Love is a lasting word even when it is temporary. Oh, that feeling. What was it? A spring fever? A sweet delusion? Yes, we both enjoyed the rubbing of parts, a blessed friction, and all the skin we touched, and the flowers given and received.
It was all so nice, even the agony and the lies. I’ll never forget you. Maybe you will never forget me. Old faces worn like thumbtacks pressed into our eyes.
A Sense Of Rank
My ancient peasant blood trembles at the thought of greatness, so I avoid it in others and in my self.
Who needs a halo and epaulets? I am general of the armies of dust balls racing across the floor.
Dimensions
The multiverse I heard will be going out of fashion. Unfortunate. It explains so much, such as why it seems we are together and so far apart, and why the wind blows so hard, but cannot turn a pinwheel held in your hand.
Family Album
All the lies and all the dead now forgotten along with their crimes. Oh ho, you there. Step this way please. By order of so and so you are cut out of the picture.
Gasping for Air
I don’t know the colour of my lungs, and do not want you to check.
Peace be with you brother. Let me breathe as I am, one quarter lung or less of freedom and forgiveness.
Hard Time For The Circus Clown
I have run out of paint to cover my face. No powder, No nose round and red enough.
I shall sit here in puffy clothes smiling at the strangers who look my way and pass by
in search of a more entertaining prisoner along death row.
Joseph Farley is former editor of Axe Factory, Poetry Chain Letter, Implosion, Paper Airplane and other zines. He has had over 1300 poems and 130 short stories published so far during his 40 plus year writing career. His fiction books include two story collections Farts and Daydreams (Dumpster Fire) and For the Birds (Cynic), and a novel Labor Day (Peasantry Press). He has also penned nine chapbooks and books of poetry. His work has appeared recently in Schlock, Horror Sleaze Trash, Home Planet News Online. Corvus Review, Ygdrasil, Eunoia Review, US 1 Worksheets, Oddball, Alien Buddha Zine and other places.
Pure grey, impure white Paleness is everywhere Towers with considerable height Blocking the view Of the ancient black and blue.
The murmur of the crowd Busy narrow road But the sight, the hearing craves for The swish, the tweets, the rainbow.
Fresh soothing stream The crystal glowing current Can never be like The hurrid rushing flow Of shineless fluid From a metal pipe.
Infinite majestic waters Waves hitting shores The calming whoosh A gentle breeze Cannot be found in a tub Full of stillness and soap.
Fields of colour Green, red, blue Dance on the gentle melody Of the breeze that blew Need to be seen By the eyes that had only in memory Plastic, paper, artificial beam.
The horizon is near The white walls embrace me here Where’s the far line The mesmerising colours, the twilight.
I long for the alteration The variety of scene Of one horizon Day and night, seen.
What has been forever in sight We thrive to see on websites Go and feed the soul, the hearing, the seeing For in nature all to the soul is healing.
Dripping emotions
It is not as easy as it seems To pour the heart On a white sheet, To select the proper amount Of something inconcrete, Of drops, of adequate sense To bleed ink and make them see What resides behind these beats.
Broken blanket
Gentle steps indoors, Heartwarming voice echoes, In memory. Frozen under this cold blanket I remember that cozy one Broken blanket? How to get that heavy one I had? About thousands of kilometres back? It held your worries, your heart On me you laid a blanket You laid a palm So cozy, so warm So so far.
Raghda Mouazen is an English literature graduate from Tishreen University in Syria. She works as an English teacher and enjoys painting, writing, and language learning. She speaks Arabic, English, German, Turkish, French, and a little Japanese. Her poetry appeared on various websites online including Synchronized Chaos Magazine, and Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine.
Debate a rag into a frayed jacket, boundless shade structured around a colleague. Yet grin.
Misses function until a baron avoids bleeding that bestows a process beneath a pulp, shoes CRATER earth , from chaos Meek neck.
Pedaling mysterious takedowns in a pot delivered as a battered orange motion processing an ignored hive: Pockets Swell, express floundering rough draft translation.
chemical leather strap. Last bit of a crumb, forthwith blemish of limitations – – – menacing forlorn vistas, vibes, instantaneous verge.
Tug & tackle & twilight white noise.
