Between college and the Army I had some time to kill at home And discovered quite by chance That my parents watched soap operas. They tried to make it look accidental. “Let’s see what’s on,” my dad would say As he turned to the channel That carried their story, And the afternoon coffee Came to a boil in an aluminum saucepan. Now, at 83, I wonder what our girls Have figured out of their parents’ lives, The rituals of two people Together almost sixty years, An accrual of idiosyncrasies, Toast sliced in thirds, The favourites bookmarked On the internet of our lives.
Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.
You can find more of Robert’s work here on Ink Pantry.
a single black crow caws from his perch atop a mesquite tree deep in the Mojave Desert.
it watches me pass as i wander by, waiting on my collapse and a skull upon which to feed.
gillian anderson
she sits across from me uninvited late night at a Starbucks near Hollywood
hi, i’m…
yeah, i know i say, voice cracking suddenly 15 or 18 or something less than 58
you dedicated something, to me
yeah, i did
she takes a bite of blueberry muffin
i slug back the remains of my coffee
congrats on the Emmy,
congrats on the book, can you sign my copy?
yeah, of course
i follow her up a long driveway, in a town that’s not Bel Air or Beverly Hills she unlocks the front door, kisses me in the foyer holds out her hand at the foot of the stairs
i keep it in my bedroom, she says, red hair cut short, blue eyes sparkling
next to the Emmy?
yes, of course
her main bedroom is massive king bed, couch, fire place sitting area, treadmill, walk in closet,
wanna shower first? she says, unexpectedly her clothes bread crumbs leading to her silhouette
before i sign my book?
yes, before that
i follow quickly, just as my fever breaks
and i wake up
norm
i keep thinking of this old man this old poet a man i barely knew other than a few notes traded back & forth
this old man down in the Village he’s dead now almost a year maybe two i can’t keep track
lots of folks die
i think about his words legacy how everything stopped when he died
maybe that’s how it’s works
everything stops when you’re dead
but maybe if one person keeps thinking about an old man an old poet
more than just words carry on
maybe that’s legacy maybe that’s enough
for norman savage
victim
the thick wet sound of shotgun blast rips from the apartment next door and i race
ten steps down the hall to investigate.
Cecilia stands in the doorway, her cigarette smoking as much as the end of the shotgun in her hand.
she smiles at me through broken teeth, skin bruised; clothes torn takes a long drag and says,
maybe now somebody’ll listen to me?
cops tramp up old wooden steps guns drawn scream in unison, get down, get down
and Cecilia turns her head and says,
then again, maybe not…
jack henry is a queer writer based in the high desert of south-eastern california. in 2020 jack’s third collection, driving w/crazy, was released by Punk Hostage Press.
I believed love would transcend all fashion and outlast all time and surpass all distance.
Memory would always recall the “once” even though that moment’s lovers would change.
Memory, I thought, forged eternal chains. Now, none of the jigsaw pieces will match.
They repose, inert, scattered, unattached, though I recall some names, some body parts.
I can’t make out their shadows in the dark though I know they once lit up my passion.
Opiates of the Masses
Crucifiction, Failosophy, Hisstory: Tomorrow is a myth. And so is yesterday. Now is all. Physicks, Asstrology, Isometricks: Yourself, as you are at present, is your only guide. Medisin, Accupunkture, Sighchiatry: There is no cure for reality. Litterature, Statuwary, Musick: Art is a grand mirage — and it takes great pride in being so. Soshellism, Dicktatorship, Demockracy: All government systems are synonyms for slavery. Kingdumbs, Milittearism, Onerousship: Allegiance to others is suicide. Noosepapers, Liebraries. Educashuns: “Knowledge” so-called is mere pretense. Relashunships, Guarantease, Freedumb: Promises are illusions. But illusions may also be promises. Ambishun, Suckcess, Sellebrity: Self-promotion is the greatest deception of all. Syphillisation: Truth is what you trust.
