I once lived in Sydney

I once lived in Sydney,
the Venice of the very Far East,
where boats glide on ancient waters
that mirror a kaleidoscope of things,
some yachts, aeroplanes and fairie dwellings,
all basking in coves and bays of tranquility.

There was one particular bay I haunted
that had a house so close to the beach
with a wooden seat,
where I sat fantasizing about being part of that unattainable idyll.
My bedroom would be the one that faced the sea
with the waves my lullaby every moon-lit evening.
My eyes would greet the sea-born sun every sunrise
and before it sets in,
and all the shells that deck the sand
would remain where they could inhale the brine
of the deep,
no holes to puncture their hearts,
no strings to imprison,
no roofs to cloister their singing.

When I was a child

When I was a child,
I came to the rescue of ants
by ferrying them across puddles on tree-leaf rafts,
and prepared a funeral for those that perished in the aftermath
of a storm that had no rainbow
or a covenant-pact.
One of my brother’s matchbox cars
served as a hearse.
Flowers were placed where a hole was dug
and a solemn face served as a prayer for the newly interred.

When I was a child,
every object I beheld instantly came to life.
I was able to commune with stone
and pine trees were my confidantes.

Because I could no understand the sky’s native tongue,
she scribbled messages to me in the form of clouds,
the alphabet of the skies,
which I was able to imbibe.

The stars, the blessed souls of my departed pals,
kept a watch over me
and shed tears, falling lights,
when I for the irretrievable pined.

Schooling and the religious establishment
instructed me to strangle whatever beliefs I held
before they became poisonous to my mind and faith.
And when I could not prove to my friends
that those objects were not inanimate,
I intimated to them in later times
that man was more capable of being insensate.

I dread the hour

I dread the hour when I shall learn
of another inevitable betrayal to come
in this never-ending, treason-driven turmoil.

It’s in the way you lower your furtive eyes,
mobilize your lips to force a smile,
then shuffle your feet to assemble a departure
that evades the encounter,
for the Judas kiss is not a part
of this forecast.

I dread the hour when I shall feel
your poison seeping into my veins
like an invisible disease
to contaminate my streams
with the venomous filth of treachery.

Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.

Susie’s first book (adapted for film), Classic Adaptations, includes Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

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

Dark plot

Looking under the bed for what’s not there
Dreaming of, climbing the Maypole
Drinking juices of the Olive Press
Kiss is the dark plot
White Rose scent, passion silent wearing a Blindfold
Making friends with a crying Robot
Alabaster silent dark woman smile
Violet stars but one, white star

Without half trying

Looms of sea moon light on Halloween
Making friends without half trying to work
Limp as a wet rag nobbling at her beer puzzler
Turned up trousers and a white alabaster shirt
Red stone nose rag old sloppy eyes guzzler
Like holding water in her hand not dirt
The moon sets before the clock’s muzzle

Pink Storm Kiss

Pink articulated lips, storm kiss of a Queen
Double dark increasing vaster Moon
Roses by a Bee was stung at noon
Said over her shoulder drinking perfect caffeine
Misty English steams of coffee from her canteen
Tide sheeting the lows of the Blue Lagoon
White rose ivory fur, sea cold eyes of a raccoon
Deep velvet looms of sea on Halloween

Couth erg

Washed away somewhat
Minitel scarcely mold
Hostel forget-me-not
Ireland’s west-ward cold
Under illuminated spot
Shriven Mass-old
Couth erg irk not
From out of the White Fire foothold

Yum Yum Gin

The Shepherd’s hour discipline
Fliting Trip overhaul
Sea-birds screaming at night fall
Rhoda den feminine
Penance for their broken chin
Breathing slumbers snowfall
Drunken women’s brawl
Yum Yum Gin

Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. He started creating poems. He has five Amazon E- Books, also 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, LKMNDS and Milk Carton Press.

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

The Rutted Track

She waits at the gate, a raven on her wrist.
A wanton look lurks in her eye,
though her lips have never kissed.

She bids the travellers follow, along the rutted track.
She knows they will not falter
and never once looks back

across the wide flat fields, where crows peck all around.
The sky rides high and silent
and sheaves of wheat lie bound.

She leads them to a cottage and opens wide the door.
The travellers reach to touch her hand,
but then are seen no more.

Slow The Dark Wind Blows

In the field a lone boy stands,
a knot of thunder in each hand.

The cart comes rattling slowly.
Slow the bone cart comes.

Cold lightning clenched behind his eyes,
as in his head the wild geese fly.

