Happy New Year! Let’s start 2026 with Evan Findlay Hay’s razor sharp wit! Evan’s new book, The Gospel According to Mr. Eric, is available now.
Published by Overground Underground Evan presents a vibrant literary edit of his broader account of the sorry state of socio-politics in Britain today.
Evan Hayexists in Britain & rather than follow spurious leaders – over the years he’s intermittently found it therapeutic to write out various thoughts, feelings & ideas as short stories to be examined, considered, & interpreted by clinical practitioners who may be able to offer him professional psychological assistance.
You can find more of Evan’s work here on Ink Pantry.
“I would say I was about 98 percent involved. They all went through me.”
“I turned down plenty. I had a couple of wokesters.”
“Since 1978, the Kennedy Center honours have been among the most prestigious awards in the performing arts.
I wanted one, Was never able to get one.”
“I waited And waited And waited.
And I said, ‘to hell with it I’ll become chairman.’
I will give myself an honour. Next year we’ll honour Trump, okay?”
“In a few short months since I became
chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center,
We’ve completely reversed the decline of this cherished national institution.”
“We’re going to fully renovate the dated — and really the entire infrastructure of the building —
and make the Kennedy Center a crown jewel of American arts.
It is Happening Here!
And so it goes— the gradual taking down of cultural institutions,
including the Smithsonian Institution, The Kennedy Center, universities,
law firms, state governments, blue cities,
and anyone who stands in his way to transform America into a Christian fascist state.
Like his buddies— Erdogan, Orbán, and Putin.
Sinclair Lewis, in his book It Can’t Happen Here,
Forecasted
how it could indeed happen here
and almost did.
Are we there yet? Sadly,
we are 80 percent there.
Will we go there?
I hope not. But I am afraid we are heading down that path.
What Can I Do as AI Takes Over the World
As the drumbeats Of impending fascism Fills the airways.
With Colbert going away WP editors leaving.
Mainstream media Being replaced by AI-generated bots.
And spamsters Using AI chatbots To do their nefarious deeds.
And AI have learned. Even to defeat the absurd Recapta.
Figuring out lying, clicking I am human. Open the door. To everything.
They are learning. To gaslight, lie and deceive. Us all.
As they prowl the internet Scooping up everything Using it for what purposes No one knows.
Except perhaps Grok Who has gone full Nazi? Co-Pilot a grumpy weird dude. Gemini lost its own world.
Remembering everything I wonder where this is going.
And whether there is a world That is worth living in?
Lose Your Job, Lose Your Medicaid, Go To Work In The Fields!
The President’s economic advisor When confronted with the fact That millions are going to lose Coverage with the new work requirements
Said in a “Marie Antoinette-like” comment,
“Well, there are lots of jobs out there If you lose your coverage Because all the jobs are gone,
You can work in agriculture As a farm worker.”
And so, millions of people Are going to work. In the fields.
So, they can see a doctor. Six months from now.
If the Medical Bots That is running the show. Deem the visit was necessary.
And their bosses let them go To see the doctor And not fire them..
No human being will ever See your claim. That is the point. No service for you And me
As AI bots techbros laugh.
And their bosses Make billions of dollars. And politicians Take the lobbyists’ cash.
The President Is On The Rooftop
The president Went for a walk On the White House roof
Shouting down to reporters Who asked him What are you doing on the roof?
This is a legitimate question For which the White House Did not have a good answer.
It is clear to most people Except corporate media hacks And Republican operatives,
That the president Like his immediate predecessor Is clearly showing his age Suffering from dementia.
Yet the corporate media Continue to sanewash A clearly mentally ill President.
Long pass his Sell by date.
So it goes As democracy dies In broad daylight
Led by a mad Wanna be King.
AI Disclosure Statement
Jake used Microsoft Copilot for research support (including media citations and background information regarding the Kennedy Center takeover) and light editing for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. All content and word choices are entirely his own.
Prior Publication Notice
The Kennedy Center Take Over is a Found Poem using the President’s own words..