Electioneering
The pigeons coo and nod on the raven’s coy oration.
The Mythic Archaic Cub, His Mandalas, and Me
I wait here still for the wise old man and his chatter of universal traits, how they shape my acts like hands on a potter’s wheel (but hereditary, innate).
“Archetypes are to psychology as instincts to biology.”
I sit in his psyche, peeling my mandarins, and wonder, is this a proper asana? Some tables down someone plays a green mandolin and my self stifles respondent hosannas.
My me was always confused by the we, and I was never the one I used to be.
I used to take my tea with cream but now I prefer lemon. Why do I have all these dreams about so many different women?
Decades have passed like clouds over seas as I searched for any available lee.
The minutes pass like birds in flight and my shadow cowers in shadows I interpret as monstrous daytime nights. Mandolinist fingers dissolve into adders.
Duane Vorhees writes after teaching University of Maryland classes in Korea and Japan. Hog Press in Ames, IA, has published 3 of his poetry collections, HEAVEN, THE MANY LOVES OF DUANE VORHEES, and GIFT: GOD RUNS THROUGH ALL THESE ROOMS.
It wasn’t that her parents wouldn’t attend because the wedding clashed with Remembrance Day and poppies exerted a powerful hold; nor that my Best Man was newly diagnosed as a schizophrenic cum manic depressive – though we were both in two minds about that. Neither that my sister’s husband turned up in a T-shirt bearing the legend BULLSHIT overdid the bevvies and insulted my mother, obliging me to step in and suffer the traditional wedding day glass smashed over my forehead, a visit to Casualty and several stitches. And in retrospect I can see it was funny to be trapped in a lift for 2 or more hours with a freshly bought packet of fags and no matches. But the worst of all was when Path of Peace, a horse I’d followed with more faith than reason, triumphed at 25-1 in the last big race of the season. What with one thing and another I never got to put the bet on. 40 years later and I’m still chasing losses.
Ray Miller is a Socialist, Aston Villa supporter, and faithful husband. Life’s been a disappointment.
You can find more of Ray’s work here on Ink Pantry.
The cat came out of nowhere, jumping out of the bushes, hissing at the pit bull. “Poor Rocky,” Carol said, stroking his trembling ears. Dumped on the side of the road, battered, bruised, and left for dead. That’s how the dog rescue people found him. He was a bait dog that had outlived his usefulness. When the vet discovered rocks in his stomach, the rescue agency named him Rocky. A starving dog will eat anything. Even rocks. When he was ready for adoption, Carol applied. She’d never had a dog before. But she couldn’t resist his sad face. Pampering Rocky became her new hobby. She fed him premium dog food, dressed him in stylish sweaters, and walked him every evening after work. There was only one problem. The neighborhood cat. It loved to come out of nowhere and terrify Rocky. A timid giant, he never defended himself. His past had beaten the fight out of him. Carol could relate. She’d also escaped an abusive relationship. Therapy had healed her wounded soul. Maybe it could heal Rocky too? She decided to try. Every night before she went to sleep Carol would read empowering books to Rocky, his head resting on her shoulder. “We become what we’re attached to,” Carol read, turning the page. “You’re a survivor, Rocky. Attach yourself to courage, not fear.” Winter arrived, and Carol slipped Rocky into a warm red hoodie for their walk. On the street, the man came out of nowhere, hurrying toward Carol. “Why haven’t you answered my calls?” he demanded. Carol stepped in front of Rocky. “Our relationship ended six months ago,” she said. The man grabbed her arm, pressing his fingers into her flesh, bruising. “That’s unacceptable,” he threatened. The growl came out of nowhere. In a flash of red, Rocky moved between them. The man jumped back and ran away. Carol looked down at the leash in her hand. She was the only one trembling. “Let’s get a snack,” she said, stroking Rocky’s soft ears. “My treat.”
‘Attachments’ was first published in The Rye Whiskey Review.