The grey horse hobbles slowly.
Slow the old horse groans.

The sky cracks wide, a dance of fire.
His feet root deep into the mire.

The hanging air sways slowly.
Slow as silent stones.

Lost voices twist his bitter tongue
and will not heed the distant drum.

The dry dust rises slowly,
and slow the dark wind blows.

Soon We Will Be Bones

Soon we will be bones.
This robe of flesh will fade away,
no more to dance in forests green,
to taste the kiss of hidden streams,
to wander lost in misted hills,
to suffer fever, loss and ills –
but still walk on

to lie again in languid sun,
to feel the touch of sudden rain,
caress the joy of other’s flesh;
until at last all this is done
and only bones lie quiet, alone.

Waiting For The Rain

We wait for the rain to stop falling.
It came to us just before dawn.
We wait for the first light of morning
and the blackbirds to start up their song.

For here it must always be raining;
the faces that pass pale and long,
as if they all know nothing’s changing
and no-one remembers the sun.

For my dear, we will always be waiting,
now that the storm clouds have gone.
In the courtyards and taverns
we dance with abandon,
then wait for the sweet rain to come.

Business as usual fights her fire—
            her reshaping;

her iron tongs grab
             frackers, drillers, extractors

by their stock options.
            She hammers hot metal

with the intensity of
            all the teenage Gretas

whose voices sere the ears
            of Wall Street financiers,

of politicians who ignore
            crackling ice, drowning

islands, dying phytoplankton,
            gasping seals.

At Kildare her flame burns
            bright with creation—scent

of hope fighting for breath even as
            carrion rules the day.

Killer whales’ whistles haunt
             the Irish sea, barn owls scream,

a school of herring darts
              under her wing.

Nan Lundeen has published poetry, fiction, and nonfiction at, among others: Atlanta Review, Connecticut River Review, Steam Ticket, Illuminations, Yemassee, The Petigru Review, Evening Street Review, patheos.com, and U.K.’s Writing Magazine. The retired, award-winning journalist lives in southwestern Michigan and holds an M.A. from Western Michigan University.

Turning Dials

You can bleed out in the heartland
and never find a pulse,
turning dials on odd contraptions
that almost turn themselves,
dustbowl feathers for the screeching Thunderbird
of myth, this sorry welling of brackish bail water,
silly corn maze competitions where no one ever wins
and this homely bramble bush woman
standing by a long-cracked window,
her hair up like a personal laundry line,
that lumpy oatmeal cold of an unshared bed,
dripping faucet from adjoining bad breath hovel –
falling out of love, out of tow job repo cars
dragged out of this dying garden.

Commensurate

All this talk of proportions and not a single usable
scale in sight; not coral-worn under the glance-a-lot sea
nor forsaking this long grand laze across galloping lands –
if I were a betting man, I would lose it all to the house
and move in under an assumed name, charge everything to
a room that is really just a view with mini bar,
sit up on hind legs like a skiffle band of nerves and polyps;
the tar for the feathers and everything gone birdie up,
a tear in the awning so that you know nothing is on the mend:
moth-eaten haberdashery, bumper car lisp,
this dusty lint trap fire in waiting.

Bust of Revenge

Move the plaster around all you like –
this bust of revenge, the hair falls away
like everything else you never really had,
the blood squawk of distant crows across cold winds,
shake shake booty trees bare as coming into the world;
force the hand, rub sleep from tireless eye,
build cheekbones high as ever-prominent mountains,
a valley cleft chin to sooth the sayers:
show the sweat, no one ever sees the sweat involved,
the wine of thinning lips, these many hours of compromise;
build the man into a city you can call home,
if only in the mind, count these many gardens
that refuse to grow.

Quartz Parking Lot, Ontario Street

Just tiny pieces in the mix,
but I find them,
take my time as if making fluffernutter
out of the marshmallow horizon,
in that quartz parking lot of the Scotia Bank
along Ontario Street,
across from the Soliel Dental Center
that overcharges for shoddy work,
kicking stones against the curbing as old timers
come and go,
drive off in cars that will outlive them
almost 2 to 1,
the windows rolled down like dollar store
parchment paper
while I feel my belly for a tricky hunger,
for growths that could be
the end of me.

Getting Loose

Does the tiger lament its enclosure?
You bet your stripes it does,
but I’ve been getting loose for hours,
this bottle here beside me like a tart purple warrior
who couldn’t give two samurais what you think
about swinging dicks in the field or anything else,
the most obnoxious music the ears could find;
you can keep your bloody date nights
and company gas card, I can feel the great unwind;
no filters, no fees…
just this Joan Jett cherry bomb getting off
as off as off!

