Sleepy Whale 370

I stumble in to the Royal
My stool between dark woman and fair man
Ghost-woman drink a beer from a coffee can
Unreluctance mobility loyal
Steaks on to broil
Fair man’s name is Dan
Fishing tomorrows plan
He puts in hid beer fish oil
Half mad deathless God
Making friends without half trying
Moon mid-watchers awed
Gloaming gray sky
Alabaster silence Izadi
The dark woman is shy

Sleepy Whale 372

She only bikes to Bluebird
Organic Vegan food and beer
Everyone wearing biking gear
Radio music’s Blackbird
Alabaster Peanuts absurd
Radio’s too loud so all can hear
We’re saving the Earth and Deer
Save all I herd
Ghost Candle lights
Neologisms scrutinize way
Sun flung flint glass daylight
Emmy and Tess Hopscotch play
No sun’s solar-power making light
Now snowing, where my sled

Sleepy Whale 373

She hitch to the Bear Pit Bar
Don’t drink the Morning-Glory
Bar-Maids from the Dormitory
Suzie Gruff playing her guitar
She’s like a poor tuned car
Unshed tears sky, like an observatory
Too much beer to tell a story
See the shooting Star
Smelling Geysers through a crack in the door
Lost Yellowstone in glass
Deck drinking on the second floor
July’s Christmas
Hiking days, now I’m sore
Were at the bottom of the Hourglass

Sleepy Whale 374

Flying star ship to Dragonfly
Where’s everyone’s Jetson’s shirt
Maladroit silk skirt
Atonic fast Barfly
Ship to the moon glorify
AREA 51, lost in the desert
UFO’s alert
Mars-Woman’s lullaby
Catalectic tetrameter North-Star
Mid-watcher moon, Rocket
She’s playing atomic guitar
Singing for Spacey Sprockets
Her bars bizarre
She put a Sprocket in my pocket

Sleepy Whale 375

It’s snowing I run to Way Side Inn
Snows falling Christmas Eve
Ghost Woman in the corner weaves
Butt of cigar, Ashes on her Chin
Rich silk stockings Feminine
It’s Christmas, hard to believe
Unshed tears, Crucified shirt’s sleeve
Ashland’s forty year Gin
Where’s the horse slay?
Hearth sitting Sabastian’s glow
In the light he’s Gloaming gray
Snow falling, wind’s starting to blow
Ghost woman begin to sway
She’s wanting under the Mistletoe

Sleepy Whale 376

I woke up in a bar named Sue
Sitting next to fair lady and dark man
Drinking Fat-Tire a condensed milk can
I roll over for a brew
Pot smoking in the corners new
Ghost woman’s sitting next to Ann
Alabaster silk stocks wearing Ann’s plan
West Wealthy the Well-To-Do
Bluebird Oyster Soup
Life from Outhouse Booze
A game with a mini Basket-ball hoop
Outcast woman came back to snooze
She almost flew the Coop
Closing time she sings the Blues

Sleepy Whale 377

We like drinking in Ogden, a Bar on Wall
Old Farmer dropping money in the Jut-box
Ghost woman’s alabaster skin and red hair Lox
I grab a stool next to Paul
He high talks on Jazz Basket-ball
Green St. Patty’s foaming Ale paradox
Crash?! Snot Green Mustang taking-out the mailbox
She screams Last Call
Ghost woman’s nobbling her beer
Wall hanging my eagle Art
Deathless Gods atmosphere
She talks like she’s so smart
Jut-box won’t stop so we can hear
She turned out the lights, now time to depart

Sleepy Whale 378

Octoberfest for a month, Snowbird
Waning for Beer at Barfly
The tram fly’s the blue sky
The Mug size not absurd
Eating dropped pop-corn, Black-Birds
Don’t let the birds drop in your eye
She is she, and I am I
She’s princes Lady-Bird
Blowing the foam off, Foaming Ale
Smoking butt of an old Cigar
Sabastian’s alabaster black tail
Only standing seats in the Bar
Wearing her shocking Electric blue dress
She began playing her guitar

Sleepy Whale 379

Doing a Jig to be at Piper Downs
As I traverse the maze to my seat
Slide past a Ghost woman
In green silk
Drinking a foaming ale in candle light
Dark woman and fair man
Hiding in the corner dancing
Man with sea cold eyes
Smoking gun powder cigarettes
Brief gestures to sit
Human shell bar maid
Gerrymandering
Poker playing
Farmer’s won’t
Stay
Sat down

Sleepy Whale 380

Won’t find a key they’re always, open
Bar Maid Butt of cigar ashes always on her breath
Black Forest Clock-mocking twelve times
Fashionable charming, Cotton-ball Barons
Wearing rich silk alabaster stockings
Such is life Outhouse sewage breath
Weasel rats basement, swimming

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, Jute Milieu Lit and Utah Life Magazine, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, In Parentheses, Adelaide Magazine, UN/Tethered Anthology and the Writing Disorder.

