I didn’t know you but I’d seen the photos in Hello, believed in the bloom of your body next to your sons’ downy skin.
I breathed the fragrance of your motherhood as you exalted breast feeding on This Morning and silenced Katie Hopkins.
I loved the sassy, savvy, baby-toting grace of you though sleepless nights shadowed your cheekbones and I ached to hug you the way
I’d hugged my daughter five years earlier; wanted to walk your boys around the park while you chilled on the sofa with a tub of chocolate Haagen-Dazs.
I thought you’d make it despite the bitter-sweetness of your last Instagram post- you in your Mum’s arms when she was still golden.
I didn’t know you but I couldn’t believe you’d return to familiar ghosts, lift the lid to your heroin stash and reach inside.
Sheila Jacob was born and raised in Birmingham and lives with her husband in N.E.Wales. Since 2013 she’s had poems published in various U.K. magazines and webzines including One Hand Clapping and Atrium. In 2019 she self-published a small pamphlet of poems about her father’s short life and working-class upbringing.
When we would go home for Christmas, It was to my mother’s town, Where I was the cousin with the Yankee accent, Who didn’t like grits: A gentle, Southern place: Gracious lawns, winding drives In our grandfather’s Buick, past the golf course.
I see a dim American past, parts best forgotten: Cedar Christmas trees, trackless trolleys, Water fountains “For Coloured Only”, Maids summoned from the kitchen with a bell, Bearing trays of puffy rolls.
Christmas would be over and we’d go back north, New toys stored away, my mother crying.
Metairie 1977
A child’s Christmas in Metry We called it then, Until our girls, teachers’ kids, would catch on. A plumbing contractor Lavishes new wealth To display for children and parents Along the sidewalks of a subdivision The lights, the moving creatures of Christmas: In one room, Santa’s helpers, In another, an animated crêche: He watches, approving yet sullen, Dimly seen behind the picture window.
It does not matter that his home is darkened now, That other families Who did not live in Metairie then Now drive by another spectacle All the more preposterous Further up the same street: Thousands of lights blinking, Reindeer, elves, angels, God knows what, A parish policeman sourly chants: Keep moving, keep moving.
Shreveport 1982
A downtown church on Christmas eve, Well loved, well cared for, Worshippers in fine clothes crowd together In the old walnut pews– it is too warm for furs: Married daughters, handsome nephews In from Houston, people we do not know: Of all the places one could be this night, As lonely as any bus station or manger. But there is this: The particular tears of Christmas, The precise fragrances, the harmonies That make it palpable, That release memory’s stubborn catch Differ for us each And for every home far from home. I hear the sound, thin and sweet, O Holy Night, Scored for the voices of teenaged girls, The white light of candles Dancing on their faces.
Cedar Trees
Christmas night: A potato-casserole weariness Settles in upon the land. We are ankle-deep in tissue, Love and Lego, Lists of who gave what to whom, And I am wondering what became Of those cedar trees We would cut and trim Christmases ago, Those trips to my mother’s home, The grits, the black-eyed peas, the puffy rolls. Cedars gave way to Scotch pines, then to Fraser firs that fill a room.
Years later two cedars grow Outside the door, wider and taller, With strings of white lights That do not reach as high As last year, Unmindful of the sacrifices Of their forebears.
The Day After Christmas
Tree smaller this year, Lights burned out, Not replaced. Garbage can only half full The day after Christmas: Children grown, gone.
Christmas Night 2007
There are twelve of us for Christmas, Three generations, ours the oldest. A benign weariness: Food and gifts, family jokes and tales, Small stresses let quietly pass. Cousins cavort, careen, compete. Our daughters, friends too, consider vegetables; Their husbands assemble a soccer goal While the gravy cools. As we are leaving, I think I see Traces of a tear on Julie’s cheek; Her smile lingers, quiet, faintly moist.
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.
Angie Dribben’s poetry, essays, and reviews can be found or are forthcoming in Cave Wall, EcoTheo, Deep South, San Pedro River Review, Crab Creek Review, Crack the Spine, Cider Press, and others. A Bread Loaf alum, she is an MFA candidate at Randolph College. Everygirl, her first full-length collection, is due out 2021 from Main Street Rag.