Laura Stamps loves to play with words and create experimental forms for her fiction. Author of several novels and short story collections, including IT’S ALL ABOUT THE RIDE: CAT MANIA (Alien Buddha Press). Muses Prize. Pulitzer Prize nomination. 7 Pushcart Prize nominations. Mom of 4 cats. Laura’s Twitter.
The sky loses all its colour- In the leisure of your eyes. My palm loses track to- Answer your phone call. The melody stops when- Your kisses appear. The broken tree collects- And shares the love. Love clings to the fallen leaves. Our love drops to the ground. Only the fingers remain untouched. The blackspots stain the diary. The waves of the metamorphoses- Floats in your blue eyes. The crisscross of the destruction- Spreads over the strings- Of the guitar, out of the blue. The memories stick to the thorns. The voice cracks to the last pitch. The lane drenches- In the damp of the dark. This earth is a daredevil, Galib.. I failed to be a part of it. So is with the innocent lives. I am longing for you. Millennium. I’m in my last move of this battle. Waiting for you under this dull sky.
Tiyasha Khanra is a poet and author, who lives in Kolkata, India. Previously published on Internation Times, Indian Periodical, Spillwords, Storymirror, The Lakeview Journals and elsewhere.
I don’t want you here. The void is a void. Sun a bright November forty seven ride. When I was last depressed I drowned myself in Tito’s. This was a gift from you. You won’t be there, but I want you there.
Endless Twine, so to Speak
every sentence can rebirth a hundred times correction fluid applied to my tongue I gag paint thinner thinker emotions, I’d say what a wondrous gift, a paperclip glinting in fluorescent sun, how endless sky turns fake the longer I stay inside
Hard to Think Around the Thing
I don’t want details. To paint the scene is the scene. I am trying hard to think around the thing. To forget the figure and face. But it was late October, your phone was booming This is Halloween– and my bed was on the floor then. And the baby blue walls before the High Street crowd, everyone in masks– with the scissors. You cut the hole in my pants. Because I was in silky green. I was alien alive in the wrong place, wrong time. There was the gold stage behind us. By garbage can makeouts. Groping hands reached into the city’s cheap costume. And there was chill in the wind except when everyone was bunched into each other. If we couldn’t stay warm we’d have to go inside. No one wanted the street. But we didn’t want inside.
Dental Care
is a drill I am filling holes in the days my worn-out jeans piled on plaids & flannels in a bag of old saliva
& I didn’t listen when you asked– no, pleaded– take care
the whir of the overhead light looms over every scrape
Cover
Skinny Love isn’t your strongest (red guitar grass blades, guzzles of beer)
the world doesn’t know your name still I walk infinity eights through
your friend’s backyard evading dormant dog droppings while the strumming lands
soft & sweet, butterflies on my cheek. I’ll find a blanket somewhere to sit on
under the awning, a shade for when it rains
James Croal Jackson (he/him) is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. He has two chapbooks, Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021) and The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
As you grow older, you feel the rain before the first drop plops upon your skyward face because aches in wrists & knees are the raging storm clouds unseen.
O, how it was to be young & without a care or worry, running through the rain because it was fun instead of trying to seek shelter.
Each drop a baptism to bring your spirit a sense of renewal you didn’t know you’d need before the pain.
I used to sit on the porch with my dad during storms; he’d tell me ghost stories that always seemed to fall on the current day’s date.
When you’re just a child, you don’t think of all that can be lost in a tornado while sitting in a bathtub with your bub, having the time of your life.
Tim Heerdink is the author of Somniloquy & Trauma in the Knottseau Well, The Human Remains,Red Flag and Other Poems, Razed Monuments, Checking Tickets on Oumaumua, Sailing the Edge of Time, I Hear a Siren’s Call, Ghost Map, A Cacophony of Birds in the House of Dread, Tabletop Anxieties & Sweet Decay (with Tony Brewer) and short stories ‘The Tithing of Man’ and ‘HEA-VEN2’. His poems appear in various journals and anthologies. He is the President of Midwest Writers Guild of Evansville, Indiana.