Read more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Roma Morning

The tick-tock of horse hooves
rouses me from sleep.
I crawl from the bed to peer
over the hotel balcony.

A man’s red hat bounces steadily below.
Wooden wheels click
against the dirt in this early hour
before any cars pass this way.

The gypsy’s song interrupts
the damp morning air.
As he drives his cart to market,
his voice swells with richness,

beauty from the Old World
passed down through the years,
now nestled near his heart,
the story of his fathers.

It arrives along the same path every day
down through the mountain pass,
carried by wind and want
over the ancient stone.

Scrambled Eggs and Ben Franklin

I remember Saturday mornings
at Grandma’s house.
I can almost still see her,
looking outside of her kitchen window with its
blue and white plaid curtains and saying,
“Yes, siree, looks like it’s going to be
a sunny side up kind of day!”

The air would smell like cinnamon strudel
and everything good in the world.
Grandma’s spoiled tabby cat, Ben Franklin,
would wind around my legs as I sat
at the kitchen table,
meowing impatiently until I snuck him
some of my scrambled eggs.

Grandma said she named him Ben Franklin
because he had more common sense
than most folks she knew.

In my eight-year old way,
I thought life would always be that simple.

But now I’m grown.
Ben Franklin’s gone.
Grandma’s in a nursing home
where some stranger fixes her eggs in the morning.
She doesn’t remember us anymore,
but every now and then, I see her moving her
hands across her lap in a stroking motion.

I always wonder if where she is,
she’s dreaming about scrambled eggs and Ben Franklin.

Amy L. George is the author of three chapbooks, the most recent one being The Stopping Places (Finishing Line Press). She holds a doctorate in Literature and Criticism and teaches at a private university in Texas.

Percy Shelley’s Heart

Don’t quote what scientists had thought
of the heart that lay unburned
amongst a pyre’s ceremonious coal,
a handful of gold,
on the Tuscan shore.

Don Juan had drowned in an ugly storm
whose wrath had claimed Percy and all
on a voyage of doom,
but Keats’s poems were bound to endure,
enshrined in a pocket in Percy’s coat
to identify his corpse.

In a shroud of silk his heart reposed,
befriending Mary wherever she roamed,
a grail for thoughts.

Her death bequeathed to us what she adored,
wrapped in a poem in which he mourned
the death of Adonais, Urania’s orb.

Amulets

My totem is a rivulet

I make amulets of the relics of friends.
a few hairs from a feline pet,
the leash of my assassinated dog,
my dad’s watch which malfunctioned shortly before he died.

My talisman is my second sight,
a precognition of events to come:
of seas trespassing over grounds,
of birds remapping their ancient charts,
of bullets rebounding to hunters’ chests,
of Zest depleted of its zest.

Her smile, a charm around my wrist
and words she whispered in my dreams,
I wreathe with lilies to deflect my fears.

Edward Scissorhands

With silver blades, Edward sculptured art,
the unique youth endowed with scissor hands,
vying with masters whose fingers carved
everlasting marks!

I grew to cherish every blade of grass
that Grandma tended in her hospitable house.
Emerald had coloured every childhood trance,
bequeathing to me a fructuous cast of mind.

I view the dubbing of chivalrous knights
with blades of glory from ancient times
and wonder if a woman like myself can earn
the title Knight with a blade of ink.

Expansive

My flat mate had once informed me
that she could only become expansive
after a glass of intoxicating wine.

I told her I had the opposite problem
for I readily wore an expansive smile
which a friend used to discourage
in our misapprehending times.

I’m aware of this trend for smile enhancements
to which some actors and politicians resort,
but my smile does not serve a purpose,
it does not placate, appease or enthrall.
It merely mirrors an inner comportment.

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 multiple venues including 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.

