the long and short hands move in synchronous precision sand flowing seamlessly in realms of truth and reality
time, delicately sacred, yet essence lost and wasted in a game of algorithm, chasing shiny bugs and trolls down the winding rabbit hole
where the long and short hands dig a graveyard of morrows where sandstorm hits the eyes with biases and lies
the cure
wind from unknown seas beckon to leave the harbour sail into the uncharted, the peregrine’s heart pumping salt water comes alive… heals
Wake up!
Hear, hear! Captain’s missing Oh dear!
You clown, Take the lifeboat. Or drown.
You cluck, This is a plane. What luck!
Lorelyn is a self-published author of Twin deLights, “Haikuna Matata (a collection of haiku) and Hainaku! It’s Pundemic! I am Balot. Acovida dito (a collection of word plays and puns).” She is also a member of the Write Your Legacy community in the Philippines, working overseas as a medical transcriptionist. Her poetry has been featured and published in several anthologies and journals like The Haiku Foundation and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
In accordance with night-time tradition, the granaries were lit in unison to forge an awakening of honey, and there we were on our knees: punctual in thought, with the body in horizontal delay. Tongue, huge tongue, angular and yellow, flaming pagan tongue speaking the abstract language of colour, thundering to the ice dormitories of the mind, tongue as still as the extinguished rifle which, uttering a sound delivers to dictionaries “flock”, a winged soup of living swallows which only a short while before was freezing in the nests. But wanting to improvise the day in the middle of the night, sacrilegious anticipators in the tradition of every sleep, we were woken by a false mechanical god each in his bed, sweaty and expelled from the dreamy hut, unworthy of the Halakhah and therefore branded with tufts of wheat entangled in our pyjamas, waking up, rolling on cliffs of pillows, falling on mattresses of icy water, foaming with desire for the light coming, coming in carousels of neon, pale at first, sanguine later, fading sleep in ridges, in the chorale of dissenting senses. In awakening, head swooping to the ceiling, tufts of wheat between his fingers.
The copper tree builder
He roamed at night in the narrow hollows of the streets, twisting through the fires his crackling hands. From here his industrious crime moved into railway stations: He would steal copper from the depots. Filiform foxes accompanied him, at night, swinging on his back. At the window, I would watch him and learn to know how to run in the dark like swimming, on asphalt that before my eyes does not exist. In this way I learnt to know how to cook a thought à la cocque that perhaps exists and shines, white and orange – when light has no other role than to distribute arms, legs, nerves, fingers and hands, under a face. But under the occipital river when there is total darkness, he insists, he works. And here is the branch, and the flower sprouts, and he twists that tip on his finger. I watched it weave the bloody texture of the roots, and make them converge in the centre, inside the trunk, then vanish again into branches: the wind sniffs, approves and escapes returning to the sky, and then comes the light. And here is the branch, and behold, the flower sprouts, and at that tip, along with the copper, he twists me.
Mauro De Candia was born in Italy. He studied Modern Literature at the University of Bari. He lives in Lombardy where he works as a teacher of Literature.
In 2018, he made his debut on the literary scene with the syllogue ‘Le stanze dentro’ for Edizioni Ensemble, a book that was runner-up in the 2019 Nabokov Prize and a finalist in the 2020 Carver Prize. In 2021 he published, again for Edizioni Ensemble, a second syllogue entitled ‘Sundara’, which was awarded second place in the Nabokov Prize 2021, with live television broadcast.
Somewhere under the Bixby bridge, high off the spirit of Kerouac, I formed words with the letters left in the sand while you stood silent. At the time, it felt like a new beginning, where we could start over, to recollect the words the tide spit back up onto the shore. But, it was the end of an article that took two years to read, the headline: Man Searches for Himself in Other People. Then you would creep so far into silence, apathy would engulf me, and all the things I thought were important are what drag me under the ocean.
My ears still ring, and my chest still aches from standing waist deep with my back to the sea when the riptide whipped me under.
So when I think of Big Sur I think about all the cars that have driven over the cliff— whether intentional or not.