Vague Threatening Ideologies
not a tongue animating stick but the present tense sneezing of a formaldehyde trapdoor cinching ventriloquist dummy less than OR equal TO a fetus protected more than an idea , as if communion wafers were nourishment, tho the insteps perform matter of fact hexes UNTIL all abandoned possibilities become the summation of a Nation.
regulatory effects, this last of luxurious empires:
all that crumbles and fades and burns from resisted needs.
warbly ounce of rosary
portray miniscule trouser snippets cough cough cough cough cough machine HITS sound FiLe escape: ‘harder than a neon empire sweatsuit’ & cylinder EXITS bellow cruising chop , whoosh WHOOSH ,, whiffing weapons of MaSs discontent – – – ‘shower & join us on the boot farm’ – – – bona fide fourth trench of the industrial circus window shipping vampiric snapping flask ]whosoever blanched meeting martini shades[ ,,, AdDeD bUrSt of yearly stipend.
circumstantial assertions avoid
heretics assent outlining caricatures lack distinguished section V further addressed disease of profound anemic limping all due wounded apprehension species
glow certain forms common integral list proper pooling arguments
of each of giving of ultimatum lungs
provided oxygen hampers an end a functional virtue wither substance however such skills lacking weapon existence assigned wholly
destroy communal controversy the hollowed void of partial citations resisting the logic of common sense
Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is member of C22, an experimental writing collective. He is the author of the books automatic message (Free Lines Press), combustible panoramic twists (Trainwreck Press), Pointillistic Venetian Blinds (Alien Buddha Press) and Vagabond fragments of a hole (Schism Neuronics). He has had numerous pieces published in various journals including Otoliths, Version (9), Don’t Submit!, BlazeVOX, RASPUTIN, Ink Pantry, Unlikely Stories Mark V, and experiential-experimental-literature. You can find links to his published work here.
You can find more of Joshua’s work here on Ink Pantry.
A man was eating breakfast at a restaurant and was subjected to a conversation from a neighbouring table
The server came over to tell him the restrooms were out of order The man suggested the server also tell the neighbouring table, because the four of them were full of shit
The man left before he found out if he had successfully prevented any accidents
A New World Record
Scene: A grave that people are constantly passing by, stopping for a few seconds with their backs to the audience.
Announcer (in excited sports-announcer voice):
This is a day of great pride for our city; the Guinness people are here to confirm the record. Today there have been many tens of thousands of people passing by the grave of (Audience can fill in for themselves the name of the person to be so honoured).
And the Guinness people have confirmed it: the new world record for the largest outdoor urinal!
Letter to a Medical Billing Company
(Sometime in autumn. The MAN receives a bill from his wife’s doctor at the nursing home for her services back in January. The bill threatens him with collection if he doesn’t promptly pay. The MAN consults his records and sees that bills from this doctor both before and after January have been paid, and sits down to write a letter to be sent with the bill in lieu of payment.)
I dislike receiving threatening letters, especially when the threats are due to your incompetence Bills both before and after January have been paid, so obviously someone in the office knows how to bill the insurance properly I suggest you find out who that person is and give this bill to that person so you can be paid Under no circumstances are you to contact me about it ever again
(The MAN never heard from the billing company again, and his wife switched doctors, though the switch had to do with the doctor’s medical competence, not her administrative competence.)
Michael Ceraolo is a 64-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press) published, and has two more in the publication pipeline.
Turning on the morning news Drinking my coffee Seeing the news About the latest school killing
This time in Texas An 18- year old high school student Bought two assault weapons
Shot his grandmother Then went to an elementary school Killing 18 children and two teachers.
Why he did this carnage Remains a mystery He was shot dead.
Why congress does nothing, The State of Texas does nothing, Is not a mystery.
The NRA and their minions Continue to claim The answer is more guns For everyone
If only the other teachers And students were armed Perhaps only a few children Would have been slaughtered.
Politicians offer useless thoughts And prayers But doing anything meaningful Just can’t be bothered.
The dead don’t care about their prayers And their useless thoughts They remain dead.
And soon all too soon We will watch the news Of yet another gun massacre.
Things My Parents Taught Me
My parents taught me A lot about life They were unique With their take on life.
My mother was born Into a Southern Baptist faith One of ten children
Part of the lost tribe Of the Cherokee Indians My father grew up On a Farm Became an atheist.
They could not agree On religion Said we would have to figure That on our own,
But they had a Buddhist View that the thing to do Was to do the right thing
But we had to figure Out that on our own.