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

Salad Bar

Yesterday I ate ten dollars’ worth of salad.
Here is how it happened:
My wife was at her book club
And, recalling those
Teacher appreciation lunches
They used to throw for us,
Stylish young parents in
Black Cadillac SUVs—
Exotic salads, all manner of
Rice and pasta, marinated vegetables,
Olives, oregano, oil and vinegar—
I betook myself to an affluent market
Near our upscale shopping mall,
Passing the hot bar, pizza and sushi,
And started filling my biodegradable box
With commingled delicacy.
Next to me were three men about 50,
Business casual,
Speaking a European language
I did not recognize:
Strange place for a power lunch.
I thought to myself:
There’s a metaphor here someplace;
If you wait, it will emerge.

They charge by the pound.
Embarrassed by my excess,
I took some home.
Julie was coming over
With her young, two kids
With different stories.
I shared with her kale greens
In a balsamic vinaigrette.

Cairns: Rye, New Hampshire July 2015

Places are prompts
So I always bring paper and pen
To Odiorne Point.

From a distance
The cairns look like people.
Up close, some are:
Children, rock upon rock,
Add to the gallery,
Silhouettes, mist rising,
Burned off the promontory.
Some are engineered, like pyramids.
On this one a little girl, maybe four,
Places a third rock atop a second:
It is enough,
Trail markers not needed, a holy site.

Moments past low tide,
Shimmering bands of water inch landward.
I walk back across the gravel beach
To where my grandsons look for crabs.
Another family approaches. Someone says,
“Oh, I do hope the tide comes in.”
It has every day
So far.

In The Days Following Hurricane Katrina: August 2005

We sit before cable TV
In sick, entranced numbness;
Cathode ray exudes an unspeakable pain.
A chapter in our lives
Washed over by waters toxic with despair:
We hid from a storm there once,
A third of a lifetime ago.
Now, with anger and revulsion,
Love and hope,
We grieve for the losses of friends,
For the place where our children were young.

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 Bob’s poems here on Ink Pantry.

She finally moved from Fukushima
fled its failed, toxic nuclear plant
I wasn’t close to her,
don’t want to be close to her

I get nervous when she moves toward me, arms wide
with a smile unnaturally bright
like the ladies who painted radium on watch dials
and licked their brushes to keep them pointy

I don’t want to love her
don’t want to be inside her
No means no

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, is based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. His new poetry collection was published in 2019, The Arrest of Mr Kissy Face. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.

More work from Mitch, including his Inky Interview here.

Ancient stump with brown pine needles sprinkled on the forest floor.
No sign of the trunk and canopy that was once rooted
Through and by this humble stump.
Further ahead, a hickory stands like granite.
Around its crooked and askew trunk winds a vine,
Embracing the hickory.
The vine is splayed, its fingers fly out
Like the digits of a child touching the air.
To my left, a white pine, the monarch of trees,
Massive and straight and soaring to untold and mythical heights.
Directly in front of me, two trees,
Soldered together like conjoint twins.
Are they/is it one tree
Or two?
Do they nourish each other?
Sprinkling the forest floor,
White flowers as delicate as spiderwebs.
Lazy in the sun that bleaches the air.
The breeze is gentling,
Touching my skin like a breath.

Christopher Johnson is a writer based in the Chicago area. He’s been a merchant seaman, a high school English teacher, a corporate communications writer, a textbook editor, an educational consultant, and a free-lance writer. He’s published short stories, articles, and essays in The Progressive, Snowy Egret, Earth Island Journal, Chicago Wilderness, American Forests, Chicago Life, Across the Margin, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Blue Lake Review, The Literary Yard, Scarlet Leaf Review, Spillwords Press, Fiction on the Web, Sweet Tree Review, and other journals and magazines. In 2006, the University of New Hampshire Press published his book, This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains. His second book, which he co-authored with a prominent New Hampshire forester named David Govatski, was Forests for the People: The Story of America’s Eastern National Forests, published by Island Press in 2013. 

Our Children

Our children,
Who art of future generations,
May your lives be blessed,
Your dreams fulfilled,
Your hearts content for now and ever after.
Forgive us our socio-political mistakes and the work it will require of you,
As we must forgive our own parents and previous generations.
Do not be led into the temptations of hatred and hypocrisy,
But deliver yourselves from the paths of injustice and inequity.
For your children’s kingdom
Depends upon what you leave to them.

Revealing

The life I thought I’d have,
But wasn’t it at all,
Became as much a surprise to me
As tulips in the fall,

That odd expectancy
Of unanticipated pregnancy.
Or, life bled from a story
As from humanity’s great vein.