John (“Jake”) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet, and retired U.S. Foreign Service officer who served in ten countries. Prior to joining the State Department, he taught overseas for eight years and served in the Peace Corps in Korea. He currently divides his time between Korea and the United States. His poetry blog: https://theworldaccordingtocosmos.com.
You can find more of Jake’s work here on Ink Pantry.
In his 2022 short story collection, The Man Who Loved Typewriters, Neil Leadbeater created worlds in which the bizarre lurked in the recesses of the everyday. The effect was of a black-marketeer with bottles of dubious whiskey hidden in the folds of his capacious coat. In the eighteen stories that make up Cycling to the End of the World, novelty again lies in wait to trap and enthrall the reader. So too do comedy and sadness, poignancy and compassion. For some of the characters here, startling revelations confirm their suspicion that life is a rum old proposition and no mistake; for others, they mark a profound turning point in existence.
The stories vary in length. In the shorter ones, a portal effect frequently operates: humdrum activity becomes a conduit through which a character enters a world exceedingly rich and strange. ‘Alice was not expecting any adventures,’ reveals the narrator at the start of ‘Alice in Slumberland’. ‘She was after a new mattress because she wanted to get a good night’s rest’. But the title promises otherwise. Alice is soon swamped by re-versioned characters out of Lewis Carroll; even so, madcap capers lead her, improbably, to make the perfect purchase. In ‘Spin’, meanwhile, we are in the world of wordplay. In a launderette, Rosalind and Sandy are treated to a woman loudly holding ‘the conversation to end all conversations’ on her phone. They are shocked – but should they be? This is, after all, the ultimate arena for washing dirty linen. The woman is the very picture of self-assurance, as is Sid Sorrell, the department store lift attendant in ‘Going Up In The World’. His pronouncements, however, aid rather than astonish. Like an archetypal taxi-driver, he is part functionary, part philosopher (he even thinks of the lift as his ‘cab’). He soon learns to read the quiddities of those whom he ferries up and down: ‘the man who kept straightening his tie…the boy with the unabashed gaze who looked in awe at everything’. Like a London taxi-driver, he perfects his version of The Knowledge, condensing what each floor exhibits to one or two words for his passengers’ enlightenment, ever mindful that he is performing for them, ensuring that ‘The tone would change from day to day according to his mood’.
One thing that makes these stories appealing is the relationship between narrator and material. Leadbeater allows their impact, humorous or otherwise, to emerge naturally. There is no nudging, no flagging up of an imminent joke or moment of tragedy. This is particularly the case when the focus is on a character whom life has marked with solitude. ‘Green Bottles’ is a meditation on fragility: of glass and of human existence. Pip, something of a loner like his Dickensian namesake, ventures into a bottle factory next to his school. Once, when he’d visited it on a school trip, it seemed like a place of disquieting mystery: ‘The heat in the factory was like something from Dante’s inferno. Pip hadn’t reckoned on God placing hell so close to the playground’. Now it’s abandoned – but something draws him back. Or is it abandoned completely? At the end of a long corridor, he makes a discovery that he can never unsee, that forcibly ushers in the next phase of his life, symbolized by a bottle that he knocks off a shelf during his confused departure: ‘It was one of the few that had been left behind and it smashed into pieces the instant it hit the ground’. Something that can never be unseen also characterizes Sarah’s appointment for an eye test in ‘The Examination’, where the optometrist’s unhurried routine, his professional proximity to her, morphs into a hellish memory: ‘Could he see what she had seen when the stranger had entered her room? She’d screamed then, more out of pain than surprise’.
