Lions fire from the ochre riverbed, you stand in white among the sun trees, you dress in linen sand, burnt perfume and your red furs linger on the river air, you arise on a ladder of clear stones to gather fragrant branches, you silver thread the light on water. I seek the dynasties of your silence, a drop of my lamp oil falls like a water bead on the shard of a mirror resembling the cenotaph of a queen.
John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France. His most recent chapbook, The Daymark, was published by Origami Poems Project.
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
The sun is well into its spring U-turn, sends warm rays of regret for its winter absence.
A bee lands on a breeze-tossed petal, induces a golden butterfly to join him.
Dogs no longer just walk with their masters. They seek out each other, circling and sniffing.
A mockingbird on a rooftop advertises his wares in borrowed song.
Windows open. Chimneys are silent at last.
It’s the season when my fancy demands it be turned to something. Not love, necessarily. Lazing’s a good second choice.
Like Father, Like Son
A father, Frank going straight after a long history of drug offences –
and a son, Matt out on bail after a stash of cocaine discovered in his car by cops –
that’s the family scene, the one where Matt sneaks in and out of the house
or stays up in his room, eats his meals alone
and then, when they do run into each other, their tongues freeze up
but two pairs of hard angry eyes make contact,
as they both look deep into each other, see the same festering hungers, the same wretched desires, the same pathetic appetites that adulterate the family blood –
and they turn away in a shame disguised as a superiority –
“he’s turning out just like me,” thinks Frank –
“I’m turning out just like him,” thinks Matt –
from the disgusted looks on both their faces
you would never know they just agreed on something.
These Fine Children
They are perfect, middle of the night sleeping, middle of the day, thumping volleyballs across a net. Their faces are pure and lovely, just like yours at that age. The photos on your dresser are a history of how these moments came to be: your sly glance through the slightly ajar bedroom door, your full face at the parlour window. God’s creation? Maybe. Your creation? Is there any doubt. At night, alone at the kitchen table, coffee and a cigarette, a bottle of pain pills… if only their father were alive to see this. For all their glory, triumphs know their place.
Flowers for a Friend
The river’s all dolled up, with the sheen of skyscraper lights, some stars sprinkled here and there – the Hudson must be on its way to someplace special.
Your face flashes out of all others like a sudden appointment I’ve forgotten to miss, and the sirens – God, the sirens – it’s the sound of cops looking for something to do.
Someone (you?) says something. It’s hard to tell in a crowd. But I listen. And I believe.
A woman’s selling flowers that are so outrageously perfumed, like they’ve been reading French novels and wanted everyone to know.
I buy a bunch, hand them to you. You take them like you’re accepting a bill you already know you can’t pay. The river keeps going. We don’t. Not yet.
Passerby
You bring me pleasure. Ironic that. You could be a harpy, a bigot, a child murderer, for all I know.
You could be fool enough to think that a lovely face, long straw-coloured hair, a lithesome figure in a fluttering blue cotton dress is enough. Let me tell you. It is enough.
Yes, in my friends, I want all the virtues. But I look for beauty in my strangers.
Someone in the Fog
The fog is thick but I can just make out a person up ahead of me. Not the features, just the shape. Not the way of living, just the presence. I see what must be a head but not the knowledge. And a torso but no scars. Limbs but not what they bear up. I’ve just reached an understanding of who and what I am. But with other people, the fog rolls in.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Novus and Calliope. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Levitate, White Wall Review and Willow Review.
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I have spent years warding off evil from my chest. I’m convinced that my heart — once plump, pulping, and dramatically impaled by Cupid’s bow — has since flattened into a planchette.
I drag my planchette heart across ouija boards — and spell out your name though I’ve buried you a thousand times. More incantations: “R u here?” “I still <3 u.” “Gimme a sign.”
Not that you answer. I swallow the sting of my séance being seen-zoned.
Arshi Mortuza is a writer and educator residing in the Greater Toronto Area. She is the author of One Minute Past Midnight and Pressed Flower. Her work has been featured in numerous literary outlets worldwide.
