The only place it is a mountain is from our dock. Driving around, I have seen it from other angles, No more than undulations In the New Hampshire landscape. But across the pond it rises Gently, right to left, And runs asymmetrically along a ridge Perhaps a mile, Sloping down at last toward the big lake. It is the remembered view We carry home at the end of summer. In my binoculars I can see New A-frames in the high meadow On the near slope. I do not begrudge them their gated driveway, Their view of the pond, That they have taken up residence In our field of vision, Their binoculars trained, I suppose, on us.
At the Laundry
Summers I worked at the laundry, Money for college. This was in the ’50s, People still got polio then. We washed the dingy garments of the shoe towns (We still had them in New Hampshire then) And the fine percale of folk Down gated roads by the lake. The girls who did the folding (We called them girls then) Would offer coarse jokes About the bed sheets of the rich. And I, caught, then as now, Somewhere in the middle, Passed wrenches to Neil, our boss, As he straddled the ancient boiler, Expert turnings of things we chose to think Kept us from blowing up. He nursed and finally lost a son to polio. For forty years I went by his house And we would recall the ones Who ran the presses, fed the mangle. The laundry is gone, of course, Chiropractors and aromatherapists in its space; Gone, too, is Neil, my gentle friend, Who valued me in a fragile time, On hot July afternoons, Steamy with the innocent fragrance of Starch, fresh linen, decent toil.
By the Meadow: June 2007
Betsy Winbourne, now eighty, Rakes hay in the meadow at midday— You would not do this a month from now; Up from Boston, opening the cottage. No sign of the Woodleys; They say his tumour has come back, His fields thick with timothy and clover, In need of Seth to mow, If one knew where Seth had gone. I walk along the lane Gathering the winter’s news: Someone’s cellar flooded, Someone’s well has failed, Bears in the woods, taking out bird feeders. And yet: The young leaves, the greens, the light, So various, so fresh with innocent hope: It is early June in New Hampshire And the world seems possible.
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.
I have no clue what Krshna taught Arjuna but I like the name Atman a lot. Atman. Atman. Where a man is at. At all times. No matter what. Gita, get in the action, gorgeous girl, God is the answer, keep the meter.
Wisdom, none. What Krshna tells Arjuna makes no sense. I prefer mathematics. Knowledge of how things are made and done more than meditation on the Self as a manifestation of the One.
I’ll never have to leave this comfortable planet. We have this asset but can we sell it? In Paradise Lost, Satan executes his plan but God already knows all about it. Still, whether it succeeds or fails is up to Man. Same here, when it comes to nuclear armaments, a distraction from the work of making life permanent.
It is all premised on the mystery of invisible but sentient particles— little Krshnas and Kachinas nesting inside one another. Meanwhile life goes on outside all around you— WWII, the Napoleonic wars, the Civil War which we’re still fighting.
Krshna says behead your brothers without prejudice or justice. So it transpires in the nuclear fire. Whatever forever. Teacher, teacher—tiger!
On the Avenue
From marble and granite to steel and glass, we were discussing Rhina Espaillat’s On the Avenue in class, was it 1950s or 1980s NYC and were the fifties the city’s halcyon days or is it now, the 2020s, the boroughs teeming with immigrants from the round earth’s imagined corners, Hasidim and Muslim, Haitian and Russian, as we Italians and Irish in an earlier era were. Everything will be ok or not, the recombinations which make prediction and intuition fortunately hopeless and each individual an experiment gone well or wrong. On the avenue God speaks by spewing toy and clothing stores, breakdancers and ice skaters, the Brooklyn Navy Yard seen from the Brooklyn Bridge, the skyline admired when my car broke down on the Triborough Bridge. The numbers of us overwhelm, there exist powers overwhelming for the human body and mind. I don’t mind but I can’t make sense of it. Gandhi said What you do may not seem important but it is very important that you do it. By that what is meant? Linda said Why does God always have to be a man? I said He could be a She but she’s probably really a Tyrannosaurus rex. I like to be in America!
On Suffering
I waited too long to biopsy my lung yet lived long enough however long is long. Whatever. It’s not wrong to count along while busy living. Sing and stay strong absorb the sun’s photons and store them in your bones.
Those bones outlast slights and wrongs are white as lightning and strong as sticks and stones. Inside is one’s spirit, soul, the nameless one the one that’s never known. It has no cell phone can’t communicate or even moan. Therefore. Why complain? Have some fun.
Soon I’ll be undone underground my garden burned down. So what. John Donne died and so did Milton. Emerson too, and Whitman. Get over it. Vote. Love. When the train comes in the station whistle with it, wish on stars with passion or careful hesitation. Anything’s fine, within reason.