My mother had a lot Of sayings
Like Don’t trust experts What is a PhD Bullshit piled high and deep
All politicians are lying When their teeth are moving
There is nothing worst In this world Than a reformed drunk
And despite their fiery Love-hate relationship They did love each other And that showed.
In the end We become our father And mother
Just the way The world is It seems
Encountering Aliens
While walking on a moonlit path Through the forest trail Sam Adams looked up At the stars and planets And the full moon.
He was a detective, Checking out a mysterious box, Found in the woods
He had his pet wolf With him That he had won As a tip In a poker game In the underground casino.
He came upon the box There was a flash of light, Relishing the chance,
To embellish a story Fit for eternity, Of how he had found,
The enemy aliens And destroyed them
Before they could invade The earth.
The crowd at the bar were busy drinking that night rushing about drinking
When the aliens came To order a drink.
Howling at the New Moon Trijan Refrain
The lunatic light of the full moon Lit up the night sky, Turning the night into noon. Making us feel quite high
The drinkers keep drinking in the bar, Drinking all night until the mar. Just howling Just howling The drinkers keep Soon the night becomes quite bizarre. Scent of bad craziness in the air.
The lunatic light of the full moon Making the drinkers fly. Soon they are ready to swoon. Some want to die Others want to fight and spar. Some star at the dog star. Want to drink more Want to drink more
The lunatic light of the full moon The drinkers ask why. Naked dancing to the mad tune, With a look very wry, They howled at the moon. They howled at the moon.
Encountering The Storm God
Sam Adams Was walking in the woods When he encountered A furious thunderstorm.
Lightning lit up the sky Revealing an abandoned cabin Sam Adams ran to the cabin.
Sought shelter there From the storm That continued to howl Outside the door.
He made a fire Got out some food And prepared to spend The night.
Around midnight The owner of the cabin An old mountain man Appeared.
He was angry at Sam But declared that Sam Could spend the night Provided he could outdrink The old man.
If he lost the bet The old man Would have to kill him For the crime of trespassing.
Sam accepted the challenge Around dawn, he got up With a pounding hangover, And went out the door.
The old man came at him Shot him dead And disappeared Into the storm clouds.
John (“Jake”) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet, and former Foreign Service officer having served 27 years with the U.S. State Department serving in over ten countries including Korea, Thailand, India, Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Spain. He has travelled to over 50 countries, and 49 out of 50 states. He speaks Korean, Thai, Spanish and studied Chinese, Hindi and Arabic.
You can find more of Jake’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Born and raised in Ammanford, once the heartland of coal mining in West Wales, Paul McGrane is the co-founder of the Forest Poets poetry collective in Walthamstow, London. From 2006 to 2020 he was the Poetry Society’s Membership Manager. His first collection, Elastic Man, published by Indigo Dreams in 2018, won the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize. British People in Hot Weather (Indigo Dreams Publishing) is his second collection.
I have to admit that the title of this collection puzzles me. Arresting it may be, but there are no mad dogs and Englishmen going out in the midday sun which is to say that no poem matches the title, the phrase does not appear in any of the poems and the time of year is invariably winter. All this proves that you cannot judge a book by its cover. McGrane, I conclude, is a man who likes to surprise his readers, and there is plenty to surprise us here.
The main theme of this collection is centred round personal relationships. These relationships are seen through the lens of childhood and adolescence, a school nativity scene, a distant father-son relationship, a well-meaning next door neighbour, weekends with grandparents and characters from a Verdi opera.
McGrane writes more about his father than his mother. Both his father and his grandfather were miners. His father was a coal hewer to begin with, moving on to become a colliery repairer below ground. In the early 80’s he was medically retired before the mines were closed down. McGrane is proud of his working lineage even though his relationship with his father was a difficult one. In ‘Social Distancing’ he writes: ‘he’d see but look straight through me. / To him I was something that / my mother should take care of / like cooking and cleaning and the washing up.’ In ‘Your father’s gone to stay with cousin Cyril for a while’ we catch a glimpse of the domestic situation at home:
Bad husband, he was very rarely in, spending all his time in the pub or the garden sweet-talking seedlings into flower
but when they’d share a room ice hung from the ceiling and every cough or sigh could spark an argument …. I’d be out of there as soon as I was old enough to leave.