Minor characters from my past play walk-on roles in my dreams. Precise details: the huskiness of a woman’s voice, the neatness of a long-ago boss’s moustache, cameo appearances with those closer to me in life’s hurly-burly, my regulars, intrigue me. The only part of an early story by John Updike I remember was when the narrator described the past as a vast sheet of darkness where a few random moments, pinpricks of light, briefly shine. Reading Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld’s witty modern take on Pride and Prejudice, reminds me how much art makes of misunderstood information, sexual and social tension, the giddiness of thin secrets, small things lit by hope or darkened with despair. Before mobile phones, noisily busy in an adjoining room, I once heard the staccato of a long message being left on my answering machine. When I had time to play it, optimistically expectant, to my utter horror it had vanished due to a connection fault. I never learned who believed I had received it without response. These missed instances transport me to student days and Angel’s letter under a rug in Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
My serendipitous discovery of Yeats’ early poem, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, also before mobile phones, came about when, like a character in an old monochrome movie, I lifted an antimacassar on my club armchair, exposing a hidden letter. A nephew, my house-sitter during recent travels then, had a girlfriend, the letter’s addressee. Did she hear his approach, slip the letter from sight, then later forget it? Aswarm with voyeuristic conjecture, I read it, mind-chuckling about this connection to novelists’ formulae of letters found too late or never. Someone with a European name travelling by bus around northern Australia gazing on an endless panoramic heat shimmer covered a page describing this before getting to the point: his unrequited, perhaps ended, love for my nephew’s girlfriend. His heart’s slender hope bled all over the rest of the pages, awkward syntax charging its poignancy. Conscripting the young Yeats to illustrate his adoration, the poor guy reduced that effect by transcribing the gorgeous ‘Cloths’ as ‘Clothes’.
Now, my mind a maelstrom of memories, I wonder if that lovelorn swain recalls his paean to the girl he had lost to my nephew who, though no longer her partner, is still in touch with her. Do his thoughts return to the landscape between Broome and Darwin when he felt dizzy with desire for a girl who is now growing old and drinks too much? Do pangs of lost love, its accompanying dolour, linger? His added postscript: ‘No more beautiful words were ever written. Isn’t it you and me?’ followed Yeats’ poem. Perhaps with Maud Gonne on his ardent youthful mind, Yeats closed with: I have spread my dreams under your feet;/ Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. One thing that young man lonely on a bus achieved was his inadvertent introduction to me of what would become my favourite poem, so rich is its tapestry of swooning loveliness. I wish I could dance the tightrope of language with that broken-hearted scribe who heard the tyres moan, leaving all his dreams behind, as my reading life whizzed by.
Ian C Smith’s work has been published in BBC Radio 4 Sounds, Cable Street, The Dalhousie Review, Griffith Review, Honest Ulsterman, Offcourse, Stand, & Westerly. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.
You can find more of Ian’s work here on Ink Pantry.
When the tomorrow comes as a light at first, and in the dark the darkness burns, it explodes in flower loops your soul. Without seeing, without waiting! This autumn shares fruit scent, even though the type is pushing towards winter, the leaves fall, when the loops are ready to be born. Without seeing, without waiting! I touch this autumn, it burns my hand and the day becomes sad. When I smell I feel a spring breeze. Without seeing, without waiting!
Nikollë Loka was born in Mirdita on March 25, 1960; graduated as a teacher at Luigj Gurakuqi University of Shkodra; master’s degree in pedagogy at the University of Tirana, doctorate in history of education at the University of Tirana. Author of ten poetic volumes in Albanian and three poetic volumes in Italian (two of which with co-authors); included in the anthology “La Poesie contemporaine albanaise”, “L’Hartmattan” publications, Paris 2024. In addition to Albanian, his poems have been published in Italian, English, French, German, Arabic, Romanian, Swedish and Macedonian. Winner of several literary awards in the country and abroad. Included in the Lexicon of Albanian writers 1501-2001, editions “Faik Konica”, Pristina 2003 and in the Encyclopedia of Italian language poets, “Aletti Editore” Rome 2021.
