Fully vested in five years At a gallop down the mother lode Of sacredly androgynous momentum
This was the insistence of shown parenting Procedures (thinking therefore ambling) Toward receivership-shape dollops of blue
Sparring from the heart zone To the prickly pear-shaped furry Pet’s domestic best-kept
Sieve-through pours (thoracic left In park) to capture the amen Ities (teased) from scratch
Your back replenishing of pheromone Mid-wintry seizures interruptive of The palace breast inducing seepage
“Keep Tahoe Seductive” Keep the backhoe busy Keep tobacco dry
Your powder or mine In Brackets
As You Were
“My modular home is your modular home,” said he With tongue in checkered Pastiche yielding triple Flutings ribald as blond Bomb bombast versus nocturne
Qualitative braggadocio mentions Center selfhood Where it hurts most In a moving car Far flung from captions overflown
The remedy proposed is merely welding Sadness to the dome (“surely goodness”) Imparting patterned walking Patterned speech And patter by itself
Hell’s briefings linger where we lurk Awhile impeaching history for all its Franking privilege unaccounted for While unaccountably indifferent To generally accepted practices
Remove vermouth from home base While you’re at it, and revoke The privileges afforded an untimely Youth displaying comfort via back brace In the dim moonlight of inner space
Sheila E. Murphy has books forthcoming from Lavender Ink Books, Unlikely Books, and Chax Press. Her most recent title is Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX, 2023). She lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Wikipedia page Sheila Murphy.
In the long nights when there is no light and the dark looks like a mass of coal, I eavesdrop on my body: my heartbeats, the nightmares that frighten my sleep.
I don’t know why. I cannot recognize it. The heat invades me like a desert storm, my body is taken from me and the winter and summer are thrown together.
You sleep blissfully next to me, my arms – outstretched, don’t reach you in your dreams. Who knows what exotic lands you explore there? And you ignore my feeble cry for help.
One day you won’t recognize me anymore and a stranger will appear in front of you. I will be less child, more adult, thoughtful. Surely you will have lost my first wrinkles.
You’ll be sorry that you weren’t closer to me to accompany me, holding my hand, to cross together the bridge where a woman grew up and threw her frailties far away.
How do you feel, little child?
Tell me, how do you feel in this world where sorrow knows no boundaries? Your Mom departed too quickly, to where there’s no pain or suffering.
Who will caress you with a gaze and who will put the joy back in your life? Whose eyes will you watch as in a mirror, and who will call you “my son?”
Who will whisper sweet words to you, and where will you find enough love? Have you begun to see the world without colours, entirely in black and white?
Fate abandoned you; you are an orphan. By an evil hand your Mom was taken. Will luck find its way back to you, now that shrouded in fog seems everything?
Your Mom is in heaven, above in the sky. Believe it, until you grow up one day. Fate abandoned you, and now you are only an orphan. Will fate ever come back this way?
The Last Walk
We were walking together, mother; and I couldn’t understand why you said nothing, as in silence, you cried.
I was more confused than you as I asked “Why do you cry?” Your glance was fixed in space, your hand touching mine.
I didn’t know that was our last walk, though you seemed to understand. You were sorry for yourself, for me on the way to leave this world.
You felt sorry—you wouldn’t see me, you wouldn’t hug me anymore, you wouldn’t enjoy those green parks and the kiss of the sun’s rays in the morning.
If I’d known it would be our last walk, I would have kept you in my arms.
Irma Kurtiis an Albanian poet, writer, lyricist, journalist, and translator and has been writing since she was a child. She lives in Bergamo, Italy. Kurti has won numerous literary prizes and awards in Italy and Italian Switzerland. In 2020, she became the honorary president of WikiPoesia, the encyclopedia of poetry. She also won the prestigious 2023 Naji Naaman’s literary prize for complete work. Irma Kurti has published 29 books in Albanian, 25 in Italian and 15 in English. She has also translated 20 books by different authors. Her books have been translated and published in 16 countries.
Whispers chirp on the windowsill, gazing at me— unbrushed hair, morning breath.
Two kids with striped tees whisper at the cemented debris, prayers I
suppose? The clouds, too, whisper at one another, pinching cotton skin.
Now I whisper to the mirror, Have a nice day. You should feel the joy.
Just a Little Reminder (inspired by This is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams)
I ate the leftover slice of apple pie that you probably saved for your hungry morning stomach but I couldn’t help my oblivious fingertips from reaching the subtle scent of cinnamon.
