry appeared over sixty-two years ago. Much more recent work has appeared, or is to appear, in The Sparrow’s Trombone, Scud, Ygdrasil, Mobius, SurVision, NAUSEATED DRIVE, Unlikely Stories, & Word For/Word.

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

Gustav Holst Considers a Pebble While Composing ‘The Planets’

He cradles its convexities
in the palm of his hand,
feels its significance,
weighs its bulk.

Striated it could be Saturn,
whose drawn lines
are deeply scarred
from hard-earned experience.

Pockmarked with craters,
it could have been Mars.

Cold, it could be Neptune.

Its sudden jollity
is the playfulness of Jupiter.

Broken open
he hears music

How did it get inside?

Rivers in the Dorian Mode

In that see-saw Margery Daw
ocean of a morning,
red poll bullocks near a barbed wire fence
steer clear of the flood –
all that collective improvisation
driven by the height of tides –
not the happy-go-lucky flow
you sometimes see in summer –
but one that shifts into
a faster pace –
an orchestral outburst
of tidal manoeuvres
surging up from the Channel –
so we listen to fenders
shielding blows
that, and the willows weeping.

Coln St. Aldwyns

In 1953, ‘Gardener’s Question Time’
with Franklin Engelmann
came here. The programme was recorded
in the Village Hall (now defunct)
by the BBC.

I was two years old.

I have a shrub that doesn’t want to flower.
(but not all shrubs do!)
How do I identify my soil type?
(clay, silt, peat or chalk?)
How can I get rid of slugs?
(you never will).
Is it safe to move my peony?
(yes, but it won’t like it).
Can you suggest some plants
that will grow in the shade?
(snowdrops, dog tooth violets,
hydrangeas, hostas
and the hart’s tongue fern).
How can I attract bees?
(foxgloves)….

Between the Norman church
and the cottage gardens
these same questions are asked
and answered
year after year.

Neil Leadbeater is an author, essayist, poet and critic living 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, Scotland, 2011); The Worcester Fragments (Original Plus Press, England, 2013); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, England, 2014), Sleeve Notes (Editura Pim, Iaşi, Romania, 2016) Finding the River Horse (Littoral Press, 2017), Penn Fields (Littoral Press, 2019), and ‘Reading Between the Lines’ (Littoral Press, 2020). His work has been translated into several languages including Dutch, French, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish.

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

the grimacing tree

once i buried
some of my pain
but years after
after i thought it
was long decayed
it broke the surface
& stretched into
a tree of pain
each blossom
a bouquet of bayonets
w/ boughs full
of razor-blade leaves
& on many
a sleepless night
i hear its poignant
pointed music
beneath my skin
this terrible tree
my twin skeleton
swaying & jangling
like murderous
wind-chimes

one for mrs. t.

in second grade
i used to imitate
arnold horschack
from the tv show
“welcome back kotter”
when the teacher
asked a question
i’d stab my hand
up thru air
& yell , ohh! ohh
ohh! ohh!
it was a brief
period of acting out
i was usually quiet
it probably had
to do w/ my grandmother
dying in my room
while i was moved up
to the unfinished attic
full of exposed insulation
& incoming nails
& a third-hand bed
from one of my cousins
& my brother
getting arrested
for burglary
& all the fighting
& screaming
but anyway
mrs. t. always sent
me to “the timeout nook”
where there were
big soft pillows
a shelf full of books
& colourful curtains
around the whole thing
my classmates thought
it was a punishment
being away from others
but i felt like a prince
we didn’t have books
at home so i read
& lay on pillows
i didn’t feel the need
to be in the group
or answer questions
or imitate tv show
characters
i was my true self
& i miss that nook today
& mrs. t.’s kind punishment

snouts

i don’t get writer’s block
b/c each cell in my shape
is a bloody screaming wound
a misfit achilles heel chorus
of haemorrhaging snouts
that i translate one-by-one
into the blackest of ink

my wish

i want my deathbed
to be a far off forest floor
no walls or roof
no voices or hands
just a whippoorwill song
while across my upward palms
the light of the milky way

Rob Plath is a writer from New York.

Weather Patterns

In a thunder storm,
the skies slowly darken.
Thunder explosions
fill the sound waves,
first from a distance
then closer and louder;
closer and louder.
Flashes of lightning
paint jagged danger signs
on the moving horizon.
There is a drying sun coming
if we can just be patient.

Anonymous Confidential

You permeate my heart
like infectious nuclear pheromones.
When you glisten from the sun,
my olfactory balance
overloads in knee bending compliance.
Your arduous tease glances
trigger kaleidoscope pulse sensations
that shiver shake nerve endings.
And as of this date,
I don’t even know your name.

A Climatic Courtesan

whose cumulus cerulean eyes
can scan simple calculated lies
like soaking rain swept skies
establish immediate sighs
allows the moment to crystallize.

Her breath like the pace of sunrise
arrives as a bold chromatic surprise.
Her kiss, a sweetened dew disguise,
holds my pursuit with no need for replies.

R. Gerry Fabian is a poet and novelist. He has published four books of his published poems, Parallels, Coming Out Of The Atlantic, Electronic Forecasts, and Ball On The Mound.

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

Adolescence

Despite his friends’ warnings,
he fell in love with a red-haired girl.
He took his feelings outside in the open,
beat up a kid who said she had cooties.
And was suspended from high school for his troubles.

The red-haired girl is in tears
is at the funeral of her grandmother.
The old woman’s hair was also red
before it went white.
A kid was sent home for defending her honour.
But the news hasn’t reached her yet.
Besides, she’s moved beyond the awkward years.
She’s staring at the end of life.

She Was Eighty Seven When She Died

There’s a walk-in closet
It’s empty within.
Stale perfume flutters out
like the wings of a moth.

The four-poster bed
leans to one side.
The comforter is faded.
The pillow cases yellowed.

A small cameo
with a rusty pin
rests on a lace doily
atop a dressing table.

It’s watched over by
a black and white photograph
of a young woman
in theatrical dress,
her face half-bleached.

The room struggles
to be who she was
but the hug,
the kiss on the cheek,
are missing.

And more than that,
it doesn’t even know I’m here.

Whatever Happened To Freeform Radio

Driving through the Midwest,
I’m struggling to find a radio station
that isn’t talkback,
or isn’t programmed by accountants
or country or religion
or doesn’t play the same songs
over and over.

But, on a straight road,
across a flat land,
every station is straight and flat.

On a Stretch of Arizona Highway

Behind the wheel,
straight ahead,
sixty miles an hour,
I see myself
there in the distance,
as far as the heat haze
that blurs the foot of the mountains,
until, somewhere in that purple crag,
I disappear completely.

The Carved Giraffe

Should I buy the carved giraffe?
It will impress the folks back home
that we have indeed been to Africa.
And the workmanship is adequate.

Sure everyone in the marketplace is selling
the same rhinos, elephants, buffalo and zebras.

But I don’t see the words ‘Made In China’ anywhere.
And I did look. This really is African wood.
So should I buy the carved giraffe?
Two continents await my answer.

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.