You can find more ofNikollë’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I thought the squirrel had died inside the tree so I poked at it with a stick. It didn’t move, so I poked inside the hollow I thought it was trapped in, poked it again. Something grabbed my stick tugged it with teeth and tiny hands, and so I pulled the stick back out. Weeks later
three tiny tails snaked out of the hole next to the first squirrel’s twisted and wrapped around their mother’s tail as though they had to cling to her even out here. I never saw their little faces, never saw anything but the tails growing thicker and redder and fluffier with each day. The mother would only come out at night to gather food for them, I never saw her leave her post. I spread crackers with peanut butter for her in the kitchen carefully placing them just below her nest as an offering a plea for forgiveness.
One morning, all four tails were gone. The hollow gaped at me, abandoned, from my old birch tree. I put more crackers in the garden, put them in the branches near the hollow, chased stray cats from my yard and kept the dog inside, but I never got to see those little squirrel children never got to see who had made their first home in my yard.
The Mouse
My husband calls me into the kitchen to show me the mouse that has fallen into the sink during the night. “I think it’s dead,” he says just as it begins paddling half-heartedly in the water once more one last, futile effort to find some purchase on the slick porcelain basin one impossible final effort. Its eyes are dull, flat, black minutes from the end. I reach down into the water, pull the little creature up by its tail take it outside. “Make sure it’s dead,” calls my husband from the house
not wanting to be a part of whatever I have planned. The mouse struggles feebly in my hand. Its eyes don’t see me. I have never seen eyes like that before, half goggled, oblivious like two dull nail heads jammed into its face. I carefully set it down in the garden, place its feet on the dirt let go of its tail. “Please don’t come back,” I whisper as it struggles for life, for balance before springing off into the undergrowth.
“Please don’t come back.”
The Myth of Correspondence
To fully understand the pictures I have sent you first, fill a bathtub with water and ice get into the tub with all of your clothes on. Only then should you shake these photographs out of this careful assemblage of paper.
This is the only way you’ll be able to understand the shades of weather that separate us, the only way to separate yourself from your envelope of tropical breezes and permanent sunshine. I will speak to you through the ice bruising your skin a frigid wraith clinging to you from too far away.
Tuesday
On a perfect day, I would be able to open my back door find nothing but jungle waiting for me, sunshine filtered in through the leaves of trees I’d never seen before, the calls of unfamiliar birds coming at me from all angles. On a perfect day, I would hear snakes in the undergrowth, monsters rustling just out of sight hear the low rumble of a tiger or a jaguar breathing a warning shot close by, perhaps as close as the cooling shade beneath my back porch.
But this is not a perfect day, and I have not been transported to a random scene from a Kipling novel, have not been transported back in time to march with Herodotus or Alexander through lush jungles untouched by civil war am not looking for new species of birds with Audubon or stumbling into and through the ruins of Machu Picchu with Bingham. I am just digging holes in my own back yard for tulips and daffodils wishing I could be anyone but me.
Mouse Trap
The little mice watch me from their prison of tin and plexiglass inside the live mouse trap I baited the night before. Four little mice with pointed noses and trembling whiskers eyes black and bulging against their dark brown fur. I wonder how I must appear to them, this giant thing that they spend their days avoiding, rushing from one dark corner to another at the sound of my footsteps, and now there’s nowhere left to go, they wandered into this baited box and now I have them in my curious grasp.
I tap on the little plexiglass window and they rush to the corners of the box, cram themselves into the entrance chute, their thin black tails twitching and curling, hanging out in the open. I imagine what it would be like to keep them as pets, these stinky little mice what it would be like to train these wild mice to live in a cage to eat only when food is offered, and only what I alone offer them if eventually, they would learn to anticipate my arrival at the door of their cage with joy, or if they would always be just as terrified of me as this?
Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Talking River, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, Hugo House in Washington, and the Indiana Writers Center.
You can find more of Holly’s work here on Ink Pantry.
The short woman waddled across the children’s section of the library toward the young woman cooing at a baby she had set on a blanket on the floor while a toddler screamed nonsense at her. She understood. He had to pee. Oh, I’ll watch her the short woman pointed to the baby. Are you sure? Much nodding. I’ve always wanted a baby. The boy’s shrieks garnered eyebrow raises and winces from other patrons. Much blushing. Thank you. The mother ran the toddler toward the restroom. The non-mother waited then picked the baby up and followed the mother until the exit.