I know you would have dreamed about it in your sleep–the taste of mother’s apchima, the taste of mother’s locks of charcoal hair, but I wanted to feel them, too.
I will bake another plate of apple pie for you, for you have me, mother, and everyone you can hug so please forgive me for having your last slice of apple pie.
To My Future Daughter
The world is yours. Even though you couldn’t solve 2+3 in front of your crush, even though you stained your favourite white shirt with ketchup droplets, everyone will love you even more for it. Even your own mother. If you happen to have a little brother, perhaps even a spark of a little sister, let them comb your Barbie’s hair, even if they do smear fingerprints across her sheen. If you have no siblings at all, comb her hair with your best friends. Nothing could hurt more than the turned backs and giggles, other girls shielding their Barbie’s from you. Never be that girl, Daughter. Your lips possess the magic of speech—of sharing and delivering your flower beds and fireworks, even doves circling on top of you, shaping a halo. Don’t worry, your mother will help you knock on others’ doors if you need help. (Your mother had trouble, too.)
Yukyung Katie Kim is a tenth-grade student at Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts. A passionate visual artist and writer, she has a keen interest in poetry and fantastical imagery. In her free time, Yukyung enjoys playing the oboe.
I feel light in a thunderstorm. I electrify your touch through my veins. I’m the greenery around your life that breathes your earth into your lungs. I challenge all your false decisions and doctrines with the glory of my godliness. I’m your syntax, your stoic, your ears, your prize. I walk daylight into your morning breath allow you to breathe. I let the technique of me into your brain cells; from the top tip to the bottom of small baby foot extensions. I’m the banquet hall of all your joys, damnation; your curses, your emotions— and you’re breathing with the wind.
Poet In an Empty Bottle
I’m a poet who drinks only red wine. When inebriated with earthly delusion and desire, I crawl inside this empty bottle of 19 Crimes Red Wine, lone wolf, no rehab needed, just confined.
Here, behind brown tinted glass and a hint of red stain, I can harm no one— body squeezed in so tight, blowing bubbles, hidden, squirming, can’t leap out.
My words echo chamber, reverberating back into my tinnitus ears. I forage for words. Search for novel incentives. But the harvest is pencil-thin the frontal cortex shrinks and turns gray. Come live with me in my dotage. There are few rewards. My old egg-beater brain is clunking out.
I lay here, peace and quiet in prayer. I can hardly breathe in thin air.
I’m a symbol of legacy crumbing stored in formaldehyde. Memories here are likely just puny, weak synapses.
“I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be here when it happens.” Looking out, others looking in at me. Curved glass is a new world intangible dimly defined. I no longer care about cyberspace, uncultivated wild women, the holy grail of matrimony. I likely will never write my first sonnet with angels; I only fantasize about them in dreams.
Quiet in osteoarthritis pain is this poet who only drinks 19 Crimes Red Wine
*Quote by Woody Allen.
April Winds
April winds persist in doing charity work early elbowing right to left their way through these willow trees branches melting reminiscences of winter remnants off my condo roof no snow crystals sprinkle in drops over my balcony deck. Canadian geese wait impatiently for their spring feeding on the oozy ground below. These silent sounds except for the roar of laughter those April winds— geese hear nothing no droppings from the balcony— no seeds.
Down by the Bridge
I’m the magic moment on magic mushrooms $10 a gram, amphetamines, heroin for less. Homeless, happy, Walmart discarded pillow found in a puddle with a reflection, down and dirty in the rain—down by the bridge. Old street-time lover, I found the old bone man we share. I’m in my butt-stink underwear, bra torn apart, pants worn out, and holes in all the wrong places. In the Chicago River, free washing machine. Flipped out on Lucifer’s night-time journey, Night Train Express, bum wine, smooth as sandpaper, 17.5 % alcohol by volume $5.56— my boozer, hobo specialty wrapped in a brown bag. Straight down the hatch, negative memories expire. Daytime job, panhandling, shoplifting, Family Dollar store. Salvation Army as an option. My prayers. I’ve done both. Chicago River sounds, stone, pebble sand, and small dead carp float by. My cardboard bed box is broken down, a mattress of angel fluff, magic mushrooms seep into my stupor— blocking out clicking of street parking meters. I see Jesus passing by on a pontoon boat— down by the river, down by my bridge.
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 313 plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 46 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 7 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 653 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member of Illinois State Poetry Society.