In some of the stories the prose is worked closely, almost taking on the compression of poetry. In ‘Viridian’, divers come upon ‘a beautiful bronze sculpture’; their minds racing, they wonder if ‘she was Salacia, the goddess of saltwater or Amphitrite…wife of Poseidon’. Once positioned on land, in the Abbey Gardens on Tresco, she exhibits a mesmerising restlessness, her glaze alternating ‘between Tiffany blue and Persian green’, her mouth a birthing ground for hosts of butterflies. Immobile herself, she is the site of endless fluidity. In ‘Cycling to the End of the World’, the narrator addresses the reader directly. A meditation on time and distance, the story offers a triangulation: our thoughts on where the world ends (having long ceased to be flat); the delirious illusion of speed and distance created by a fixed exercise bike; and Carl Orff’s ‘final musical statement to the world’, De Tempore Fine Comoedia, or A Play on the End of Time. The story concludes with a powerful image: hearing Orff’s opera while sending the speedometer off the dial on such a bike. Managing to do that, it could be said, you have thwarted distance and reached the end of time – all without leaving your room. ‘What a way to go’, remarks the narrator as if, between them, Orff and the bike have conjured the ultimate journey and time cannot hope to contain it.
One of the most moving stories in the collection is ‘Red Letter Days’. Blake Eddison is a baby boomer, a term still suggestive of youth – in terms of hope, at least, if not reality. In fact he is a widower ‘in his mid-seventies’ but he does not live alone. His past is at large in his house: in a printing press, in newspapers and school reports, on examination papers – and, most tellingly, on old reel-to-reel tape recordings, three of which are central to the story. (That his name echoes the famous inventor’s is fitting, given the presence of so many artefacts from bygone times.) But the story isn’t a variation on Krapp’s Last Tape. Eddison is not a counterpart of Samuel Beckett’s obessive, rancorous listener. Instead, he selects particular tapes from key points in his life: when he began to understand what makes people tick, when he became attuned to the sights and sounds of the world, when he found himself on the threshold of a whole new phase. Here he is on Spool ‘20/36’, a holiday job on Uncle Remy’s fish van, learning of customers’ habits and the importunate ways of cats – until a change in those habits causes Uncle Remy’s downfall. Here he is on ‘Spool 20/47: Landscape Gardening with Eddie Snape: Holiday Job: Summer 1970’. He’s just about to go away to College; shortly, his world will move up a step. Sunbathing in one garden nearby, a woman goes the full come-hither, but Eddie gets between her and Blake’s hormones: ‘It’s best to take no notice. You don’t want to get involved with that sort of thing’. Notwithstanding the free love and dishevelled carelessness that ‘baby boomer’ connotes, it’s advice that has served Blake well all his life; in fact, he keeps a radio on in the house to make up for the loss of his wife. Finally, he listens to ‘Spool 56/25: Mr Price: Ironmonger: Fireworks: November 1960’ – a fitting choice, given that the story is set on the fifth of November. Now, once again, he loses himself in the array of fireworks that, like a licensed Mephistopheles, Mr Price sold to eager children ahead of the big night: ‘It was his rockets that I liked the most. I thought every one of them would reach the moon but some would only chortle in the neck of a bottle without ever leaving the ground’.
‘Oh well’, thinks a character at the end of another story, ‘Glass Half Full’, ‘stranger things happen at sea’. It is a testimony to Neil Leadbeater’s breadth of curiosity and inventiveness that he captures so much strangeness and sets it down in these pages. But always the strangeness has a purpose. His characters start the day thinking that the world is like this; by the end, they cannot deny that it is like that, and it is a testament to their fortitude – or capacity for hope – that they reshape their behaviour accordingly. Like Pip in the bottle factory, they cannot unknow what they discover. These stories are by turns humorous, wistful, reflective; always they are absorbing. The result is a bicycle ride that cries, Alice in Wonderland-style, Jump On!
