TO EXIST BETWEEN ETERNITIES WILD NOTHING LIKE THE EYES OF THE SKY AXIS INFINITY DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE BLISS /COME FORWARD WITH YOUR VISCERA AND VIOLENCE AND SHARE MY WINGS/UNLEASH YOUR SPIRIT BENEATH THE RAMJET ALLEGRO TEMPLE OF THE NIGHT SKY A NEED FOR MIRRORS AND COUNTLESS SKIES/SHAKE YOUR INFINESSENCE SLOT CANYON HIGHBREATH NARCOTIC ERUPTIONS CLOUD NOTHINGS EXOTIC PULSE A NAME BEYOND DESIRE SEMAPHORE SIN PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK TALKING TWILIGHT/ INTO A SPHERE OF YOUTHFUL SYMPATHY RIDES THE THIEF OF YOUTH THIN AIR ADDICTIONS MELANCHOLY BODY SACRILEGE TATTOO HIGHWAY INSOMNIA PUNK/ TEENAGE BLOOD REPETITION OF A THOUSAND HUNGRY EYES/SOMETIMES WE ARE ALL ETERNAL IN THE CONSTELLATION OF MIDNIGHT MOSAIC FACTION/ MY GREEN UNQUEEN GALLERY CRUSH HYPERRITUAL AUTUMN CRY OPULENCE LIKE A TRIANGLE AND A DUEL/SOME TALK TO MEN WHILE OTHERS TALK TO GODS DANCE IT VISCIOUS RIDDLE OF THE SANDS CHAMELEON CHARADE STAR CODE CHALICE/ASK THE DESERT ORACLE THESE POISON DECLARATIONS THE REAL UNREAL CONVERSATIONS WITH A NEW REALITY/DISSOLVE THE ILLUSION IN A SPIRITDANCE/NATURE’S SYMPHONY DRAFT INTOXICATION
You can find more of Rus’ work here on Ink Pantry.
To our cottage on the pond, I ascribe human attributes, And why not: Four generations of Idiosyncratic postures, Favourite chairs, The smiles of grandsons Around each corner, In every splash off the dock, Scent of decades of pine rooms, My father’s shaving brush, Memories in other artifacts We did not buy.
So when we leave, Packing up board games Along with Beth’s shy grin, We ease out onto the lane, Regret visceral Until about the Massachusetts line. The cottage, at first forlorn, Has figured out what’s going on, Recognizes the red kayak, An intruder in the guest room, But, relaxing under its cover of Newspaper, moth balls, Frayed bedspreads, Like an old bear we know, Dozes off for the winter.
2.
Cold October rain Scatters unwilling leaves, Crimson, orange-gold, Before the holiday, Slick paste on asphalt. I pack my painting tools Under the house: The can of grey stain Will not survive the winter. In the tight wood On a hill back from the pond Green clings to green, A few leaves fall unturned.
3.
Late October: SUV’s headed out, mostly Pickup trucks on the lane. They are the surrogate residents On the pond in the off season, The people who shut off the water, Drain the pipes, Winch up docks up onto land, Check in winter for snow on the roof. We have a common concern For a tight seal around the chimney, The grey birch by the Turtle Rock That needs to come down. We discuss The judgment of the selectmen, The Red Sox’ chances for next year, The merits of metal roofing. We entrust them with precious things, Sacred ground, these folk With whom we share a love of place Until we come back again In June.
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.
I aim a spray of bleach. the bathroom smells strongly of swimming pools.
expecting visitors, I touch my mask, and scrub the toilet spotless.
an attendant, tired and early morning, long on a hot summer’s day.
One shouldn’t fit
on a bus, and seeing the mind inside each of these people. a lady who smells. a man with a book. a kid looking somewhat uncomfortable. the cone of thought backward, expanding all colours and size – infinite large in shape and not knowing collision. thought in there. there’s so much person in everyone’s head that one shouldn’t fit on a bus. like going to a tent in wexford, in growing season. seeing how sunlight makes strawberries.
The overly personal poems
flying our interest like flags at a football match.
animals hidden amongst other animals;
robins in gardens fighting christmas decorations.
camouflage – the rage and futility of display.
Fear of losing
what you’ve managed to get. or reducing your income. or only maintaining it.
fear that the job will be different next year. fear that it won’t be.
that my girl- friend won’t marry me. that she will. that she will
sometimes. all these thoughts driving nails in the soles of my feet. I sit at a table
outside a cafe eating a fried breakfast sandwich. traffic honks,
snarls and sends smoke through my mouth and they finger my collar.
it’s saturday. the weekend a scramble. the weekdays some eggshell which got in the pan. a truck
could be sideswiped, could come off the road.