Season by season things get done. Algebra and calculus, Malcolm X, George Washington. No taxation without representation. A gun in every den. People will be governed one way or another, by a king or trusted friend. Corporation. Men are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Evils to which they are accustomed.
I’m too young to die! I cry. My generation cannot outrun the sun but I want to see what happens next, a tsunami or tornado, rain and wind beyond our comprehension hit in the head by speeding debris, irony of ironies! plastic contraptions, rotting computers and yogurt cups, pain in the baby! Moment’s notice. None, I notice, live long enough to see the end. A billion
years hence human sense has so modified and mutated under some other sun we share one mind and everything’s remembered by everyone. Look it up. There is no death, just perfect rest. A perfect tan is possible, and work is fun. I’m going there when I pass on because souls will travel at warp speeds, using nuclear fission. About suffering, religion was right (and wrong) all along.
Robert Ronnow‘s most recent poetry collections are New & Selected Poems: 1975-2005 (Barnwood Press, 2007) and Communicating the Bird (Broken Publications, 2012).
The day it began; I was me. Mabel and I had fled the wages office of Tyrers department store, to the gardens in Palmer Square. We sat on the last vacant bench, amidst giggles, mid-conversations of folk out on a mid-summer’s lunchtime. Some were courting couples, office workers, and shop assistants, others, faded mothers chasing toddlers around pushchairs. The zing of mowed grass crashed with fumes of passing vehicles. I longed for a sea breeze and deckchair on Southport beach.
Mabel chattered away about her wedding plans, while I tugged a dog hair from my meat paste sandwich. I dragged my finger against the edge of the bench to hide the fur. Meat paste clogged the ridges of my palate, and I stretched another hair from my mouth, too long to be Albert’s. I glanced at Mabel’s ponytail.
“Are you not going to finish your sandwich? After I took the time to make it for you. Oh, did I mention my wedding will be in the grounds of Charles’s parents’ stately home in Cumbria?”
Mabel had finished her sandwich and sunk her teeth into a Vanilla slice. She held out a jam tart for me. I gagged on what remained of the bread and paste, swallowed hard, before I praised Mabel for making such a tasty sandwich. I took the tart. She continued to talk and talk enlightening me to how lucky Charles was that she had agreed to marry him. How he wasn’t the best-looking man, that, that wasn’t critical as he absolutely worshiped her. I responded in what I considered to be a polite way, by asking her a simple question.
“How come your Charles hasn’t been round ours to say hello?”
She’d been going on and on about Charles and the wedding since we met, on her first day in wages. That was a month ago. Within a week we had become best friends and flat mates, although I couldn’t recall agreeing to that.
Mable spat out the answer to my enquiry, her changed tone and menaced wide-eyed glare unnerved me. I felt I was the one in the wrong. She knew I hated being called Liz.
“Liz, really, why would I bring him around to meet you of all people.”
She sniggered while dabbing the sides of her upturned lips with a pink cotton napkin. My response, squashed by a battered self-worth. I retrieved the napkin she’d tossed onto the bench next to me and folded it before putting it into my handbag along with my pride.
“Oh, best be getting back, don’t want Miss Twist picking you up on your time keeping. Oh by the way, I’ve mentioned to Miss Twist you’ll do my late this Friday. Charles is whisking me away for a romantic weekend.”
“I can’t I’m…”
“You can, I’ve told your Jimmy you’re spending the weekend with your best friend, me!”
She puckered her matt red lips, pressed her little finger to the left corner of her mouth then clicked shut her compact. She took hold of my chin and told me I’d be pretty if I smiled more, before kissing my cheek. I smiled. We walked back to work, with no more said about Friday only the sound of Mable’s voice whittering on about how special she was, and that Charles knew he was lucky. She had me carry her handbag. I walked two steps behind her, as she strutted and laughed.
“I feel like the Queen with my lady in waiting.”
I couldn’t recall why I’m her friend. Betty from our office stopped to chat, Mable placed herself at the centre of the conversation and I wasn’t acknowledged by either of them. I felt myself sink to the bottom of my stomach like I was riding the front car of the rollercoaster at Southport Pleasure Land. I never returned from the pit of my stomach. Once Betty had gone Mable grabbed my hand.
“Come on, darling, we’re going to be late. Don’t you worry I’ll let Miss Twist know it was Betty’s fault.”
For the rest of that day, I was the most important person in her life in a strange unforgiving way.