Upon Waking by Angie Dribben
Once a wildebeest calf fell behind the herd fell prey to a spotted hyena who had fallen to instinct to survive or so we’re taught And it was hard to hear a mother’s child scream But I did not change the channel
And the mother stayed with her herd One glance back A single clockwise canter to witness her calf submit And then the mother walked away and it was hard to watch a mother walk away but I did not change the channel
and the hyena took the hindquarter, tore the calf at the hip leaving her untenable and the hyena drank from the wound of the calf and it was hard to watch one take what isn’t theirs
sometimes I dream I am wildebeest, when I wake, I am hyena and I cannot change the channel
Poet for Hire, Jena Kirkpatrick, is editor of the poetry anthology Writing for Positive Change for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Texas. Jena tours nationally as a member of the Trio of Poets. She writes poems for clients worldwide. Jena is an artist instructor for Badgerdog Literary Publishing. Her work in the classroom was featured in Teachers & Writers Magazine. Over the last three decades, she has self-published seven books, co-written, three multimedia performance art shows, competed in two National Poetry Slam competitions and released two poetry CDs.
I wish you love & happiness…I guess I wish you all the best by Jena Kirkpatrick
I wish you love & happiness…I guess I wish you all the best (John Prine)
who lost me first? was it God or Buddha or my ungrateful lack of worth –alone or together reflections on the past not sure how many tears I have left last night in a furious rage I actually said I was grateful you were already dead because that was one less person I love I’d have to worry about losing –who who lost me first? –you you lifted me up you always stuck around you never left my side –from the day I lost my child now we’ve got this virus screaming bloody fucking murder endless echoes of a tool pitting one against another over fences –on TV screens panic attacks forged by violent dreams spooning with a psychotic ventriloquist everyone is scared scribbling ridiculous lists who lost me first? was it Christ was it heaven or hell was it the ability to practice free will was it set forth as a precedent carved in stone by some ancient was is illicit drugs or sorcery some flaw in personality every precious moment is countered by adversity maybe there are answers in pollution or abuse or all the callous judgments we throw like seeds to sprout on this earth maybe we have babbled long enough repeated beatings for too long ignored are the hungry children the sick all too often pushed aside in favor of elitist when given the chance will we ever correct what’s wrong who lost me first? stay at home and sing on your marble terrace have your slaves bring you your breakfast revel in the thought that what you squander makes you
somehow eccentric your dirty money won’t save you you will die like the rest of us do who lost me first? I was lost to the trees to the wind to the stars on my knees praying for forgiveness since birth
yeah I knew love. love knew me. and when I walked love walked with me. but friends don’t know. they can only guess –how hard it is to wish you happiness
Michael Whalen has been a member of the Austin Poetry Slam Team, and coached two Austin Neo Soul Poetry Slam Teams and four Austin Youth Poetry Slam Teams. He’s edited numerous chapbooks by young poets, and released 1.5 of his own poetry chapbooks.
M L Woldman is a GED graduate with a heart full of fire. Founder of Austin Poets’ Union, poet and playwright. Author of three books and numerous publications. 5th generation Texas.
autumn by M L Woldman
the fire recedes from the sky and we know it’s autumn four months of autumn and eight months of summer that’s what we get now in texas i relish these months when dusty coats can find their place in circulation again and you can see your breath: making each exhalation a visual affirmation that you are alive i write this poem every year a love poem to autumn in the hopes that she might stick around a little longer this time it’s an exercise in diminishing returns because the sun won’t be happy until it swallows the world
Expect childish words from children and broken words from broken people. Only the lonely hope to hear from the small, the discontent. Expect nothing. The guest speaker favours keyholes and tiny spoons of breath-cooled soup.
I expect the impossible.
What does not exist never / continuously disappoints. It comes from the sky like lightning or a slash mark or the new fall / fall fashions. The guest speaker used the phrase “cash cow” so offhandedly that, for a moment, the audience imagined itself collecting lactations in golden buckets.