And I think about how they’re abandoned, rusting below the waves, clawing upward against the rocks. I think about the couples who vanish from the shoreline, consumed beneath the morning fog. I think about what it takes to stop searching, what it takes to give up hope, and where the hope goes when it eventually slips beneath the sand.
I picture Kerouac sitting beneath Bixby rummaging through grains of sand searching for a sense of sustenance in a life he felt was insignificant. Then I think about all the lives lost underneath Bixby bridge, the minds that wandered over the edge hypnotized by its beauty. I think about us running back to the car, and the words we left, how the tide eventually came back to claim them, and how I found a part of myself that was never missing.
David Blake is an educator, musician, and someone who pretends to be a serious business person Monday through Friday.
these last nights the man pacing upstairs crying out to jehovah i walk with him a while until the police arrive
sleep talking to her dead lover i roll away return to living with my own death
golden days looking for ieds under cars with my serving father before the war turned inside and a clock began ticking
counting bodies in the overcrowded lift and breathe in 123 and breathe out 123 the memory of skin
winter light breaks on the warehouse floor the cornered rat white with asbestos gives up the fight
Steve Black was born at the end of the summer of love now navigating the gig economy within the shadow of London. Published here and there, now and then.
My heart aches and breaks as I sit in my self made grave Disconnected and trapped, I feel alone as I build my own tomb I sit and liquify myself into some sort of melancholy happiness Becoming some sort of wobbling feeling
Even as I quake and cry Even as my mind turns poisonous And I think I should die Even as my walls move around me and trap me inside With a smoke and a drink, I still know where joy lies
Joy lies down on the sidewalk in front of a bar Where me and strangers scream poems at each other and into the stars It’s where the bouncer laughs and eats curry after playing a song on stage It’s where all these artist come together to make noise and dance away
Joy lies at the bottom of my double whiskey And that’s not a sad statement because that’s where it rests for all of us At the bottom of our drinks, we turn our heads up and smile At the bottom of our drinks, we kick our heels and turn wild
Joy lies in the afterglow of a kiss As two faces pull apart Joy lies in two interested parties Walking past each other at the bar
Joy lies in the saxophonist’s sound That bops around our heads and makes us feel all It’s where the bartender and I talk about drinks Books, music, and wine Where we smile because, at least in this moment, we’re alright
Joy lies in the aftermath of the night In the shotgun boom explosion of fun It blows me a kiss and wishes me well As I slowly meander on back home
On and Off and On and Off
I stir There’s a man on the TV And he’s calling me over Motioning me to come to his side With the curve in his hand
And from my perch on the window I can look down upon the world At all the ants that are people Walking around loud and proud
But I got distracted from the man on the TV And he gets angry at my forgetfulness So I approach again and listen to him whine He pushes his grey hair back and tells me Tells me
The walls have nice colours They have stories when they’re all beat up like mine Chipped paint and water stains that will be there, always This is my eternal home
And the man on the TV is screaming now About how I am causing all these problems That I have no focus and no will That I am weak and a coward
But I’m just sure he hasn’t looked at the trees long enough If you stare into those branches I swear you see God, or someone All wrapped around somewhere and nowhere Trees and their leaves, wrapping and spinning and staying I think trees are all we need. Trees
And that man! That man on the TV Screaming his deafening battle cry at me It’s all too much He’s saying that if I keep this up I am nothing But I am already nothing, according to him He tells me I need to buy this I need to be that I need to love my country I need to hate this country It’s too much I turn off the TV And go perch on my window Above the world And stare at a tree
Samuel Plauche was born on the island of Vashon in Washington. With not much to do on the heavily forested island, Plauche quickly found a love in books, which quickly led to a love of storytelling as he would make up stories of magical creatures in the woods around his house. At the age of twelve, Plauche moved to southern Louisiana where he became more involved with his Cajun heritage and began hearing more and more Cajun folktales, songs, and poetry. These writing lessons only found on bayous and southern porches continued to influence Plauche’s writing, and soon he too was joining these storytelling sessions with ones of his own creation. Eventually, Plauche moved to Seattle, and his writing changed yet again to include more stories about living in the city. Plauche now combines the magic found in forests and the themes of old Cajun storytelling into setting specific stories, often inspired by events from his own life, about the highs and lows of the cities he has been to. Plauche moved to Chicago and graduated from Columbia College Chicago with his Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing with a specification in Fiction. He has recently had work published in Commuterlit, Black Poppy Review, and Mementos CHI as well as having an active website where he self publishes poetry and short stories for his ever growing audience.