I’m sat on a deckchair, on Southport beach. Sand swirls above the damp ridges formed by the tide, like fairies and elves dancing around my bare feet. I’ve shoved my knee length tights into my sensible shoes. I curl my toes down, halos form around them, dry sand rolls over pale skin. There’s a chill to the early October day, I wished I’d come in June, even though that wasn’t possible as she was still alive. I look for the sea, far away a murky greenish line forms a break in the skyline. I turn to my left and right, I’m alone. Tiny figures move up and down the pier a mile away. A drip forms on the tip of my nose. I consider wiping it on my coat sleeve but think it’s not what a sixty-five-year-old should do. I reach down grab my handbag, balance it on my knee, I pull out what I think is my handkerchief and pinch my nose. As I scrunch it up with my spindled fingers a wave of sickness hits me. The pink cotton napkin falls into my lap, I thought I’d thrown it out with the rest of her belongings. The wind catches hold of it, and it takes flight like a kite. A quote from Lauren Bacall pops into my head ‘Imagination is the highest kite that one can fly.’ The napkin descends landing like a shroud over my feet. In that moment of flight, it hit me, I rummage in my bag searching for a mirror. I pull out her compact and remember her giving it me at the end of that mid-summers day when I found her hair in my sandwich and she made me feel guilty. How have I not thrown these items; I must be going senile. I snap open the compact, a cloud of power puffs up and is lost in the sand. I hold the mirror up to check my nose is clean. A face stares back at me, I look behind me and back to the face, it’s still there. I hear a voice shouting.
“I’ve not been myself for forty-five years.”
The words echo like the distant sound of the ocean from a shell held to my ear as a child. Whiffs of salty-seaweed seep into my nostrils with each stuttered breath; brings me to my senses like a dose of smelling salts. I close my eyes and I’m sat at her bed side. Her matt red lips, faded by time and ill health. Her laced skinned left hand lies ringless and flat, dissolving into the white sheet. Her chest clicks as it rises and falls, like a young robin calling for its mother. The click is interrupted by a chilled silence of impending demise. I count the seconds to the next bird call. I’m up to fifteen, click, nothing, click. The silence crashes into my ears, I fill this gap and mute the clicks for help with the brevity of my voice.
Mable, I stopped liking you on the day you made ‘me’ fade. You started the process a month before, but I was too moulded to notice. I was so happy to have a best friend. I was never the popular one, never chosen by the netball captain, or for a last dance at the Town Hall. You brightened the wages department and picked me as your friend. You separated me out from my family like a sheep dog. I took your guilt and you were the shining light that everyone flew to, like moths. You collected moths, to take the pleasure of being wanted and the glory of winning. Mable, I’m quiet for a moment, until I hear the click. Mable, you stole me, you continuously had an answer for why you needed me to stay, if I left, you’d, well, you hinted I would be the one to find you. Charles, you said died in a boating accident. I never mentioned I saw you walking alone from my deckchair on Southport beach, that romantic weekend. Charles was killed a week later. Miss Twist fell down the stairs that lead to the shop floor. It was you who found her. I didn’t tell you I’d left my handbag in the staff restroom that evening and seen you with Miss Twist. You cried crocodile tears at the grave side of Miss Twist. Her family comforted you. A month after the funeral you became Wages Supervisor. I forgot who I was, if anyone asked, I’d say I’m Mabel’s friend.
I hear another click, I count, to a thousand. I have my wish of a deckchair on Southport beach.
Sally has an MA Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. She writes short stories and is currently working on her novel based in 1950s Liverpool. She sometimes writes poetry. She gains inspiration from old photographs, history, her own childhood memories, and is inspired by writers Sandra Cisneros, Deborah Morgan, Liz Berry and Emily Dickinson.
She has had short stories and poetry published in various online publications, including The Ink Pantry and AnotherNorth and in a ebook anthology ‘Tales from Garden Street’ (Comma Press Short Story Course book 2019).
Sally lives in the countryside with her partner, dog, and bantam.
You can find more of Sally’s work here on Ink Pantry.
My world, a dark blue in its Vastness comes with aches And pains and a cache of Visions that echo in the Ebony void, of its emptiness. My music, filled with secrets And stories couples me to Winter’s wind as it ricochets Off my nighttime memories.
I Enjoy
The sounds of waves continually rushing onto a sandy shore bringing in stories from the deep where man has no power to edit,
The rays of the sun that never end, which carry warm supplications in the ether high above where man has no ability to censor.
The chirping of colourful birds singing feathery arias high in the trees of a verdant forest where man has no capacity to tarnish.