A blanket was unfolded
To find, instead, a tapestry.
And, I didn’t so much unfold it,
As stop preventing it being opened.

Torn Photo Legacies

Towards the end,
You were tearing up photos
When we came to visit you,
Bring you chicken from your favourite restaurant,
Brew you coffee in the machine
We gave you for Christmas.

We asked you why you tore them.
You had a guilty look, but a realistic reply.
“No one wants them. I don’t have anyone left.” It was true.
What were we to you?
Family, yes, in a sense – but not relatives.
We don’t know anyone
Who knew who you once knew.

But, then again,
Breaking bread with you
Alongside our children
Was always more important
Than whomever you once
Broke bread with.

Mourning the Future

Children cry for many reasons
That adults ponder for many seasons
As they cry too
To understand
The tears of babes,
The punishments of man.

Freshly birthed, departed
From all that’s known, unaware of all that’s started
The healthiest
Newborn cries,
As mournfully as a parent
Who sees their grown child die.

Parents and children are separated
Because of politicians who have long loved to hate
The poor,
Vulnerable, and innocent,
While inculcating
Policies of ignorance.

Yet crying fails us.
Or does it? It may not solve what ails us.
But it expresses
A need,
For acknowledgment,
Making demands for a future we must heed.

Samantha Terrell is an American poet whose work emphasizes social justice and emotional integrity. Her poetry has been published in a variety of chapbooks and journals, including:  Algebra of Owls, Dissident Voice, Dove Tales by Writing for Peace, the Ebola chapbook by West Chester University (PA), Knot Magazine, Lucky Jefferson, Peeking Cat Poetry, Poetry Quarterly and others. Raised in the American Midwest, Samantha and her family now reside in Upstate New York.

Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

True, back then, he was a foolish fellow
– mind lost in mazes, avant garde for fame.
The dawn he heard those warblers singing in
the willow wood ended his foppish ways.

He let his lyrics amble, breathed the songs
within the trees, came to the river bank.
The pipes of Pan unstrung his childhood pages.
He saw Ratty and timorous Mole rowing.

He waved to them. Badger, Badger, they called.
Badger he became. A life of black and white.

The Fencers

His habits build a fence with hammer and nail,
unplugged rhythms gives pulse to purpose.
He pins the wood as if it were untamed.
a greening thirst rooted in earth. His son
thinks him daft, hungers for things electric.
Time is money, he mutters to himself,
scoffing the bara brith his mum had made.
Cake defeats him. Binds the beat of his heart.

Matins

The stoop of cloud broods
a hunchbacked cumulus. Work beckons.

Slowly drying she switches on
another humming light

and mumbles along flowery margins
tying curtains that thread

to rituals of waking with tea
and toast and thick cut marmalade.

Repeating and rehearsing and repeating
will map the muddle of intentions

but she swims the waves with mermaids
long after the breakfast hour.

Phil Wood studied English Literature at Aberystwyth University. He has worked in statistics, shipping, and a biscuit factory. His writing can be found in various publications, most recently in: Fly on the Wall Press (Issue 6), Ink Sweat and Tears, Poetry in Public, Poetry Shed, Allegro.

Line of Demarcation

She stood naked at the hotel window
God stuck to the roof of her mouth
the dying bury the dead while Stukas dive-bomb overhead
remembering mid-morning along the banks of the Rhine
Hunnish maidens sleep-dancing while Czechoslovakia re-disappears
I told you- there’s no point in waiting for me-
& you, you had red eyes like a Japanese sunrise
Tanks stuck in the snow

It used to be that when the phone rang, it was you
and if it didn’t ring, well, I knew it wasn’t you at all

Sharing oilcakes in Sarajevo-
Elenita, aren’t you a little bit drunk?
tiny angels swirling- how many close calls can one soul have?
(I was hoping you would know)
Chewing on coffee grounds- nothing goes to waste out here
seems like the world was just going through the motions
I love you when you sing that song
it lets me pretend it really hasn’t been that long

Yelena, years ago I should have known you
You are an exception even to the exception
I’m sorry, she whispered again, one thousand summers I’ll wait
”Well, DON’T!!!,” I yelled
“I have always loved you,” she reminded me,
“Baby, you’re white like snow, I’m white like a cloud
…..I will never stop smiling on you.”