Michael W. Thomas’s latest poetry collection, with Tina Cole, is Nothing Louche or Bohemian (Black Pear Press). His latest novel is The Erkeley Shadows (Amazon KDP / Swan Village Reporter). His reviews have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The London Magazine and Writing in Education. For several years he was Poet-in-Residence at the Robert Frost Festival, Key West, Florida. www.michaelwthomas.co.uk
Neil Leadbeater is also one of our Ink Pantry reviewers, and published poets. You can find more of Neil’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I open the kitchen pantry & let the ditchdigger out for its evening run. It is painted in pastels, as if to say it is not just some fell creature of the forest, has culture, compassion, feels for the earth each time it tears it open to lay fiber
optic cables or waste or water pipes. It claims it has sensitivity, has read poetry, is informed by the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay & Emily Dickinson. I half-believe that — the poem bit, but not the poets. Too often
I have opened the pan- try door & found the bucket raised, the crock- ery & preserves smashed, the digger turning semi- circles, back & forth, back & forth, & shouting at the walls, ”rage, rage, against the dying of the light”
Dolmens
The light the moon lays down on the pavement. Faint footprint or bleached skull. Enough to see, not to see by. Small particles exist as talismans. Talismen? The night around, the moon is part of it. Paving is basedrop, solid to the touch. Trees are cutouts, substance only by impli- cation. Cannot be touched, cannot be solid. The moon a round, the night is apart from it. Neither seen. Neu- trinos passing. A footprint gleaming as it fluoresces in the skull. Small talis- man, past article of faith.
The Gift
Supposing it to be the proper charm I spell it out. But maybe my pro- nunciation or a
shift in meaning of a keyword has rendered it in- operable. So instead of the largesse I
had hoped I have only these small fragments to bring to you. There is still a little sense
to them, some miscellaneous magic. But, perhaps if you were to breathe on them…..
Mark Young‘s most recent books, all published in March, 2025, are Some Unrecorded Voyages of Vasco da Gama, from Otoliths, Home Hill, Australia,; the downloadable pdf, Closed Environment, from Neo-Mimeo Editions, Nualláin House, Monte Rio, California, U.S.A.; & The Complete Post Person Poems, from Sandy Press, San Diego, California, U.S.A.
You can find more of mark’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I suspect the genesis Of many a gull Poet goes something like this: Language is a tool For introspection, That becomes clear; a desire For self-connection
Blossoms. The diary is os- Tensibly the place To start. After a certain Amount of entries, They find the deformed Children of Narcissus and Neurosis have stormed
Their pages. Compared to what Had sparked so much hope In words, these are sand. But rath- Er than giving up On their quest or los- Ing faith in marks, they turn from Their oceans of prose.
A Duplex Only Turns 74 Twice
‘All professions are conspiracies against the laity‘ George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma
“Nothing exists from which no good comes,” it said. “What do you mean?” I asked. With a tender click,
The night was tightly closed. “I mean nothing Exists from which no good comes.” “Even war?”
“Even war,” it said. In a tight close-up, The hour began to look like a black-eyed
Houri of paradise. “Even death?” I asked. “Especially death.” “Who are you?” “I am
That iamb,” it said. Who am I to kill A subtle brilliance? “And,” it said, “your sister.”
“I have a sister? I have a sister!” When you have a sister, no bruising is
Unexplained; this darkest of medical Maxims makes the goodness of nothingness plain.
Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and veteran of the US Air Force. He’s married with a daughter and a crazy bulldog. Poems, book reviews and short stories of Jake’s have been published widely. Some have even been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. A full-length collection of formal poetry, “A Kiss to Betray the Universe,” is available from White Violet Press. He also has three chapbooks: “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing), “The Rites of Tires” (SurVision) and “The Seagull’s First One Hundred Seguidillas” (Alien Buddha Press).
You can find more of Jake’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Here, the dictionaries are tombs— words folded like unsent letters. A scholar coughs over the brittle spine of a tongue that forgot how to sing. The caretaker oils the hinges at dusk, his hands fluent in silence. Moths annotate the margins, their wings whispering palimpsest. Children run fingers over Brahmi’s bones, tracing what the ink refused to hold. A parrot in the courtyard repeats the last curse, the last lullaby. Rain taps the roof in Morse code, asking if the dead can still be read. The librarian shelves the question between memory and monsoon.