In ‘Thrift’ McGrane sketches a picture of his mother through the extended metaphor of the sea pink. Like the Royal Mint, who used thrift as an emblem on the threepenny-bit between 1937 and 1953, McGrane plays on the double meaning of the word.
‘Going viral’ is another loaded title in which McGrane explores our recent experience of trying to prevent the spread of the coronavirus during the pandemic. Despite all the rules around handwashing, the germs in this poem keep spreading.
Two poems that really caught my attention in terms of wit and originality were ‘Unit 8 / Series 53 has died (and, oh, the difference to me)’ and ‘Search: Mark E Smith’. The former explores the question of whether robots have feelings and the latter the frustrations we have all faced at one stage or another when trying to identify a particular person who happens to have a very common name. (My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Jones so I can sympathise with the dilemma that this imposes when searching through family history).
Other subjects covered in this collection include ‘Dying Words of Patrick Moore’ which hints at the possibility of life on Mars and ‘Press Gang’ which compares and contrasts the fate of two people in different time frames: Brigstock Weaver, forced to loot ships by pirates in the 18th century and the teenager Jaden Moodie who got caught up in low-level crime and was murdered at the tender age of 14 by a rival gang member in East London in 2019.
I’m a sandcastle on the shore, watching idly by; not testing the waters – too afraid to make waves
I also ride out waves all day, with the tides rushing in, then out
But wait, aren’t I, too, a wave; formed from the flowing energy within this moon’s waters, climbing to the peak of this slippery cliff, and crashing down into energy forming, just to flow from the same water again and again?
From Katy, Texas, Abi (27) has been avidly writing poetry since her early 20s and looks forward to where it’ll take her. When she isn’t scribbling away, she can usually be found in her art studio, sculpting. Mental health is a common theme in Abi’s poetry, as her own has inspired much of her writing.
Chance, as always. Sudden rain & a street without awnings. Open double-doors nearby, the room beyond gaslit. A small hand-painted plaque, Maximilian Planck’s Wunderkammer, read in passing, interpreted inside.
*
A personal museum, small as they always are. Once might have been a doctor’s surgery or a dance studio. Not even a shop. Windowless. A widow’s pension- eking pittance, the widow’s mite.
*
He’d seen them before. Usually military, the bits left over from a life that was never shared. Medals & Mauser bullets, though never the one that got them in the end — if they died that way. Most caught the pox or plague, or fell from their horse in a drunken stupor.
*
This one medical. Abnormal an- atomical specimens on shelves against the back wall. Inherently dangerous. Jars full of alcohol. The spluttering sconces on the wall.
*
Had seen better. Had friends at St Bartholomew’s.
*
But still, but still. The honesty of the items stopped his heart. For a moment, for this moment. Later, as he thought about them, it would happen again.
*
He knows there will be one time it will stop forever.
Mark Young’s most recent books are Songs to Come for the Salamander: Poems 2013-2021, selected & with an introduction by Thomas Fink (Meritage Press & Sandy Press); Your order is now equipped for shipping (Sandy Press); & The Advantages of Cable (Luna Bisonte Prods).
You can find more of Mark’s work here on Ink Pantry.
walking at night and the financial district fires, I guess because they leave the lights on so the night-cleaners can work.
seen from a distance it looks damn impressive, propped up against the velvet of some soft and studded sky like stacking racks of driftwood gone ember on a lakeshore and just far enough away that if you didn’t know you’d never guess the length –
during daylight city towers goliath and sometimes I walk in it, forever in the foothills of a mountain range solid as the edges of eagles in the sky, enough to disrupt gravity and leave the birds that die in flight falling sideways and toppling through windows and ruining board meetings.
but at night on the way to the store for wine or tonic water you see them for what they are; the imitation of the lazy flame gloriously burning like christmas trees. without self-knowledge, feeding on themselves, showing their true light only to those who cant afford to work there –
in 500 years not even our bones will be remembered.