I wouldn’t get out
of the way.
The train goes thwacking
grown tired of my novel, I stretch, scratch my legs. everyone here is sat down; sleeping or freezing in snowdrifts of quiet conversation.
it’s late. outside the train goes thwacking like a galloping animal over countryside.
in here we’re all sealed in.
it’s very quiet. steel tore the ground like a tight pair of shoes and left it red and wounded and we run across it together in silence ignoring each other.
DS Maolalai is a graduate of English Literature from Trinity College in Dublin and recently returned there after four years abroad in the UK and Canada. He has been writing poetry and short fiction for the past five or six years with some success. His writing has appeared in 4’33’, Strange Bounce and Bong is Bard, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Out of Ours, The Eunoia Review, Kerouac’s Dog, More Said Than Done, Star Tips, Myths Magazine, Ariadne’s Thread, The Belleville Park Pages, Killing the Angel and Unrorean Broadsheet, and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work is published in two collections; Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden ((Encircle Press, 2016)) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds(Turas Press, 2019).
You can find more of DS’s work here on Ink Pantry.
In the aroma of Madeira in a glass and the incense of tallow she finds her muse in the day’s snug sunshine, painting the birth of a wren by hand, her heart trembling, coming alive, she’s not too far away from the white blossoms of dogwood trees, and she calls her craft the art of seeing, examining the world around her like an artist with a keen eye capturing animal life like she did the blackbird in flight, wings all aflutter eclipsing the sun, the oak and eagle as her witness. Everyday her life is opened up and with the fine strokes of her paintbrush she sparks a red flower to dance brightly, illumines the tiny movements of a butterfly climbing the window glass, sunlight glowing in its wings
Memory of Hope
Raindrops danced on the red brick terrace and rippled the surface of the cerulean birdbath, my world never silent as I listen to the rhythmic tap of rain on my window, on the patio table; the memory of hope I thought I may never know again, a soft-born light I wished would revise itself inside of me, nudge its synergy with the god in heaven to make me want to live again, a potent reminder that without hope it’s too easy to give up and die. My spirit shyly opened when autumn’s shower outside slowly came to an end, leaving behind a luminous rainbow aura on my bedroom wall.
Eyes of the Painter
Elation swirls inside his heart come the half rising dawn when he undoes his tangled layers of thought and lets the life all around him spill from the tip of his paintbrush onto the canvas, a garden brimful of visual delights living inside him in the rains of November, driven by his visions and the taste of tea leaves on his tongue; every arc of colour, every exquisite detail pure as the beauty of an early snow. In his eyes he steals from a childhood memory, the plumb feathers of a peacock; and a quiet healing in the inner layers of his heart calm him while he is alone for hours, the sound of a symphony on his stereo drifting in from the music room. One day he finds himself growing blind and when his eyesight is gone he longs to paint what he sees in his dreams.
Bobbi Sinha-Morey‘s poetry has appeared in a wide variety of places such as Plainsongs, Pirene’s Fountain, The Wayfarer, Helix Magazine, Miller’s Pond, The Tau, Vita Brevis, Cascadia Rising Review, Old Red Kimono, and Woods Reader. Her books of poetry are available at Amazon and her work has been nominated for Best of the Net Anthology in 2015, 2018, and 2020, as well as having been nominated for The Pushcart Prize in 2020.
I remain ever hopeful. Just looking for a sign that’s all. Doesn’t have to be a booming voice. Or a bright light through the window. It’s not as if disappointment overdoes the atmosphere. No deep bass notes on the piano, no owls at the window or grim reaper at the door. The failures happen at such ordinary times in such ordinary ways. The flat beer. The lousy gift. The smile that drifts over my right shoulder to the guy behind. So let the better times begin in as commonplace a way as a pool ball sunk off a carom, getting the last outside table at a restaurant on a beautiful summer’s day. The rain’s been used so many times as cliché for the down times, I’d even hoist my sail to its sudden stopping. Like I said before, I don’t need a miracle The keys just need to be where I left them. And maybe the copy machine doesn’t break down. Such are the vagaries of the common man. The horror story that’s really a fairy tale. The wish list that makes its excuses.
Ode to the Gun
The gun sits on the dressing table beside the unmade bed in a ramshackle motel room off the interstate.
It’s cold as death, glints away whatever sunshine dares to come its way.
Without a shot fired, it toughens one guy and trembles another enough to make his knees knock together.
On a dressing table, cold as death, without a shot fired, try telling that gun, it doesn’t kill people.