You can find more of Michael’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I should have learned a craft. A trade. Making or repairing things when they are broken. Doffing my cap on the street for the doctor and the notary. A modest working-class home with a glowing
potbelly stove. Marry the fishmonger’s daughter. Cars don’t want to drive anymore. Just give me a moment. I open the hood and take a look at the engine. Oil. Fat. Tire pressure. Wipe a dipstick
in the crankcase with an old rag. Wood. Screws. Nails. Saw. Plane. Toolbox. Maybe something with electrical engineering. Troubleshooting.
Short circuit. Switches. Click twice and the light will come on again. No, no thanks needed. It was nothing, really. Now it’s too late for all that.
Night on the threshold of east and west
Gently passing over the river the throbbing of two-stroke diesel engines, locomotives drag rumbling goods trains across the bridge and waiting for the painkillers to kick in I listen to secret signals from migrating birds keeping contact high up in the night sky on the threshold between east and west.
Not going to church
A merciful God plunges my world into safe shades of grey, behind this mist is nothing, everything is gone, ditches disappear in grey nothingness, the green of meadows grey, roads
grey, villages, beasts, women. We put off going to church because we can’t find it, the church and the world are gone, we retreat to the safety of the crypt, draw the mist like a warm grey blanket over
our innocent nudity and listen silently to the secret language of our togetherness, eat each other’s flesh and drink our salty nectar, take root in the grey earth and enter into the greyness of our amniotic fluid, grey
as the night and the day that follows it, and the days and grey nights, when unseen planets roam across the sky, grey as the grey days and the grey moon,
grey wool keeps us warm in the thick grey fog, grey grease fuses us in the grey world where nothing is left but our bodies and the all surrounding greyness.
Saturday amateurs
Hoar frost covers bare branches around frosted fields, birds fall from the sky like plagues as we walk across the frozen ground to the white expanse at the edge of our own frozen penalty box.
Snow in January
Barely visible a white blanket covering the land, a single weightless flake swirls earthward, we see snow accumulating into metre-high dunes into which trains run aground, a layer of thick ice on rivers and lakes, professional speed skaters’ thighs, farmers block supermarket distribution centres with their tractors, flashing lights tear up the night. Snow falls in January, spring awaits in the ground, bulbous plants, trees bud, sheep lamb, the newsreader’s voice fades and extinguishes in the cold.
Enno de Witt is a published Dutch author and poet, an artist and musician, webmaster and editor. For him, writing poetry is a sheer necessity, like breathing, sleeping, drinking and eating. His poetry is founded on the bedrock of the classics, Dutch as well as international, and revolves around the Eternal Questions, often using imagery pertaining to his younger years, growing up on the seashore amongst wild heretics.
You can find more of Enno’s work here on Ink Pantry.
She woke for dusting stuff, ducks and owls and robins, a joy of bric-a-brac. And later some chit-chat, pegging the washing line with sensible semaphore.
Once bravado flourished a bucket list of gliders, balloons, parachute jumps, any harum-scarum thrills. The ornamental throng was the end of all that.
Today the bandages unknot and a clarinet glides to a clarity of wings. No longer grounded, she says to feathered friends. They flock above the migraine cumulus of the cul-de-sac. Birds flighting a remedy in blue.
The Wreckers
The sacrament delivers Him, says take, eat this, know sacrifice. There is no bread, no wine, no bliss.
We kneel for them, and us, for hunger bites and biles our bellies, culls our children. Are their deaths our trial?
The darkness rises, the great wave curls, we hear their voices, we hear their call, the darkness rises, the great wave falls.
We gather on the sand, the cove a howl of prayer, our sin is humble need, we breathe the salted air.
Come keeling ship, come closer, crew a childhood of wraith, beguile their sight with candled night, believe in faith.
The wrecking rocks are Him, let guilt be our relief, belief shall bite, our guile will free our womb of grief.
The darkness rises, the great wave curls, we hear the crew, we hear their call, the darkness rises, the great wave falls.
Vaquero
No cause to hurry ahead, so let’s bide awhile here he said. The horse heard and sort of understood.
The distance forging in red, like a blacksmith, then the sky cooling to night. The moon silvered over the horse.
Across the mesa, the wind scissored around the rock. Don’t chew on things that are eatin’ you, the voices said.
Phil Wood was born in Wales. He worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. He enjoys painting, chess, and learning German. His writing can be found in various places, including : Byways (Arachne Press Anthology), Klecksograph, Black Nore Review, Fevers of the Mind, The Ink Pantry.