Yesterdays of my Dreams
Like butterflies flitting in the breeze, my mind is floating in the blueness of a sky full of images, visions, prayers, and forgotten truths, that touch the quivering echoes of all the yesterdays of my dreams.
Untitled
As our thoughts rise and fall on seldom trod paths, The warbling of birds will cast new visions into Our evolving memories.
As a rusted gate swings lazily on a copper hinged hasp It solemnly warms us to loosen our emotional grasp On those things that are dark, but ephemeral.
As thoughts swim up the river to a placid pond, They go to a place where contented minds gaze, and muse upon in the lazy hours of the day,
As things plague our mind, and arrive as if designed by demons, we must understand that they are just bits of unreality, and
As each new day leads us to greater happiness, They will vanish into the darkened void where All such gloomy things are quickly destroyed.
Burning Tempo
Another day Like yesterday… Red dust Climbing Into the earth, The oceans, And rivers dry, Birds swaying In the dry wind, Ashes in The hearth, Don’t cry, Don’t cry, it’s not Over yet… Pretend my friend. Each day is a Miracle, Life is magical, It’s a beat, A pulse, An echo. Voices Bounding off the Heated land, by Drum sticks used by withered hands Hidden inside Leather: Pretend my friend, … Don’t cry, Don’t cry.
James, a retired Professor and octogenarian is a Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee and has had five poetry books “The Silent Pond,” (2012), “Ancient Rhythms,” (2014), “LIGHT,” (2016),“Solace Between the Lines,” (2019), and Serenity (2022), over 1700 poems, five novels, seven essays, and 35 short stories published worldwide in over 255 publications. He earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO.
You can find more of James’ work here on Ink Pantry.
There was a knock on my door. I heard footsteps walking as I opened it. My heart skipped a beat. I saw no one, only heard footsteps walk and walking away. I counted a thousand footsteps at least. I am known to embellish things. I fear the man I am turning into. There was no shadow to those footsteps. In the distance I thought I saw a figure walking. It was just a memory of someone I once knew.
Taking the Name
The skeleton’s skull is suspended in the night sky, taking the name moon; its bleached white tears are dispersed along night’s canvas, taking the name stars. The black ink is spread throughout, which has already been named sky. Its hue will change in the twenty-four hours called day with spheres lingering in the sky with the names of sun and planets to keep our attention and interest.
Cut Down to Size
O, I am not handy with a saw, but I have cut into wood like a woodcutter. I cut until my hands hurt and my blisters made me feel useful. I cut under the shadows of tree leaves. The cutting of limbs was such a release. One day someone might be cutting on me. I am far from healthy. I feel the pain in my knees. I feel the torment of not being able to do what I used to do. I see my life racing by. I am seeing a future where I will need to slow down.
Count the Days
Here I count the days? My time is going slow. Between morning and noon, between noon and five o’clock, I feel a quiver some days. The days are so long. I search my soul so deep. One of these days I will lie under grass.
I am just here surviving. Green pastures await me. I will lie underneath. Time is up for everyone. There is no need to feel sad. I do not always feel down. I look forward to night to watch the stars cluster.
Our Collapse
Our collapse is our own doing. Greed inevitably consumes itself. Man has sold its soul for riches. This negligence will come due. Like a wilted flower, we will perish someday someway at any hour. I will be among the protesters kicking up the dust I will become.
Luis lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Ink Pantry, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories.
You can find more of Luis’ work here on Ink Pantry.
I adorn my mind each morning with a word as a queen for her coronation is adorned with gold, with associations to combat the foul breath that is spewed from establishments, individuals, and the rituals of the modern world.
Though sharing three consonants with its adversary numb, nimble is my armor against stagnation, stupor, and getting outrun by the spurious and the arrogant.
I resort to sedate in times of turmoil when warfare sharpens its fangs and claws, when rockets compete for the bull’s eye that is wrought by profiteers who have been wooing my hometown port.
Sanguine is my anodyne for un-halcyon days when depression is depleting both pockets and spirits and Hope is an effigy that pins impale whose sister Mercy is being burnt at the stake.
A Single Birthday
I imagine what a single birthday would be like spent with her: a home-made cake that her hands deck with nuts, with candles that are not to be blown out. Two glasses of sweet wine brewed by her ancestors in the vicinity of their country vineyard. An apple pie. And some milk chocolate that instantly melts in my mind before it reaches my mouth.
A bottle of perfume with a blue ribbon round its neck. A white hairband for my ponytail. A strapless bikini for my next summer holiday. A puzzle to keep me busy on lonely nights. And a tearless goodbye.