Eye Flusher

Everybody knows about the careless man,
how he throws himself around like a ledge jumper,
a midnight automat leg pumper, every five-and-dime
eye flusher dreaming fountains back into spout –
I always wanted to die for as long as I can remember,
never because of the dead, but rather this blotted untenanted living;
that empty refrigerator way everyone slams the door,
but never out of a serious lasting hunger…
Don’t be so dramatic! says a handsome sandstorm of Ideaologues,
but it has always been there,
right behind the eyes like a bucket of stinking chum,
like a building with a rooftop waiting for jumpers
who bought what I always bought: that the inconvenienced store
never stays open; those many long-haul miles
the sleepy midnight truckers know so well.

Over the Hill

Just traversed, a simple cow town hill,
more mound than Everest, really
and stopping a few feet away on the other side
I look back, not out of any misplaced sense of accomplishment,
but simply to settle an unsteadied breathing;
the affairs of the deceased stuck in probate,
the living fighting over the dead as though no one
wants to be stuck with the cost of the casket –
if there was any love to be felt, I would want to feel it,
standing on the other side of the precipice,
hand on hips, watching the clouds in the sky
and the sputtering rust wagon cars
in traffic pass me by.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Ink Pantry, Impspired Magazine, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review. 

You can read more of Ryan’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Sit quietly apart.
A server will approach
wearing a red apron
nothing else.
Order champagne.
The apostles dig it.
Bubbles provide tingle
that pass for euphoria,
which in actuality
comes later
according to the imagistic.
Bus your own table,
be a nice fellow
then depart.

Colin James has a couple of chapbooks of poetry published. Dreams Of The Really Annoying from Writing Knights Press and A Thoroughness Not Deprived of Absurdity from Piski’s Porch Press and a book of poems, Resisting Probability, from Sagging Meniscus Press. Formally from the UK, he now lives in Massachusetts.

Good Fun

Let’s us step into the dead-centre of some old
country crossroads one hot and starry night,
after drinking too much moon-shine and challenge
the gods or ghosts of your ancestors to a fight
just for something to do.

Let’s put the torch to the master’s crops tonight
and call him out to his front porch and dare that
old motherfucker to do something about it.

Let’s you and me put on our Sunday best,
get some flowers and a heart-shaped box of candy
and go a-courtin.’

You take Trouble and I’ll take Bad Luck,
‘cause Bad Luck is better than no luck
and Trouble is just good fun.

All Throughout the Day

Steam is rising up
from the newly
laid tarmac on HWY D
after a brief but intense
summer thunder-shower
this morning that came
and went before the sun
could even slip behind
a cloud, and the radio is
telling us to expect similar
activity all throughout
the day, and now it’s back
to the music with Tommy
James and the Shondells
doing “Crimson and Clover”
and I say hell yes to the
prospects of both more
Tommy James and the
Shondells in all our lives
as well as more sporadic
bursts of thunder and
lightning and rain while
the sun continues to
shine, brightly,
throughout
the day.

Meaner Than the Devil on a Slow Day

Hell, I read the good
book, the Holy Bible, “the
word of the Lord,” and

if there is a god
like that and even half of
that shit is halfway

true, then he’s a mean
motherfucker, way meaner
than the Devil, on

a slow day, even:
one of those big types always
answering “why” with

“because I said so,
that’s why,” and it’s their way and
no other, and they

want you doing what
they say, when they say it, not
what they do, not to

mention all the blood,
floods, locusts and plagues, the rapes
and the killing of

the first born male child
and “if you don’t like it here,
you can go to hell.”

The Buddha Comes to Belle, MO

I have only just
recently noticed the old
                         man sitting every

morning at the end
of his half-mile gravel drive,
                                 just outside of town,

in a sort of sling
seat he’s somehow managed to
                                Jerry-rig on to his

walker, in which he
will sit for hours, waving and
                            smiling, in a sort

of blissed-out yet still
serene Buddha kind of way
                               at all the cars as

they roll in and out
of town, until the mailman
                              finally arrives

with his truck full of
goodies, where it’s always hit
                              or miss these days, and

then they’ll trade a few
jokes and some local gossip
                                 and then he’ll shuffle

back to the house for
lunch and a quick nap, we can
                                   safely imagine.