Megan Wildhoodis a neurodiverse Christian writer, editor, and writing coach who grew up in the intense sun and snow of Colorado. She believes that freedom of expression is necessary for a society that is not only safe but flourishing for all. As a human who has gone through more than one phoenix-level transformations, she will spend a lifetime turning those ashes into verse, story, essay, but most of all flashlight for her readers and those she works with in her coaching practices.
that scratchy transistor still sounds the same to the ears of the past hidden under the cover of a late night wish
and you refuse to believe that the cornstalks are any shorter that the dirt is drier than it was last summer
and meanwhile the snow piles up and regardless of month you remember peering out the windshield from your backseat vantage listening to your mother swerve the wheel cussing the march and the gravel
and all of this is the same as yesterday as tomorrow when you believed the last gasp was the ending word
but now that frozen moment is less than a footnote on your approaching obsolescence or so it would seem as you sit here refusing to recognize the moment for all it is
Timeline
We were told all of this before as we reveled in the static existence that permeated the pavement, and every day meant something, except for the ones left in the background; signposts that always said: Try Again, and we did, because what else is there to do when all you’ve got is everything, but all you see is nothing?
We were told all of this before, but things like that rarely matter when today is the only day, and what has changed but a dented perspective, and you had this pocketknife, and that was enough in the hazy moment.
We were told all of this before, crunching earth that advised walk slowly, walk steady, so we ran, and one day we’ll rest.
Retrospect on the Wind
There were late night moments of ritualistic abandon, throwing everything to the fire; caution being the first to go.
We’d see the twinkling darkened windows from a vantage of impossible distance, never knowing what was on the other side of that black glass, only that it had to be something grander than the place from which we came.
Things would burn down, ashes collecting at the bottom of a rusted-out fifty-five-gallon drum, and all within a radius breathed in the noxious odour of something that never should have been.
A single struggling streetlight told the shadowy tale of every other busted out arc sodium dream, and we believed all those soundless words with an innocent fervor never to be matched.
Sometimes in the still midnight of now, you can hear a wind shoot through trees, even a lone coyote calling to the gathering, but just beneath all of that, you might hear all the things we never said.
At the Core
There’s a quiet spot deep inside of nothing, underneath everything,
hiding, waiting to be found; a centre to be exhumed, but only from within,
and that’s the trick, isn’t it?: to dig out the intention from underneath the extensions,
to explode from a position of implosion. There is a quiet spot,
and it’s there, breathing, waiting, knowing that time is irrelevant, that the wind never fails;
believing that calm will come, and it’s only to be found beyond the next breath.
how it is
to all extant you see a sideways world turning in some unimaginable cycle unpredictable and disturbing
you watch from your suspiciously rounded corner an acknowledgement of nothing a promise of everything
and yet the circles swirl the world knows and you’ll remain in the dark seeing through pinholes and pretending they’re stars
your perception an image from a coffee can camera of yesterday’s embellishment undulating and roiling and nauseous
but that’s only what happened yesterday and tomorrow is less than a dream and today’s already half in a book that’s already begun to smoulder in the wet flames of anything that ever seemed to make sense
James Benger is the author of several books of poetry and prose. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Writers Place, and on the Riverfront Readings Committee, and is the founder of the 365 Poems in 365 Days online workshop. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and children.
“We’re at our most bestial when threatened not with hatred but indifference; what our blood wants is reaction of some kind.” New Hampshire night, our own reaction, you pliant, penetrable, laid out beneath me as flies fidgeted our room, pirouetted moist air. Yet we sank beneath bestiality to do just what indifferently we wanted, beneath our glut of blood, so the summoned beasts might react with this: ripped limb from limb, buried in low-lying Virginia swamp marsh, given what aphorism is only got in extinction, darling, as I quote what you said at the bar before. In other words, they hated us. The one-night stand wouldn’t matter if your brain didn’t have the right words in it: stories, sequences, slammed-down metaphors of a singed self. Frequencies.
II.