The Essenes
Their mode of existence was marked by numbers – these offsprings of David, the Nazarenes – by sacred geometry.
Even-tempered and compassionate, they kept no servants or slaves and equal men and women were declared.
The hand that was placed on top of the head had learnt the art of healing both the afflicted and the sick.
They consumed their meals in utter silence, the vegetarian meek who drank nom fermented liquids and because purification was uppermost, they lived by rivers and lakes to keep themselves cleansed.
On Mount Carmel they pursued the truth, the illumination of inner lives, so the Book of Enoch was among other texts that their precious library kept and both john the Baptist and Jesus Christ received their blessings and enlightenment.
And sleep, which for modern thinkers contains the residue of the day’s turbulence and joys, is a source of deep knowledge, so the last thoughts before a slumber are to be purified and purged to keep the power of the mind intact.
Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. 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.
He lost the land of his birth’s winter snow, lost heart-throbbed life fragments morphed into dreams, lost his family that day long ago, a desertion scarring his self-esteem, stony heart cracked, future free as the sky. He lost chance opportunities, too few, cherished keepsakes, old friendships torn awry, lost his roadster in a carpark’s chromed queue, a character in an absurdist play, sped off, denim jacket slammed on the roof, further loss as, waving, it flew away. His pillared past bared, no longer blame-proof, he aches for things he shall not see again, knows ego’s reckless largesse caused this bane.
Molly’s Audition
Raising his spirits and his cockstand, Joyce composes letters to Trieste. Nora responds, ghosting that book, banned, raising his spirits and his cockstand, kinky, inky. From her artless hand: moist orgies. His lewd woman possessed, raising his spirits and his cockstand, Joyce composes letters to Trieste.
Juvenile Invention
Aware that city lights blink on, off, on while bubbling boredom, longing, blurs our days, we work the teeming dorms, a kind of con reaping weed from boys who believe crime pays. In this chapel of corruption, Dickie, First Nations tent boxer, plays the tribesman, my role his circus box office, tricky ringmaster minus the stretch caravan. Script rehearsed, stage props: needle, pure white thread, Dickie, eyelashes fluttering, growls chants, racehorse names back to front to pump our cred. Vultures’ cruel committee judges his trance. From inside his mouth he pierces his cheek, silver, red, burst bright, white, red, black skin sleek.
Ian C Smith’s work has been published in Antipodes, BBC Radio 4 Sounds,The Dalhousie Review, Griffith Review, San Pedro River Review, Southword, The Stony Thursday Book, & Two Thirds North. His seventh book, wonder sadness madness joy, is published by Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.
You can find more of Ian’s work here on Ink Pantry.
While doctoring the sun, my wife expounds On gradients of moonliness called “love.” Attending raves in giant fields, she’d tell Us, “Nothing is a drug,” and drop it like A mic. And neon lights berated costly Nights, so full of naked, blaring animus; If not, at least of intimations. Without A wink of hesitation, a raccoon is Digging through my trash outside; emaciated Martian with an ear for the eraser, like My wife, whose syllogisms overlapped with hope.
While proctoring tomorrows, Obama rounds The radiance of spoonerisms up to one. “Pretending saves a little space,” he’d tell Us (nothing like a bug), and pop it like A collar; neonates conflated bossy Rights – the pull of naked, blaring animus – With tons of steely scintillations. Pick out The pinkest nation: A cocoon is Hugging the rough trash inside me, wasted, Marshalling an iridescent pacer like My wife, her syllogisms home with overwhelm.
Sonnet for Democracy: or, Epigrams and Sound Bites of 2016
“You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” Mario Cuomo
Reporters quoted thermophilic Trump: “My wife’s the only girl I care to hump.” The New York Times lent Hillary its ear: “Your crossword puzzle suffers, much like Lear.” The brothers Koch were drips of condensation On the greenhouse ceiling; glass somatization. A Marxist Yankee ate a pound of fees To rush adrenaline’s fraternities. The Onion’s parodies: a haemorrhoid Deployed that contributions out-diploid. The categorical judicial branch Decided John Doe Jr.’s avalanche, At best, unconstitutional; and Scalia’s Dissent, “Divide the horse!”: paraphernalia.
“Abound but to abandon!” was the chant Protesting what The Talking Light was can’t.
Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and veteran of the US Air Force. He’s married with a daughter and several pets. Poems 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. His chapbook is Looting Versailles (Alabaster Leaves Publishing). A full-length collection of formal poetry, A Kiss to Betray the Universe, is available from White Violet Press.