General Blue Azure bloom Ghost Candle burning in the wind still a wonder Sword of her mouth a harlot blunder Fibers of Tobacco Smoking Room Verge of the cliff sliding down the flume Near window brief gestures during the thunder They are grave yard dead Six feet under In Lady’s Chapel at Olive Breeze Tomb Slice of luck being here seeing that bird Open chalk scaled back door to see the clerk Gruff Squire on Camel back took Third Have some spark in your manifested work Eating Sea-Green Pothole bowl of Curd Eyes of the sympathetic personage smirk
Sonnet CCCLXXXXVI
Short sighted eyes admonition able Spiritual in its ivory like purity abolish Pronounced beautiful veined alabaster polish A deliberate lie whit as the cable Lady of the land her self-setting the table Innate refinement unmistakably evidenced demolished Her softly feathered face polished Gentle wrong a high degree of fable A charmed woman such eyes abortive Lovers quarrel between two doves Dignity told her to stay sportier A neat blouse of electric blue and black gloves Silent sad down cast eyes supportive Haunting expressions girlish shyness love
Sonnet CDXXXXVIII
Wise precaution unobtrusively chopping Firewood Brutes of the field ship of the streets map The art of man barring the Bee’s Lap She and you argute passionately stood Whale with a Harpoon Hair Pin Hood Looked sideways towards friendly fashion trap Had her large dark lidded Eye’s zap Irish industries exquisite variations of wood Fashionable beautiful parenthesize burst Distilling grapes into puttee mirth Which she did phenomenally first Clear seas brings voices of Sirens dearth Tenor voice good graces by all means thirst Without a second care birth
Sonnet CDXXXXV
On the day but one preceding yawn Reminded herself twice not to forget Beer Hand in corresponding pocket cheer Inadvertently premeditatedly resting brawn Lower union rails and stiles of the lawn The impact of the fall so shear Avoirdupois measure periodical self-regulated veneer Weight of Eleven Stones Octagon Crouching in preparation bellow Pharmaceutical chemist feast of the Kelp Sunset over Ashland Bay’s foggy Yellow Note found in the car only said help Compressed his hat on his head and fell over Knock or not to knock enter or not to enter reply
Walk With Jack
Set off to walk with Jack Terrible rat mires her skin turning blue Life on the farm dirty Dublin dinner My Editor can kiss my tootle-do Elderly and pious vestal spinner Night reeking hungry for dough and brew Copper Tin Letter Box boy’s winter
Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. He started creating poems. He has five Amazon E- Books, also poems in Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed. Winamop, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, Adelaide Magazine, Variant, the Writing Disorder, Ink Pantry, In Parentheses, Ariel Chat, New Ulster, Glove, and in Pamp-le-mousse, North Dakota Quarterly, Barzakh, Urban Arts, Wingless Dreamer, LKMNDS and Milk Carton Press.
What’s there to transmit? I was dropped off by ship by St Branden exploring islands in the sea of fire. His curragh was smoking. The leather boat hides stretched over the frame of the boat smoked in the heat. The monk dips his blade in the sea. What does he say? “I am pleased with the smooth gentle motion of my curragh over the waves.”
Another image of the man alone, eternal before creation, made to feel the motion of the curragh. He floats before earth is made, in companies, ranks of fifty, the way the Lord sat them down on the hill to feed the loaves and fishes. Christopher Smart says, “the Lord Jesus made him a nosegay and blessed it and he blessed the inhabitants of flowers.” He called them herbs. As an herb on the hill the eternal waits birth, distilling with sun, blind for the Sun, rest surveying space, time and none, until he hears his name. So down into flesh.