As the world between her legs tightened around her, what she saw in bed with me was stark: okra, stamens, roots, all that in nature coalesces in erect growth; and a shadow father bent, then erect, then bent again, perverse from amassing wealth in a world whose submissiveness poisons him. Beneath the sultry, wooded surface, what I saw was a semi-frightened animal, along for an all-night ride (gruesomeness of 4 a.m. New Hampshire sun), knife thusly thrusting into the backs of everyone around her, managing to have stamina enough against constraint to take what she was taking. The mattress thumped: above, an angel was unable to conceal laughter, understanding it was all in the script, including the garish sun’s leer.
Adam Fieled is a writer based in Philadelphia. His books include Opera Bufa, Beams, Equations, Apparition Poems, and the manuscript-in-progress Something Solid. A magna cum laude Penn grad, he edits P.F.S. Post.
You can find more of Adam’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Aging brings loss, but sweetness persists Love is pressed from what endures
Life, a ripe apple— Red Delicious, rumour of hell, bittersweet to the core. If you can taste it with & chew it with false teeth. Most friends have vanished— ghosts slipping beyond shadowed, silent doors. That parlour where no returns. It’s only a rumour. Yet, I wander the garden, fields stripped of grace, grapes foot pressed into concord— faith fermenting in the barrel of hidden old gospel & songs. Kneeling in this season of loss. Lies the tartness of redemption. While others (wheeled) wield the devil’s fork in the heat of their own fires. So, squeeze what sweetness remains, press me— last sweetness. In your apple juice jar of love.
I Conceal My Craft
An armadillo symbolizes guarded creativity This poem contrasts self-protection with vulnerability
I conceal my craft beneath my shell. Mine of an armadillo, snug in its embrace, nestled near its warmth, as insects buzz under the midday sun, where stories collide with struggles, and words fester like unresolved thoughts, distant from the critics’ needle pen hearts. Their relentless demands, cold cash, and hollow praise layered thick with honey on pages between verses, where every line holds a lingering scent or memory. I gaze up at the vast sky and chuckle. Speaking in tongues nervously out of mind shining chimes waiting for the next critic to declare my thoughts don’t flow, out of character, my rhythm’s a misstep. I tally each word, joy, and sorrow. One poem, one collection of verses for me; One poem, one collection, a poetry book against me. Breathe shallow, breathe hard for the heart with age. I conceal my craft under the armour of the armadillo.
Dove Bar Poem
In this short poem relationship differences create distance and longing
An ex-lover told me she loved Dove dark chocolate bars. Dove bars were suitable for lovers. She ate dark Dove bars. I ate light Dove milk chocolate. She was healthy; I was sad. We often got into fights over this. She was manic, and I was depressive. Sex was a bouncing basketball affair. She was healthy, not knowing her disease. I was sad, stealing apples. Swiped from Farmer John’s orchard. Sleeping wherever I found a pillow. A pillow wherever found.
Tonight, Tonight
This poem embraces solace in moonlight trusting dawn’s gentle promise
Tonight, I am the moon’s envoy, bare feet awash in silver. Longing settles in me— spark or ember, I remain. Thunder soft as cat paws, storms now gentle memory. I flutter, no longer afraid, teaching darkness to move gently. Tonight, I find comfort in the moon’s borrowed light, trusting dawn will come.
Michael Lee Johnson lived in Canada for ten years during the Vietnam era. Today, he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 418-plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 47 countries, a song lyricist with several published poetry books, and a nominee for 8 Pushcart Prize awards and 8 Best of the Net nominations. He has over 710 published poems. He is the editor-in-chief of three poetry anthologies, all of which are available on Amazon, and has authored several poetry books and chapbooks. Michael has administered and created 6 Facebook poetry groups. Member of the Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/ and Poets & Writers: https://www.pw.org/. His poems have been translated into several foreign languages. Awards/Contests: International Award of Excellence ‘Citta’ Del Galateo-Antonio De Ferrariis XI Edition 2024 Milan, Italy-Poetry. Poem, Michael Lee Johnson, “If I Were Young Again.” Please consider me for a Best of the Net or Pushcart nomination.
You can find more of Michael’s work here on Ink Pantry.