Sunny thought that he was the Birdman of Alcatraz but it was only five months in the county slammer
The day that his girlfriend, Miss Sunshine, came to retrieve him from his dank cell was dark and gloomy but their two children, the girl, “Bright,” and the boy, “Glare,” lit up the back seat of their battered old Cadillac so intensely that that they blinded three other drivers, (one who’d been drawn to them like a moth and was tail-gating) and caused three serious accidents.
Miss Sunshine had left their adult child, “Solar Eclipse” at home, where he was working on his private research project, critiquing local meth dealers’ product
He thought that his father, Sunny, was a “lame-o,” and wasn’t looking forward to seeing him rejoin them in their dilapidated abode.
While in lock-up, Sunny had been making plans to do some renovations, but lacked the funds. He was hoping that his kids would get jobs. Bright, he thought, would make a good counter girl at the local Dairy Queen, which was only two blocks away. She was so cute, he thought, that she would attract new customers who would want to lick her body but, in an American adaptation, would settle for soft-serve
Glare, he thought, would make a good construction worker, though his arms and legs were painfully thin. In fact, Bright and her girlfriends, even the skinniest one, whose hair was green and purple, beat Glare in arm-wrestling contests whenever he challenged them
Though Glare was regularly humiliated in this way, he didn’t mind, because it gave him the opportunity to hold hands with sexy girls, who otherwise would refuse to have him touch them. Still, Sunny’s idealizations of Glare had him swinging a hammer.
Sunny wanted his house, which was a wreck, to get unwrecked so when he died, he could leave it to his kids and feel that he had done something in life.
Sunny was in poor health and his stints in dank jails weren’t doing him any good. He’d never been to a doctor in his life (though toothaches had driven him to a couple of tooth yankers), so, though he had no official data to support his belief, he felt he was likely to depart this world at any time, hopefully without much pain.
Then his kids could sit in their bedrooms, lacking lamps and not needing them, their own self-generated light strong enough to peel paint from the walls, and they would realize that Sunny was a much better dad than they had ever given him credit for.
Japanese Beetles
Japanese Beetles, I capture them and, though the Buddha warned me not to, I put them into a killing jar
This plastic “jar” once held pretzel nuggets filled with peanut butter, part of my wife’s efforts to sabotage her weight loss regimen and mine
Once the pretzels were eaten, their caloric content assimilated into our flesh, I repurposed their container. I filled it quarter-full of water and added a little Dawn When I drop in the Japanese Beetles, they are helpless— they cannot get away and, silently, they die I wonder if they have the capability to feel fear or regret
I kill them because they molest my beloved Virginia Creeper vines, condemning the leaves to ragged lace
The beetles are not “fit”— they lack survival skills To capture them, I only need to hold the open container under the leaf on which they sit and tap the leaf or gently shake it and the beetles tumble into the soapy water
When I do my killing rounds, many of them are in the process of mating and I find it poignant that while engaged in procreation they meet their doom, tumbling together into the jar Do they feel love, attachment, excitement, jealousy? I doubt it Still, the Buddha told me not to kill any sentient beings A few of them cling to the leaves, resisting capture (The Buddha said: Nothing is to be clung to as I, Me, or Mine)
but my will is greater than theirs my power is greater I am Vladimir Putin considering the Ukrainians but unlike Putin I have not suffered major set-backs in my campaign and, for the sake of my project, I have not sacrificed 70,000 of my countrymen
Toward the end of their season, a few of the beetles fly away at my approach— has it taken all these weeks for them to figure out that they can take advantage of their power of flight? It doesn’t matter–if I don’t capture them today, I’ll get them tomorrow.
The Buddha told me not to kill, so I feel some remorse Is the aesthetic pleasure I get from the vines more important than the beetles’ lives?