Doctor Moreau
I used to go back and forth. On Brando’s insane portrayal. Of Doctor Moreau. I used to wear eyeliner to class. Now I insist on wearing. My own ice bucket. And other people insist. On staying away. It’s a lovely day. On some other green planet.
There are miniatures and echoes. I used to blow soap bubbles. From the open third-floor window. When you didn’t want to do so alone. It’s kind of neat to think. About that thin line. Between saving the world. And acting like such a fuck-wad. That only the most broken. Among us respond to our efforts.
Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three current books of poems: Invisible Histories, The New Vaudeville, and Midsummer. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and Cream City Review.
Dragging a sorry-ass body to the studio riddled with pain I see there up ahead a Yellow Tiger-Swallowtail flopping around on the pavement bizarrely like something convulsing or someone improvising or a body working through a choreography.
I know this isn’t normal I am intimate with this poet-butterfly – it has made me aware as I bend down and unfold the massive flopping wings I see there the Bald-faced Hornet beautiful and black terrible and white clutching the body with its desperate and powerful and elegant embrace locked in the same brutal struggle,
And I know this never intervene don’t do it don’t who knows which animal is more rare? who knows what is beauty really and what is life and what is death?
but I can’t help it I am exhausted and riddled with pain I pry them apart
and feel better watching them fly off in opposed direction.
Hummingbird
The gaggle of kids burst out the door and flush the hummingbird from the feeder smack into the glass.
I lift the small bird from its awkward contortion on the concrete stoop into the palm of my hand and breath again because it lived.
I smooth the feathers. The little bird straightens out blinks its tiny eyes and struggles a bit to breath. I dribble some sugar water in my palm since I had read somewhere that it is possible to starve again in flight.
And I wait there with it this bird this poet this perfect work of art whispering and humming because it makes me feel fine.
Until suddenly, miraculously it bursts from my palm! Ohhh… look at that! sweetheart look at that! It’s fine it’s fine! The kids gather together close the little girl squeals up there the bird the bird look! settling in the cedar fluttering its wings and then off! into the Honey Suckle to feed.
Gorget
She will always be powerful. Small girl with these runes tattooed up and down her arms her legs. Life’s flame humming and dreaming.
And, iridescent purple gorget feathers flare out around that being. See here she hovers over the mirror-shine of Cloud Lake’s gloaming delicate composite of delight despair.
While we all suspect she has departed as the storm still traverses that ridge see there I will always be powerful small flyer beats back turbulence dissipates our torment.
These poems are from Henry Stanton’s collection, Pain Rubble, published Holy & Intoxicated Press. Henry Stanton’s fiction, poetry and paintings appear in 2River, The A3 Review, Alien Buddha Press, Analog Submission Press, Avatar, The Baltimore City Paper, The Baltimore Sun Magazine, Black Petal Press, Cathexis Northwest Press, Chicago Record, Down in The Dirt, High Shelf Press, Holy & Intoxicated Press, Kestrel, North of Oxford, Outlaw Poetry, Paper & Ink Zine, The Paragon Press, PCC Inscape, Pindeldyboz, Ramingo!, Rust Belt Press, Rusty Truck, Salt & Syntax, SmokeLong Quarterly, Under The Bleachers, The William and Mary Review, Word Riot, The Write Launch and Yellow Mama, among other publications. His book of Short Stories, River of Sleep and Dreams, is due to be published by Alien Buddha Press in 2019. His book of poems, The Man Who Turned Stuff Off, is being published by Holy & Intoxicated Press in June 2019.
His poetry was selected for the A3 Review Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Eyewear 9th Fortnight Prize for Poetry. His fiction received an Honourable Mention acceptance for the Salt & Syntax Fiction Contest and was selected as a finalist for the Pen 2 Paper Annual Writing Contest.
A selection of Henry Stanton’s paintings, published fiction and poetry can be viewed at the following website. Henry is the Publisher of Uncollected Press and the Founding & Managing Editor of The Raw Art Review. Check out more of Henry’s poetry on Soundcloud.