Count to One

Don’t wanna walk past your house because you might just be home
maybe I send my drone, just to check things out-
I can tell when you’re not in town and it makes this city sadder
your songs have become my songs
can’t un-ring the bell, can’t send ‘em back
you got me like an angel coming down like hell
it’s been so long since I’ve lost touch
One of these days, I’m going to take your picture down
You know your love is a morning glory at midnight

Watching the rain glow
I’m all brokenhearted since the day we started
making eyes
I’m so broke down, mixed up since the day we met up
meeting eyes
And it starts all over again tomorrow
everything that was already over yesterday
The nights get so strange when memories rearrange
I’m gonna tear down all the stars for reminding me-
So slow & suddenly

Getting time for a new star
well, as long as I’m staring off into space-
bouncing and balancing between Satellites
    Jumping off the deep ends of ships
all headed further East,
   upward and onward unto Tibet
to settle a debt with my old mind
fly out to Berlin with a new kind
A strange day started in a strange way
Now I know the next time I live a life
every-time I close my eyes
I’m gonna see the light
and everyday you know
We lovers of the soul

Past Perfect

And for the first time
makes me wish I had a soul to pray for-
must have been that wine at 5 this morning-
must have been because I knew you were leaving for the coast this evening-
Catching a train to a star, I know you are

but all men unfaithful
and all children ungrateful

I’m thinking you’ll make out alright in your new life
you’re just past…you’re just past perfect
makes me for the first time wish I had a soul to pray with-
So then I could pray for your safe return

Edge of Never

Starting at the beginning will ever do any good
lemme tell ya, honey
we were spending too much time insane but just not doing it together
cuts and bruises and chipped teeth to boot,
I fired you off a letter from the Maricopa Station
and it showed in the dream I had of you in Phoenix
I had to move down in-to the country just to try to shake you off
that morning, I woke up with a letter from you on my bed
your letters always smell like the beach
I mean, not the beach, but the sand in the wind
when it’s in your hair, on the beach-

your handwriting burned on me like a gloomy humid sun
I replied in Cheyenne on my way drifting North
I found the Continental Divide a proper description of us-
why, I had to leave the country just to try to shake you off a bit
Vancouver nights by the Pacific had me wondering & wandering again
so I slid back down the coast and with all my great timing, I missed my connection
and did not get to see you
So the arc took me back out to the desert once again
this time, your letter was waiting for me
and me, I was absolutely beaming

I slept with the photo you sent me
I lit tiny fires in my afternoon room
and I spent a mighty long time in that haze
all the lights went foggy and then one early evening
the very moment I began to miss you less- you called
“I’m sorry for being sad…I’m feeling better now…”

I been back & forth, across this galaxy
oh, that very very first night we met….
I really found my new love…
I guess that was our naïveté
but I still like to think about it sometimes
oh, and my, how from time to time
I wish I hadn’t burned all your letters, yknow
well, not all of them…I still have the first note
still sandy breeze
mademoiselle,
even to this day.

Stars Burnt

Stars burnt too close to the sun
clouds looking to raise a little dust
the snow in summer has no place to fall
just like when you’ve no words & I’m the number you call
you’re like a full moon at high noon
I spent the whole season swimming in your room…
a ghost looking for a little action, I know the feeling
I’m not begging, but I’m certainly kneeling

Steal me some roses
from a neighbour’s side-yard
I don’t mind the thorns, baby
when I’m crushing so hard

Stars so dirty, they turn straight to ice
clouds act so innocent
when their lightning strike twice
and all their sleet, just can’t wait for fall
you’ve no more colours, only my number to call
must have been some kind of eclipse
when you brushed passed my lips

So go steal me some roses
I don’t care whose yard
no, I can’t push you back
when you come on so hard

Christian Garduno lives and writes along the South Texas coast, balancing between Forensic Files and Moscow Mules. 

Straddling a divide between snafu and turmoil,
We dare to risk lessons on these people.
Ducking ambush, fierce and endless,
We kick doors and search in frustration.
Then race the moon to new vistas,
Where we counsel and seed hope with promise.
Amid chaos we coach, build visions,
And endure where insanity reigns.
What epic duty remains to carry this mission to fruition,
A day, a fortnight, a year or more?
How we ache to move out with character and honor.
We’ve sowed this land with spirit, compassion, and blood.
Oh, how we yearn, on the wings of the morning, to go home.

Fred Miller is a Californian writer. His first poem was selected by Constance Hunting, the New England Poet Laureate in 2003. Over fifty of his poems and stories have been published around the world.