(By the way, Japanese beetles are beautiful, their bodies concise their wings shining with pretty colour)
The Buddha observes my activities and frowns
Bad Dreams
Martin Luther dreamed Protestantism every man his own priest communing with God and Jesus in exactly the way that suited him
There was no way Luther could view the Deep Future and see a huge new country filled with idiots who call themselves “Christians” but committed genocide on the Great Spirit’s sons and daughters and enslaved dark folk seized from lush jungles and mistreated them mercilessly, who waged war on innocents abroad and exploited whomever they could while praising Jesus but worshiping money, guns, drugs, celebrity, entertainment and possessions
Then MLK Jr. idealism coursing through his blood mercy permeating his flesh ensconced before a congregation of the descendants of slaves had a dream a deep dream in which love permeated the souls of persons and they were judged by their characters and not by trivialities like the colour of their skins
but there was no way he could see into the Shallow Future where his dream would be corrupted
I had my own dream a hollow one in which I was a famous writer respected and revered for stripping down human life to its essentials
but my hands were manacled by a Chinese finger puzzle in which the more I pulled with one hand the more I reinforced my feelings of worthlessness that enslaved my other hand There was no way I could see into the future to understand that even if my dreams were realized I would feel no better about myself than if I had failed In fact, I would likely feel worse like David Foster Wallace whose acclaim only made him feel more of an imposter until he killed himself while still in his forties (his wife found his body hanging)
So there sat Luther, Luther King, and the arch-villain Lex Luther who lived inside me all of our dreams broken, curdled or abandoned.
Catholic priests sitting in their confessional boxes still rule the world justice cannot be achieved and language is a poor substitute for Life
I sit at the edge of a vast field of grass Interspersed heavily with clover and at the other edge of the field the surface of the vast inland sea known as Lake Superior sits silently waveless
My mind is blank thoughtless, mindful also at peace though not nearly as fluid as the lake because, after all, I am only human
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, is based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. His new poetry collection was published in 2019, The Arrest of Mr Kissy Face. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.
You can find more of Mitch’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Bare trees stand like black cadavers outside my window in the darkest dreariest days of March in Chicago. A whole row of them, without hope, with tangled teasing tumescent limbs and branches pointing everywhichway without insane order, Creating a beauty-reft thick dense woods of lingering resentments and busted hopes and Yugo dreams. The trunks of the bare naked trees as black as night, black as diamonds, stark, relentless, absorbing sunlight and never freeing it. The limbs of the despairing trees soar leafless and naked toward the distant sky leaden with drooping clouds— Clouds like clumps of iron ore floating in the fruitless sky, Clouds that weigh me down like empty gestures and silent remonstrances, Limbs that follow their own crazy-angled gaze to touch the bleak steel sky, Which has its god-forsaken secrets, Which looks down upon us and laughs. Oh, bare trees, an empty ode to you as you hide your laughs and grin at our expense As you stand there on the other side of my jagged window and read me, The way that nature mocks us for our futile gestures and our insane hopes. Good God, I need someone to blab to and avoid the insanity of these bare naked trees staring relentlessly at me, Seeing into me, seeing through me, sizing me up, giggling at my expense. Will we ever escape from the soggy morass of March, Which clings to us like ugly spears stuck in all-encompassing ugliness? Age oppresses me, weighs me down, the world continuing without me, And me, unable to escape the incessant, accusing stares of the bare trees standing in their singular soltariness, On the other side of my jagged crooked window.
Christopher Johnson: I’m a writer based in the Chicago area. I’ve done a lot of different stuff in my life. I’ve been a merchant seaman, a high school English teacher, a corporate communications writer, a textbook editor, an educational consultant, and a free-lance writer. I’ve published short stories, articles, and essays in The Progressive, Snowy Egret, Earth Island Journal, Chicago Wilderness, American Forests, Chicago Life, Across the Margin, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Blue Lake Review, The Literary Yard, Scarlet Leaf Review, Spillwords Press, Fiction on the Web, Sweet Tree Review, and other journals and magazines. In 2006, the University of New Hampshire Press published my first book, This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains. My second book, which I co-authored with a prominent New Hampshire forester named David Govatski, was Forests for the People: The Story of America’s Eastern National Forests, published by Island Press in 2013.
You can find more of Christopher’s work here on Ink Pantry.