You were an only child, weren’t you? The look on the face, The tone of voice, Assumption, condescension, accusation: That you are wrapped up in yourself, That you lurk on the edges of greed: A minority group Without advocates to lobby For our interests. Don’t tell me what I missed Having no siblings, What I never learned to do. There were advantages: We never lacked for books to read, And when the time came To attend to the frail and failing, Lay them to rest, We did it by ourselves.
Iconography
I spent the morning Trying to restore the Zoom icon To the home screen on my phone, Not an unlikely way For an 82-year-old to pass his time. The grandchildren are some help And know to resist eye-rolling. We got a Facebook account So we could watch the church service Online. We did not add pictures or information. We have not listed friends And do not know If anyone has listed us. Someone I think I might have known In Kiwanis Keeps wanting to add me to his LinkedIn list. We rely on Zoom in this strange time. People carry on about it But it suits me fine. I thought I had restored the icon To the home screen. That’s not quite true, But I can get to it now With only one extra click.
Downsizing
Favourite authors dropped off For the church book sale, The passing of a friend. Easier to part with: Those memos to the file, Notes on events Of interest to lawyers. We did not succeed: A storage shed, tight With boxes, whose labels Have lost meaning; Somewhere in there Green Depression Glass That did not sell on eBay, The Chelsea we bought for Caroline.
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.
The van brakes, but at a less frantic pace. That’s what life is like in lockdown. Different uses though the same materials provided. Now we make single- serve liturgies of cryogenic ice cream; filled loosely, uncompacted.
She calmed down after he’d fini- shed talking. The photographer’s shadow & her breathless carols fell across everything like patented dentifrice. I’m in a groove where I’d rather not be. The perform- ance lasts roughly two hours.
“& see all these things”
Humour has to do with the fact that certain restrictions are often imposed upon people’s movements. That any major drive for banning
customized services will ex- plode due to excess demand & denial of service unless it’s sponsored by the Noh theaters of central Japan. That spring
protection entails sealing off a spring’s water source to all women & girls. (This last idea first floated in a memo attri- buted to the Pope’s equerry.)
The Pound Cantos: CENTO XXII
Wild geese swoop to the sand-bar. Hot wind came from the marshes. The reeds are heavy, bent. Next is a river wide, full of water. Small boat floats like a lanthorn. Drift of weed in the bay. She gave me a paper to write on, made like fish- net, of a strange quality that sets
sighs to move, to fascinate the eyes of the people. Light also proceeds from the eye. The echo turns back on my mind in a biological process that very few people will understand. Matter is the lightest of all things.
geographies: Mojave Desert
Somewhere here, among the rare earths, there’s an artificial Afghanistan, complete with working casinos & a replica of the Louvre. People go dancing in those areas especially critical for bird conservation & feel right at home. The few Devils Hole
pupfish left like to do a mean Lindy Hop which the planes in the bone yard manage to ignore. They remain in wallflower stasis, stirring only to watch the tourists when they sometimes fly overhead.
Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry since 1959. He is the author of over fifty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. His most recent books are a collection of visual pieces, The Comedians, from Stale Objects de Press; turning to drones, from Concrete Mist Press; & turpentine from Luna Bisonte Prods.
More of Mark’s work can be found here on Ink Pantry.
A pen pusher, the nib a shark’s tooth, words ripped with passion and fury, pages consumed and attacked with a soulful thoughtful ferocity, leaving behind a clean crime-scene.
Running Low
The ink seems to be running low, the poems walk a high-wire, most fall but some fragments survive: I gather them like fire-wood and wait for the incineration, the cremation of the words to step forward and sacrifice themselves.
John D Robinson is a UK poet. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in print and online. He has published several chapbooks and four full collections. New & Selected Poems will be appearing later in the year. Red Dance was recently published by Uncollected Press.
The monuments to ignorance and to reason have been staring at each other’s recapitulation from time out of mind. Ignorance is measurable in monuments; reason, in moments.