A Grand Old Time

Last night
the moon made me get up
from my kitchen table and
my cracked bone china mug
of herbal tea, put on my coat
and my hat, walk out the
back door and wander off
into the hills to run with my
wild cousins, the coyotes,
through fields and backyards
and gardens, howling, yipping
and generally laughing it up,
having a grand old time of it all,
with no thoughts of tomorrow,
when suddenly the sun
began creeping up over
the distant tree line
and told us all
to get on
home.

Jason Ryberg is the author of fourteen 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 Are You Sure Kerouac Done It This Way!? (co-authored with John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger, OAC Books, 2021). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Jason on Facebook.

Eyes of Green

Not known strains from eyes of green
Tic pleasure of floral light
Proceeded to the Jordan River at twilight
Erin of Salt Lake Barges burning Kerosene
Seismic disturbance brings the Nazarene
She’s always a mass of ruins at daylight
Violet atmosphere perturbation night
Limb from limb drinking Caffeine

Sonnet CDLXVI

The sun was nearing the steeple that eve
Under her clean shirt Tattoo of a Feather
Old man who fished alone with a Tether
Cheerful and undefeated to breath
Nudging the door open with her knee to leave
Dark lady and fair man wearing black leather
Well so deep the bottom could not be better
Wearing her snot green scrawled sleeve
No two opinions on it lately
Porters corner Red Bridge squelch
Played Hopscotch there in Nineteen Eighty
Beer with Erin’s belch
Life begins with fishermen matai
We went to Idaho to eat like the Welch

Sonnet CDLXIII

Faintly scented Urine of the Nile
Running across the sweep of the wheel
Boulders bones for my steeping stones kneel
Gun Whale of a boat bit by a Crocodile
Peekaboo molten pewter wrathful
Dane Viking torch of Tomahawks Eel
Stood pale silent during the meal
White Rose Ivory vile
Shrieked whistle thistle
Tippet proper unattended risker
Shadow lay over the rock brisker
Darkness shining in the brightness missile
Turned up trousers drinking Irish whiskey

Sonnet CDLXI

Vague loneliness of alibi
Irish Face legendary beauty’s goal
Lonely silence of the Tadpole
Butt of Cigar smoking Bar-fly
Vague loneliness she can’t deny
Deep Velvet Azure through the Porthole
Grim and aloof steel Maypole
She whispered by the wind a lonely Lullaby
Time stood still in these shoes
Red Stone White Clay whirl
Un-washed under car drinking her booze
Mescal brooding silence with girl
Like a burr sticking in a woman’s news
Slope of sage thunder whittled Pearl

Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. He started creating poems. He has five Amazon E- Books, also 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, LKMNDS and Milk Carton Press.

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

Crockery

My crazy paved heart.
Jagged shards.
Unmatched patterns.
Unnumbered memento mori
to floral fragments of time.
Pierced, mismatched, shattered again.
On the rough edge of forgotten.
Momentum suspended
upon filamental fears.
Hope filling spaces between:
glue holding broken
porcelain pieces together.
Like layers of greying newspaper.
Feathered pages placed between chipped plates,
mugs, and bowls every time we moved.
Until we stopped bothering to unpack.

Below the bridge

From the deck, I appreciate the view,
but sliding alongside the bridge
there’s a living thing. Connective tissue.
Monumental, vulnerable.
Piers and piles driven into the bedrock
lost beneath the surface,
looking like tide-marked, ring-barked,
mud-implanted concreted legs,
squat thighs, old knees obscured in dark water.
Substructures: the under-bridge world,
absent even of blinks of reflected light
from unceasing ripples
passing boats like mine
leave in their wake.

Shadow

We take it in turns.
Sometimes I follow, then I am followed.
As above, so below.
When I can’t see you, we converge.
We’re not the same, nonetheless
our pattern forms the dance.

Rebecca Dempsey’s works are forthcoming or featured in Elsewhere Journal, Ligeia, and Schuylkill Valley Journal Online. Rebecca holds a Masters of Writing and Literature from Deakin University, lives in Melbourne, Australia, and can be found at WritingBec.com.     

Between college and the Army
I had some time to kill at home
And discovered quite by chance
That my parents watched soap operas.
They tried to make it look accidental.
“Let’s see what’s on,” my dad would say
As he turned to the channel
That carried their story,
And the afternoon coffee
Came to a boil in an aluminum saucepan.
Now, at 83, I wonder what our girls
Have figured out of their parents’ lives,
The rituals of two people
Together almost sixty years,
An accrual of idiosyncrasies,
Toast sliced in thirds,
The favourites bookmarked
On the internet of our lives.

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.