She finds her deepest breath. The blur of wings elates with dragonfly blue, detonates such joy. How can a child decode these winged clues? My daughter flaps her arms. I translate and learn how arms are wings to dissipate winter’s hue.
Dining At The Screech Owl Inn
Hands are a giveaway, he gloves indoors and out. No fingerprints, he jokes. He consumes that juicy rack of lamb, but leaves the veg. She doesn’t ask again. Besides the eagerness with which he licks and sucks those ribs tickle her: he thinks he is a predator, a lupus to her Lilith. She smiles, almost beguiles. He scents her feral breath, flinches, innocence plucked from his lycanthrope eye. He howls. She devours him.
Outlines
Long is the forest and wide, the sisterhood of stars like dregs consumed by clouds. On the paths of relief, a multitude of pines to ink more gloom.
Lost in the darkness and waking, she lightly sighs and turns her back on time. He lies on her floor and meanders tunes for sleep. He inks a path through pines.
Phil Wood was born in Wales. He studied English Literature at Aberystwyth University. He has worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. He enjoys watercolour painting, bird watching, and chess. His writing can be found in various places, including recently: Ink Sweat and Tears, Streetcake magazine, The Dirigible Balloon.
You can find more of Phil’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Nathan Anderson is a poet from Mongarlowe, Australia. He is the author of Mexico Honey, The Mountain + The Cave and Deconstruction of a Symptom. His work has appeared in Otoliths, BlazeVox, Beir Bua and elsewhere. You can find him at nathanandersonwriting.home.blog or on Twitter.
Racquets she said, even though there was no tennis going on.
Or maybe it was rackets, & she was talking about the noise up the road, or the way that local builders get their plans through council despite breaching nearly every bylaw in the book.
Could have been Reckitts, left up for me to interpret which among their products I’m in dire need of — condoms, antiseptic lotions, mustard, mouthwash, grime or pimple remover.
Then again, perhaps rickets, even though I’m not young — except in name — & any or all of the products listed above would have helped minimize or even remove that condition.
So, rockets. No, not that, her red glare tells me quite clearly.
Leaves only ruckets . . . But there’s no such word in general use, though it is a family name, & a brand of skates, &, if Google’s autocomplete is accurate, it might have something to do with tickets to the Rugby World Cup.
Though, wait. Because of this fuss I’m making over what the word in question is, I’ve just been accused of causing a ruckus. Perhaps that is what was intended all along.
Two poems from 100 Titles from Tom Beckett
27: Default Settings
Start at the end, my sensei told me, & work your way back. Then, once you’ve got there, start again & work your way even further back. Again & again, until there’s nowhere left to go. Then start again. This way or that is immaterial.
28: Spacing Out in Space
The stars have temporarily gone out, & I have drifted in the sub- sequent darkness. Am back in that art-inspired social diner in Bangkok — or was it on Tatooine? — gazing at
the wall, unconsciously memorizing the sign that states the place is avail- able for brunch, lunch, & dinner, as well as open for home deliveries between 8:00 am & 10:00 pm. Such
is life on the final frontier. Nothing to see when you’re going at super- luminal speeds, not even the imposs- ible linear light of stars passing by in the way that old tv series used to
imagine might happen. Nothing to do except tune out, or else turn on Net- flix or Disney+, because, as they say, in Space, when you’ve got your ear- buds in, nobody can hear you stream.
Amazone
Some time later, when the karaoke machines
started calling to one another, she packed up
her respirator & its axled oxygen cylinder &,
with a tetrapak of re- constituted Brazilian
orange juice for guidance, headed for the jungle.
From the Pound Cantos: CENTO XXXII
I don’t know what they are up to. It wd/ seem unwarr- anted. Read one book an hour, less a work of the mind than of affects, but enough to keep out of the briars. The people are addicted. Life & death are now equal, no favour to men
over women. Boat fades in silver; slowly. Let no false colour exist here. Behind hill the monk’s bell borne on the wind. The bamboos speak as if weeping. Of this wood are lutes made.
Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. He has been publishing poetry for more than sixty years, & is the author of around sixty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history.
You can find more of Mark’s work here on Ink Pantry.