You can find more of Phil’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Orange groves in Israel… my grandparents donated trees for every special occasion, circumcisions, birthdays, anniversaries, bar mitzvahs, when Kennedy became president, the moon landing
You’ll visit one day say shalom to your forest of fruit
And they bought Israeli bonds at the Bank of America on Irving St. whenever they could accumulate 25 or 50 dollars
Redeem them for college no car, nothing frivolous
Citrus and scholarship recipe for a meaningful life Jews have a long tradition with fruit and words and long arguments over their meaning and importance
When my Aunt Sylvia left one shul to join another because one excluded and not the other it might be said it was over oranges a symbol of a more inclusive community where segments make a whole where the sweetness of humanity is ascribed in its words
This poem this is part of a chapbook collection due for future release by Finishing Line Press. Check out their website for further details.
Barry Vitcov lives in Ashland, Oregon with his wife and exceptionally brilliant standard poodle.He has had three books published by Finishing Line Press, a collection of poetry, “Where I Live Some of the Time” in February 2021; a collection of short stories, “The Wilbur Stories & More” in June 2022; and a chapbook collection of poems “Structures” in May 2024. FLP will be publishing his novella “The Boy with Six Fingers” in February 2025.
If I could spend one day with Virginia Woolf, I would sail to St. Ives in her lovely boat, alight at the lighthouse which she cherished most and contemplate the waves of her literary shores.
If I could spend an evening with Virginia Woolf, I would go to Oxbridge to consume some gorgeous food, then saunter with her on the turf that was once denied to her foot, without hearing a single, admonishing voice.
If I could ask a favour of Virginia Woolf, I would entreat her not to fill her pockets with heavy stones, not to interrupt the streams of consciousness, that connect the masses with literary gold.
Star Seeds
With webs of nerves attuned to the spheres, they see multiple numbers on clocks and screens, and think of themselves as missionaries.
Estranged from human beings and milieus by outlandish traits, they are considered by most people as lonely freaks.
Telepathic, with myriads of Déjà vus, they also see dreams that always come true.
Intractable
Like a frantic wind that is unsure which direction to take, my little dog whimsically zigzags its way, sniffing the scattered refuse of residents and pedestrians – be it a rotting chicken bone, a poisoned mouse, or the carcass of a bird that was not lucky enough to obtain a burial place- straining all my muscles in the process of arduous feats, and trying the utmost of my patience.
This is how each morning begins, with a repetition in the afternoon and early evening, a battle of wills, in which I always give in.
DrSusie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a PhD 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.
Lynda Plater lives in Lincolnshire. She has been writing poetry for 40 years and has had work published in Stand, Verse and Rialto among others. Her first collection, Three Seasons for Burning, was published by Wayleave Press in 2015. Last year she was the recipient of the coveted Frogmore Poetry Prize for her poem ‘The Revd. Michael Woolf on his way to a parishioner in need’.
Saving Fruit, her second Wayleave pamphlet, moves along familial lines by focusing on various members of her family who worked as cockle collectors and market gardeners on the Lincolnshire coast and marshland during the first half of the twentieth century.
The collection opens with a portrait of her great grandmother washing sheets in a lean-to with white-washed walls. Washing sheets in 1908 was hard work compared to today. One of the many strengths of this collection is Plater’s depictions of just how hard work was in those days:
Wringing out water made the skin of her hands flayed. Muscles ached with mangle turn. The clothes line drawn down sagged with the weight of sodden linen which dripped down the nape of her neck.
In the next poem we are introduced to her great grandfather who is raking cockles at a sand shelf. Reading this poem we get a real sense of a man battling against the elements, pitching himself against the vast horizons of the North Sea while his horse ‘sleep-filled, / sandfly tired, utters snorts’ waiting for his master to load the cart with cockles.
‘Midsummer harvest, 1911’ describes a photograph which is itself a snapshot in time. Several of the poems in this collection have dates in their titles which helps us to set them in context. They are also printed in chronological order running from 1908 through to 2018. There are, of course, many gaps in between. Most of the poems at the start of the collection cover the period from 1908 to 1921.
Many of the poems are centred on domesticated rural life: fruit preserving, a great grandmother gathering samphire near the shoreline, cockle selling, ploughing, bread-making, lessons in sailing.
Several poems depict the changing seasons. In ‘Turning’, we are reminded that not only the soil but also the planet is turning and that autumn is sliding into winter. The vast open spaces of the county are summoned up in the final stanza:
The tractor turned in a long landscape and flakes of gulls turned with it. The old man watched, felt its coming, knife-edged furrows meeting in the gather of earth for fallow. And on its passing he was with gulls between their flight; saw the ploughshare steeling straight.