You cannot prepare ahead for life. With no memory he goes in faith past the deities and sinks to a womb to enter the world where surfaces rule with no certainty what you are guessing. Everybody knows the nature of this voyage. To read about it you are on it. Not to tell, the thing is forgetfulness, waking up, falling asleep, thin on the ground. Just thinking about the sea causes air to disappear. The monk thinks that thinking about the flesh inundates spirit.
The Hat
Wind, water. So in transmission there is nothing at all. You’re here, then you’re gone. You might be remembered great or small. The people I speak of are small. Peasants, still talking. A mashed potato baby, burlesque of the eternal. That’s the danger of the voyage, the details are everything. The red wheelbarrow in the rain. Do your word. When the eternal subsumes in the working and immolates pleasure for the satisfaction of creation, the details are everything. The eternal is a hat in a closet. We think of it when the plane takes off, but it is in the closet.
Some feel they have lost the hat. Where did it go? Who took it? The youngest says he can argue either way that the man who fell relived his life in the moments of descent or at the exact moment of impact. But put the hat on before the event. Be there before arrival, greet the eternal again. With that same blindness return as when you came. Know nothing at all. Knowing is equivocation here. Faith is the only knowledge. Sense details mean nothing before and after earth. What matters is what you do with the spirit. It is no gnostic trip. No matter what Branden finds on the isles. It fills the time. You have your cake and eat it too. You can go to earth and remember the hat but not see it till after.
The Lady
So who do I write for but my subject to celebrate, pure and simple. It’s about the memory of innocence. I remember being innocent. I say, I remember. I do not remember being eternal. Memory and faith must have relation. Philosophy in her blue night dress, her fragrance, her touch, her bed, I remember feeling it compounded over years, but always I start with that first moment of peace or love. It’s better than that. It doesn’t stop. So it is like the hat. I carry that hat made of a thousand touches, more. I talk of eternal, but you are bored, to quote again my youngest in the car: “Carry your sorrow, bear your grief to one pierced breast of love, the Lord’s, and there we lie.” So I guess in addition to writing this for her I write it for him. That’s a good audience. He reads everything! What more can you ask? I want to make him smile. Whether this submission… no, he’s not an editor, nor a librarian, but a grandfather. Whatever I sent to my father during his life he kept. He didn’t always get it but he kept it. I think he was mostly amazed. The Lord I praise is smarter. Can you imagine actually being understood! Unalloyed tongue. Impossible. So I write to praise God.
The World
What do we see of the spiritual world? The foreordained! Moments of predestination. Not to speak it, but you can’t avoid it. That’s the way it seems later. Before, we knew nothing. Just like the voyage out and back. Afterward, compare notes. Before? Forgetfulness. What voyage? Moments of ordination are like this. They present choice. Choice conditioned with grace. Good thing the mind prepared unknowing. Does the field know it will bear wheat? The mind prepared, the body is along for the ride. So float emotion out of stone. Sparks shower no matter what we do, but when remembered, fireworks begin. Creating heaven with a touch, his fingers, the moment is ordained. The hearts of the sons turn to the fathers. The sparks don’t stop.
I don’t know where that leaves those odd moments of Google search. Irrelevancies are possible. Snippets get picked up. Somebody’s search excerpted the St. Branden website for sure. What about the nieces and nephews? Before light dawned and I realized it went to all the world, inflicting one copy each would be enough to hide in the closet near the hat, in case somebody got bored. JAS III wanted it online. Aey will look someday at 40 and say…. I only care in the doing. A month, a year, a decade. It relives if someone discovers Homer again or meditates the past. For a guy on shore the moment lasts, then is gone. He puts out to sea. There are more isles.
The improbability of an unwritten ten generations capable of surviving, that someone could find evidence of with all that suggests of serendipity, we have to accept. We don’t ask why, only what. What is the case.? I set it out here, but not transmit. I set it out because it’s a puzzle unearthed driving blindly. Unearthed is a good word. It is a miracle not to understand the earth, incarnation, expression, image and all details. I consume with lightning and the sunlight falling, mystified with earth. That’s why we have wives, right?