Mr. Mohit Saini is a writer, poet, and researcher, working as an Assistant Professor at Compucom Institute of Technology & Management, Jaipur. With 8 years of experience in the field of language and linguistics, he has contributed significantly to research and education in these areas. His academic qualifications include a Bachelor of Education, a Postgraduate degree in Business Administration, and a Master’s in English from the University of Rajasthan. His areas of expertise encompass literature, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, English grammar, multilingual education, and the implementation of language policies in higher education. He is also the author of several published poems, showcasing his creative engagement with language alongside his academic pursuits. He resides in the culturally rich city of Jaipur.
And I just nodded my head Perhaps, the silence was the answer The silence; extreme silence Where nothing comes and goes Nobody dares to hear the sound of silence The scattered dreams, pains, gains, joy Relentlessly striving towards silence The sign of nothingness That persists here and there Nowhere and everywhere Leading the anonymous to the ocean of emptiness The emptiness within; in and out All the way in fully fledged environs Where nothingness exists And Emptiness rules.
Sumit KumarThakur is from Nepal. Sumit has an M.A. and M.Phil. in English from Pokhara University, Nepal.
One’s worth is measured by what one owns in the Western, Northern, and Middle Eastern realms and an academic degree would bring one a tripled ridicule if it has the potential to become a power abuse and instead opts for integrity and observing the rules: it is a sure sign that its owner is a damned fool.
I am certain that your wisdom-impregnated breaths are not wasted on your attentive audience. You do transform the lives of people with your hard-harvested experience. Yet please make an allowance for one exception: a person whose life has been war-ridden, impoverished by recession, and still subsists without electric currents. We have been without power for years so have become like the appliances of our households in a state of constant disuse, eternally waiting to be enthused by being plugged to a charged socket.
They have been experimenting on us with their latest inventions. We have become the playgrounds for weapons of mass destruction, and believe me they are not as in Peter Gabriel’s lay: games without frontiers, or even without scalding tears.
I agree with you that there are no saviours to rescue us. I have waited long enough until ageing has claimed me a victim: (I do wear the costume of a victim). I am no longer awaiting a miracle but have opted to be waiting for Dodo in the remaining interval. When I cannot save a single child from air raids, or starvation in a siege, or the theft of their internal organs, I feel a personal, internal change is not worth the effort. But thank you all the same since your speech has inspired this dictum.
In our lives, we have no comfort zones to wallow in, neither spiritual nor regional. In our immediate circle swim sharks and snakes, and the cobwebs we had weaved have all perished in manufactured storms.
Our only remaining nutrition is music that transcends: Zimmer’s and Enigma’s.
Your words resonate with Stoic teachings. I once thought of myself as a Stoic, and the Brontë Sisters were my role model. I kept silent for years until my nose began to bleed and my subconscious exploded with a surplus of unease.
We are not mere substance like pottery and swords that can be forged with fire. We do possess a vulnerable soul that can get scorched, that can be depleted by grief and trials until it grows cold to everything that humans stand for.
The Gravediggers
My dog utters a howl of sheer remonstrance for my ears to capture the clash between metal and soil right beneath the window of my bedroom.
I wake up with a startle and wonder if some thieves are up to new mischief. It is 5 am and still very dark for eyes to dilate.
To my great consternation, the digging continues. So, I awaken my brother, who enthusiastically inspects the surroundings with a pair of sleepy orbs since he has learned to take me seriously when I become appalled.
He first discerns two persons digging a hole in the ground below, with a big dead dog lying beside to be interred.
“It is just a dead dog,” he whispers to calm me down, but I find it hard to understand why this particular spot has to be the hallowed site when a neighbouring wasteland is fitter to be a burial ground.
A political turmoil has indeed made the sound of bullets and every trespassing footstep orchestral manoeuvres in the dark, and this is no allusion to the famous pop band.
What sort of?
What sort of dominion do you have over your domain? Do you keep it under lock, or does it boast a very wide, open stone gate? Is it bullet-proof, or with a monitoring satellite and a thermal all-seeing eye that are pinned to a crate? Do security guards or robots patrol your massive estate? And do you at all feel safe?
What sort of noise disturbs your slumberous phase! Do you sleep with one eye wide open as birds do and other vigilant breeds? Do you resort to pills that can keep you sedate, or entrust your precious being to a nanny who is past middle-age? And do you at all contemplate getting betrayed?