This time last year
I try to shy, somehow, from this tiresome “topical poetry”. to just write the day as it paces and lays itself out. as if everything weren’t an echo of everything. just writing, just living, things always bounce in. life all around me – awareness of life. and
it seems, this time last year, that everyone wanted some statement of Pandemic Poetry. “Love in the Time of Covid” the “theme issue” title that every third magazine chose. consciously, I didn’t write them, but still, I did write – and by doing so, probably did. I am a personal poet. but things happen – they do – and I hear of them. of course they effect me – the room
that you sing in will alter the shape of the song. an opera house. showers. the kitchen, making coffee. different sounds, ringing, though you use the same notes. the room you are standing in changes the shape of your singing though what people sing of is so rarely ever the room.
(March 2021)
Red.
red hair. fiery strwby hair. nipples red, a sofa, patched red with grey patches rubbed bald by our asses and hands. and her name was red in gaelic, and a tv on with something unimportant – these are the memories:
16, her 15, doing badly at sex worse at love thinking about her friend her thinking about her friend’s boyfriend.
now she is in a queer relationship and her old boyfriend is somewhere unthreatening anymore.
we used to screw together and quite slowly in her mother’s apartment after school next to the window in view of the red decks of buses.
Talented friends
the story goes: vonnegut (he tells in a book) was not really feeling inspired. he wrote to a friend about it –
feeling like that – and the friend then wrote back – was a poet, apparently – and cut up the text of
the letter. made it into a poem, or to look like one, anyway –
the moral, apparently, to tell him that even uninspired he was able to write. I don’t know if it helps, even if you’re kurt vonnegut,
when you feel like that, having talented friends.
Moments happen.
sure, yes of course, there are moments we argue, as must any people who make any plan.
I forget where things go. let saucepans boil over; she’s sarcastic about it and I lose my cool. moments happen,
but they’re bricks which a life is made up of. they are not what we’re building to live in.
DS Maolalai has received eleven nominations for Best of the Net and seven for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022).
someone telling you it’s almost too late your entire life, and then it is, and is this comedy or is it tragedy?
do you outlive your children or bury them all one at a time?
and maybe i’m part of this particular picture
maybe the sunlight is never as pure as we remember
you’re smiling at the edge of a field of flowers, but there are always shadows spilling across your face
there are always angry voices reach in from other rooms
blame to be assigned and refused and some of us grow up while others just grow old
some of us grow wings
none of us escape
what you feel about this never really makes any difference in the end
in mercy blind
here in this bluegrey room and suffocating beneath the idea of failure of mine of yours of everyone’s and here beneath this twilight sky in the kingdom of oblivion
age of lies and age of truth
of pregnant women butchered by soldiers of children sold into slavery of endless fucking massacre and in the end all we are is proof of the futility of man-made gods
of untrue democracies
of all power coming from weapons or wealth and maybe we are even hope
maybe we can still learn to dance on the graves of tyrants and false idols with bloodthirsty joy
maybe we are not quite lost
heretic
collision isn’t fatal but the blood offers possibilities
tv on the wrong channel and the president speaks of raping babies
shouts about the importance of wealth, the need for vengeance, the illusion of victory and everything spoken through a mouthful of sawdust and dogshit and then the man with the gun laughs
says there’s no such thing as something new
says this, and then he takes his own life and, in a world without safety, there can only be promises kept or promises broken
can only be darker shades of grey and red
the two of us alone in a stranger’s room and waiting for the first light of day
with broken wings, with bruised hearts
& the future is prisons, you see, and the future is loss
let go of yr house, of yr children, but hang onto the hatred that defines you
give up christ
give up all those pretty songs your mother used to sing
close in on holiness like a soldier taking aim
one from the valley of ashes
motherfucking high in the bathroom, nosebleed spraying all over the wall, the mirror, dripping into the sink and julie laughing about the broken glass
laughing about the beginning and the end
all of the shit in between
gods & priests & kings and the trails of corpses they always leave behind
a wasted mouthful
nothing to lead and nowhere to go and no one cares if you die anyway
no one cares if you live in sight of the land
we are all kingdoms, right?
we all go to sleep
we all burn
and don’t apologize, but don’t expect any applause, either
the best gifts remain unspoken
the best years are always referred to in the past tense
do you see how that’s funny?
do you understand the alchemy of corpse into god?
talk to cobain about his cure for addiction
ask if he sees the irony in the voice of a generation being a suicide
once you’ve got that sense of humour, there’s really nothing else you need
John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the continuous search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest poetry collections include A FLAG ON FIRE IS A SONG OF HOPE (2019 Scars Publications) and A DEAD MAN, EITHER WAY (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