Getting to ground, the endless conversations of my aunts and grandmother, remembered. Lib says I would come into the kitchen and say, “let’s talk.” The child is good, but the man is real. After I found all that out they told me, “oh, I knew that.” They knew but didn’t say. That resistance was a motivation to find out, just because it seemed, as coming in a Journey, all fresh. It is ineffable to me that all those linens exist after hearing all my life nobody knew anything of their maker because she and her sister were orphan girls. Little ones lost have been found ere this, now again. All the while the deeds, the artifacts, the linens were in that trunk.
I like to sail these seas but arrival is everything.
Arrival
I arrived that day after Christmas with Aey at 6 AM to snow covered streets and cold, went to the diner and had oatmeal before going to pack the remains of two hundred years. The greatest treasures were in the meanest places, signed German books in a case against the eaves of one window. I might have left them, but Aey insisted they go. Later I find all those signatures! Unbelievable. Talk about hiding the past, still feel like much was missed, but don’t know what. Sure the watercolour of Jesse was snatched and lost.
The day before we left I contracted a serious cold, the airport there was said to be closed. Temptation was great not to go. Overcoming by a hair we went. Entropies were strong, determination strengthened by knowing what happens to estates after decease, what happened to my grandfather’s furniture made with his hand, copper kettles, carvings, hand forged fireplace tools. That auction was held over that Christmas before in his house on a rainy night. Few came. What a steal. I was poor then, no transport, no storage, no nothing would be reserved. You can try to save the body. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. If the body is rejected, what of the manuscript? After every proper noun and name is searched strangers will come in the night and read, amazing from every country of the world. In the end it is like the beginning, the disposition of events, the purpose that preceded them before. Before life, after life, in between. The doing is in the doing. What is the being? Keep moving. Believe everything and nothing. The bards are going in that direction.
Attic and Basement
The attic is like the hat, temporal to eternal. What I assume you shall. All visits to that attic are nothing to the time I stayed there as a boy, cot at one end, my brother’s at the other near the books. I was over by the paintings. The impressions layer each other into one large experience to enter whenever I want. The attic has many pretensions, leads onward, oils stacked, surrounded like providence created by the generations before and passed down to inhabit. They were not then revealed. This is not just metaphor. The linens and blankets, the doll clothes and the dresses. I wish I had the dress she put on at moments at the end. It is only a metaphor now.
The body, the body. Things mean the most on earth. I go in and stroke the walnut chest. These many days I take out the pewter coffee pot used on the wood stove in old Philadelphia, turn of the century, brought along in 1944. Some cookware remained, stored in the attic. The stove itself was in the basement, but we have not got there yet. A large pot of boiling water with a swivel top and wood handle, this coffee pot with a mesh insert holds coffee. Its lines get me, the black painted handles. I don’t know what it means, it’s just there as a habitation, the hundred details together mix on top of every surface, pots of the present and past, statues and sculptures, bowls and plates, for all three of my mates are potters, but in the case rests the old pot from early on, too beautiful to behold. So the attic was filled and the boy drank from that well.
Should we have spent more time in the basement, not counting the floors between? I like the basement, but never lived there, thought about saving the old claw foot table, but didn’t. The rush was too great. Really the basement is an exile from the attic. It just works like Jake’s old wood cabinet that he made “just to prove he could,” now on my porch housing pots. Household cleansers were down there, washing machines, prose stuff, except for Marvin’s rocks and jars and fossils. He got nothing into the attic, but of course Aey and Andrew spent their visitations down there with him and the rocks for hours. He had his tools there too, the old wood handled planes and clamps. The basement? I don’t figure to spend much time when all is said and done. There is more dancing to be done. Planets are waiting. Earth reviving. Who shall deliver me? Start looking in worlds without eyes, houses, hills, flame. I build a name out of none of this, but wear it and put it over them, without which I am none. With it, well you see what it brings. It is as said, believe in the name of the son of God and believing have life in his name.