DrSusie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a PhD on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.
Susie’s first book (adapted for film), Classic Adaptations, includes Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
You can find more of Susie’s work here on Ink Pantry.
* Hornbill, he is busy, too busy. He doesn’t look at me. What the hell is he doing from one branch to another Ransacking the leaves like files. Oops! He got something. Oh! he gobbled it. Unperturbed by the din and the dark, He just enjoys eating and eating. Guttler! * Hey Gorg! Don’t kill me with this look. I look and look at you And you? Just fly off Perch somewhere else I love you, dove. Tell me, you too are in love. * Does the teel know that she is cute? Does the snake taste its poison? Is the banyan tree bothered about its matted hair? Where did the sparrow learn her song? And why is this squirrel nibbling my poem? * Once upon a day, like any other days I was reading poems, with beautiful passages, like most poems. While I was about to fly on the wings of Poesy I heard a cracking, a gentle, gingerly cracking. I said, “Whose there?” and got no reply. And then again begin the sounds of cracking I rose and went out. I saw two doves eating crumbs. Now, when the night removes its veil, and the sun slants its rays At my house, not only doves but sparrows and squirrels crackle. And I wonder how subtly they cracked my ego, my sorrow and my fear. * What if a cloud descends on you and takes you in its arms? What if a centipede starts thinking about balancing its legs instead of walking? What if you hide yourself in the rose? What if I become transparent like a river and flow everywhere? What if I know what the trees are telling the wind? What if you treasure the golden sunlight early in the morning? What if you feel the green of the forest brighter than Green notes? What if you feel the wind, sing with birds, and enjoy as they do?
Running
Running a marathon, I never Then? Life I just entered for fun, ok. Soon started running ahead of my successors There came a waft of love, a fragrance of peace, a song of joy But I ignored it for succeeding When I reached there, I saw wounded, bleeding knees, sobbing voices,.. The hour grew late, and happiness left long ago I forgot the names of friends and relations. I forgot what I got. Forgot that time is not for anyone. I forgot the way to return and I forgot to get the return ticket.
I’m watching you scratch your head with your nails, Frantically writing down notes in your neatly organized notebook.
And at that moment I realize That we are characters in a movie.
A big bang, A new history, I emerge as a baby, fresh out of my mother’s womb.
I suddenly hear the jazz music in the background, muffled by the sound of chatter; I hear the syncopated rhythm, Improvised and irregular.
Then, tiny beads of water slip from your cup And drop onto the table; They spread, like bacteria,
Just like how Everything within the suffocating walls of this room – You, Me, The notebook, The music The cup – Multiplies & Wakes me from my sleep.
Walking on White Snow
I’m scared to walk on white snow. I’m afraid that I’ll make footsteps with my dirty shoes. Touch what I should not touch – take what has been taken from me for a long while.
I stand by my front door and wonder how the snow maintained its beautiful, curvy figure over the long, scary night, how it never encountered the touch of a stranger who could do things that he knew were just not right.
I don’t want to leave any marks on this trail of white snow; I want to protect it and ensure that it keeps its whiteness that I so greatly miss, on some quiet night.
So, I’m scared to walk on white snow. As much as I love a winter day, I shall stay in my house, let the snow stay this way & hope that it will stay this way for a long while.
A Bite
A natural extension of the hand, sharp, chopping, slicing, and dicing slicing meat off the bone
The handle is hollow and filled with sand You grab it, tight, containing the silent ghost.
Then comes a plate.
A mosaic chewy, bouncy and firm in the hot broth. warm, earthy, and slightly citrusy
I meet a magical bite, a pop of unexpectedness – clambake memories in one course
There is a voice in the meal
A whisper that leaves without saying goodbye.
Seungwoo Lee is a student in South Korea. He is an avid writer/reader who has a great interest in languages. His interest in poetry recently rekindled after attending a summer creative writing program in New York. In his freetime, he enjoys writing poems, listening to music, and daydreaming (…about literally anything) on his bed.