The True Nature of a Healthy Stroll
A hill shaped like a skull, a lopsided house for a family tilted the other way, a waddling woman with cavernous eye sockets… and that’s just the first block.
A faceless man, an Indian fakir, a klezmer band playing “My Way” in Yiddish… it’s not easy to cross a road around here.
How can I get where I’m going when an albino armadillo crosses my path, it’s raining Rolexes and the fire station’s aflame?
Meanwhile, the pavement’s as green as my stomach, my umbrella won’t open, the zipper of my pants cuts like razor blades and I still have another hundred yards or so to go.
I never make it. The odds are not in my favour. Across the grocery store parking lot, a plastic bag rolls like tumbleweed. A grosbeak alights on a grey wire fence.
Eyeballing the New Estate
Trees line just about everything. Even the trees are lined with trees. This is not foliage left unharmed by the bulldozers. The greenery is imported.
The houses have names like Gardenview or Hilltop. They’re places in a dream town. A windless sunny parody of the way we live. They front a lake studded with swans.
We’re driving on just-paved roads in a new estate that used to be forest. Those with money can’t wait to put down a deposit, to get away from the likes of us.
Once this neighbourhood’s fully occupied we will not be invited back. My mother sighs. But without malice. She’s long since learned to accept her own highway exit.
Goodnight Dear
Typical night of sleeping by subtraction, because the people running are not us, and nor are we the chasers.
Same with the gunshots. We didn’t fire the revolvers. And they weren’t aimed in our direction.
So our neighbours scream. We don’t. They even thump each other from time to time. But only noise spills over into our sanctuary. Not fists.
Those growling dogs can’t bite us. The yowling black cat may upturn a trash can lid but not our good fortune by strolling across our path.
We’re free and clear of our surrounds. The huddled homeless woman doesn’t share our bed. Nor does the sex offender in the room above.
Bad things happen to other people. That’s why we have it so good.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and the Round Table. Latest books, Leaves On Pages and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon.
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Longing for the good old days even knowing you can never go back.
As the months and years have rolled by since I’ve retired I’ve lost touch with most of my old coworkers. It’s the nature of the beast I tell myself the natural order of things as you have less and less to do with someone less and less in common, you lose touch it’s simply the way it is, it’s normal. Lisa’s wealthy now, goes biking through the back roads of Tuscany and Scotland, what would I have to say to her, or to Craig who is younger than me, visiting colleges with his son?
Diorama
But I’m not done living! he shouted at the gods shaking his fist.
Strange to think that I’ve lived twice as long as my father lived. He died as a young man. But as my father no matter how much older than him I live to be he’ll always be older than me because time itself at his death is forever frozen unable to move forward. So he’s 36 and I’m stuck at 15 in this timeless diorama forever.
Invisible Man
Don’t take your yourself too seriously. Without humour you’re dead in the water.
Rick was a good guy the handsomest guy I ever knew. We worked together sometimes stopping at a bar at the end of the day. Fascinating watching the ladies buzzing around him winking and waving or coming right over to say hi ignoring me completely even though I was sitting next to him. It was like I was the Invisible Man. “That happen often?” I asked him as a stunning young woman handed him her business card, touched him on the shoulder saying call me. He shrugged and smiled, such a modest guy. Yep. Rick was a good guy the handsomest guy I ever knew. Fun to be around unless of course you were hoping to find a date for yourself.
Scout and Jem
Memory’s the second thing to go you know she said with a giggle.
I remind myself that doing really well at Trivial Pursuit is not I repeat NOT proof that you are smart. But I suppose recalling so many facts pertaining to history, literature, science, sports, even entertainment is cause for feeling pride particularly when you’re a Septuagenarian supposed to have a fading memory. “But before getting too inflated and self-satisfied,” spouts the damn Devil floating in the corner, “I’d be remiss in not reminding you that you did think Victoria Falls was the tallest waterfall in the world and you did forget the nicknames of Atticus’s children in To Kill a Mockingbird, you moron.”
Give or Take
Don’t waste time worrying about what you can’t change or fix, she tells me all the time.
The fancy-pants astrophysicist with the big glasses and crazy hair explains in logical scientific detail that in 5 billion years (give or take) our Milky Way Galaxy will collide with our neighbour the so much larger Andromeda Galaxy and be torn apart. Oh no! I think and begin to worry but abruptly realize – 5 billion years, seriously! Even I can’t be that stupid to worry about something 5 billion years down the road I tell myself as I see the Devil in his corner shaking his head not having to say anything this time for a change.
You can find more of Michael’s work here on Ink Pantry.
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.