In this collection, the natural world is all around us. In ‘Sailing lesson’, a heron, startled by a sudden close encounter rises out of the reed beds; in ‘Jar of clay’, curlews ‘break soft molluscs / in rising light’ out on the mudflats and in ‘The ring ouzel, November 2018’, the small bird ‘slow-grey eyed’ with ‘a white collar like a pastor’ catches the poet’s attention as the season rolls on and the theme of migration takes hold.
Whether she is writing about rooks in winter, a murmuration of starlings, outdoor labour in frosted fields or time spent in the service of the Lincolnshire Yeomanry in Egypt and Palestine during the First World War, Plater’s vivid descriptions pay tribute to her family by taking us back into the past and giving us a glimpse of how life was lived a century ago.
The cover image, ‘Apple’, a watercolour by Lynda Plater, is the perfect fit for this collection.
There is a poem in my heart a stop-gap love that cancels the chamber beats. I can’t dismiss the cane I walk with or the heavy, pounding heart, missing breath. There are prayers of my past etched in abuse that I delete pictures about— my brain recycles ruminations. I can’t delete beats or add them. I’m waiting for the final fall— when the gym whistle around my neck from grade 8 basketball class squeals out an Amber Alert for a dying old man.
They say I’m a poet, a word dabbler dripping sap from an old maple tree— tin can worshiper catching leftover sins. I face the world left, head-on. A shot of cheap vodka drained from an 80 Proof-1.75 Liter— lemon and lime juice mixed in reminds me of Charles Bukowski’s mic and desk beers lined up for consumption elongated in order, on the table— those L.A. Street whores, bitches, fantasies of men past 60.
I can’t delete past swear words, rearrange old events, distinguish melody from harmony notes at the Symphony Orchestra echoes of poor past performances.
Let me gamble what’s left: aces, spades. Joker is bankrupt, my crucified self. Silence over spoken reflects quietness nibbling of self.
Candle of My Night
In the candle of my night I see you blinking your eyes, pink with a magnanimous a vocabulary of mythology, a Nordic star, shy, shining in blondness, resorting, shuffling back and forth like a loaded deck of cards, lead-weighted- your lost teardrops through the years, your esteem. Quarter plugger dollar player jukebox sing-along, you’re but a street slut, musical bars and chairs. You stretch your loins over the imagination of penises like a condom. Protected, fruit preserved on your spreading branches. You wake up with sun tone memories then the darkness, those mythical tales and lost poems of the Poetic Edda or Marvel comics. You urinate morning dreams, thoughts, remnants away. You aren’t my first memory— candle by night.
Chicago
I walk in a pillow of cinder. Flames apart from this night still ignite. I am still determining where I live in a yellow mist, muddled in early morning white fog. I lost my compass in a manhole, dumped, dazed in thought. The L trains still flow on decrepit tracks. I toss ruminating imagination into Lake Michigan. A loyalist at heart, Chicago will have no mercy, memory of me. I will decry my passing and die like the local city Chicago River rats, raccoon divers, and smog. Mayor Daley hardly remembers his own name, less mine. I lie to daybreak in shadow grass. Sins stick on my body like bee honey. This old Chicago, Chi-town, grungy streets, elderly brick buildings shagged out. Apart from the moors stapling down luxury boats in the harbor, let’s not be fooled on any night, Al Capone still rules this town.
Closure
With age, my room becomes small— roots gather beneath my thoughts in bundles— exits are few. The purr of romance. The bark of leaving lovers, fall leaves in distress. Animals in the distance deer, wolf calls, birds of prey, eyes of barn owls those coyotes. I see the bridge, the cross-over line not far away. When this ticker stops, livor mortis purple is dominant, all living quarters of the heart. From here, the dimmed light of dawn twinkles takes on a new meaning, not far.
Anticipation
I watch out my condo window this winter, packing up and leaving for spring. I structure myself in a dream as Moko Jumbie, masquerader on stilts. I lean out my balcony window in anticipation. Dead branches, snow paper-thin, brown spots, shared spaces. A slug of Skol vodka, a glass of cheap sweet Carlo Rossi rose red wine. I wait these last few days out. That first robin, The beginning of brilliance— crack, emerald dark, these colours.
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 313 plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 46 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 7 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 653 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member of Illinois State Poetry Society.
You can find more of Michael’s work here on Ink Pantry.