Momus chooses a moment—and clay comes into play, so one can sculpt something meaningful (occasionally called Auris.) This is a susceptibility experiment. Some have called it palliation; some have called it abductive inference (Intel inside.) Watch possibilities caper beyond the buoy.
Monument huggers live bronze-coloured lives. They grow lemons of embarrassment; they lag musical flags. Note the smoke of their vigils, the mouthful of kisses. Some others travel, but they sprout where they’ve been planted. Only and only.
All questions bow before this: are we prepared to kill somebody to prove that our imaginary guru is better than theirs?
——
Red Lights
We hide from our naked past in our see-through garments. What can they reveal, anyway, if not what makes us all look like banana fingers?
Somebody shows off his big red zero. Somebody gets diagnosed with BDSM. Marine mud gets rather gummy on a muggy day. If the mud had a brain, would it be deep-brown or see-through? If a womb had a brain, would it nurture an Einstein or cheese crisps? And what if it suffers from misperceptions?
Wherever you are, the world sees your bare blossoms. Here’s a portrait of your confidence as a younger ape, the age of prunes before they wrinkle. Innocence is pleasurable, sex profitable, control very pleasurable, murder extremely profitable. Never bite the tomatoes of my lips.
This is libertinism, it withers and museifies. This is destiny, it excels in making evil from good and good from evil, especially where there’s nothing else to make them from.
——
Fairy-Tale
How easily heads can be detached from a dragon! All those young men hypnotised by grimaces and tail movements… Don’t be so cheesecake! Do it! A simple chop-chop—and new borders get puffed out, already proof-tested for spelling and spillage.
Out there, watch out for ideology bonfires: you can end up in one if you don’t supply a flamethrower. And this is where dragons come in, short-fused but quick-blinking. What’s not to like about a bouncy walk along the border chalk?
As we powder our reflections’ twin noses in double-glazed mirrors, a brand new yesterday gets shoved into our windows. This is beyond comprehension, like thirsty shadows or torrential trees. Like an egg with a flag.
——
Hauptwache, Frankfurt
I like talking about salamanders and goblins. I feel a little like a toy; sometimes like Tolstoy. I’ve put my last 100 clams into betterment, but the upper-crest accent eludes me. You can’t change yourself on a budget; you need a shipment of paint and pain. Your time is a deadwatch time; your medical condition is fiddling. What are you going to do about it?
Look around: your city has always been a moveable beast. Yesterday it worshipped the Holy Randomer; today the Eiffel Tower grows atop some heads. Angels have invested in yellow vests; they are busy with portfolio rebalancing. Wherever you go, ethical judgments stare at you from the local cloaca. Jack Wolfskin appears from around the corner and says, Howdy doody.
——
By Way of Introduction
Meet the serial killer called progress. Read his book called Backward Induction for Dummies. Note his frozen eyes, his despair. Nothing dies on this planet; this muddles the streams of perfection. Survival is a black aroma; the puddle of choices never dries up. Passing caracaras wonder if they’re seeing an extra-long worm or history in the making. They are not sure, and neither are we. After all, there is something nematodic about thinking.
Somebody said life is an overture. To what? Universe opens little apertures – and here we are, transparent on every side. Happy motherless day! Still, some of us have a positive altitude, while some others conceal their thoughts in ten-foot-tall elephant grass.
——
Anatoly Kudryavitsky lives in Dublin, Ireland, and in Reggio di Calabria, Italy. His poems appear in Oxford Poetry, The Literary Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Prague Revue, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Plume, The American Journal of Poetry, The Honest Ulsterman, The North, Ink Sweat and Tears, Cyphers, Stride, etc. His most recent poetry collections are The Two-Headed Man and the Paper Life (MadHat Press, USA, 2019) and Scultura Involontaria (Casa della poesia, Italy, 2020; a bilingual English/Italian edition). His latest novel, The Flying Dutchman, has been published by Glagoslav Publications, England, in 2018. In 2020, he won an English PEN Translate Award for his anthology of Russian dissident poetry 1960-1980 entitled Accursed Poets (Smokestack Books, 2020). He is the editor of SurVision poetry magazine.
