Shadow limbs of the dead tree stretch across the barren dirt in search: they descend into burrows where dark meets dark, reaching for a neighbor but the sun moves so touch never happens.
Shadow limbs rotate sunrise to sunset; a sundial ticking seconds like bug tracks stitching hourglass sand.
Snagged
It’s painful for the cottonwood tree to grow beside the wooden fence.
Posts planted in the ground with no hope of spreading roots. Planks nailed like fake branches with only splinters as leaves.
When the wind blows, when the boughs brush against lifeless boards, the tree caresses the fence and doesn’t mind leaving snagged leaves behind quivering on splinters.
Below Morning
Sunset on top of the clouds shines brightly like snow-capped mountains with darkening valley in gray below.
Below in the cornfield rows of irrigated ditches reflect last rays of sun stretching toward the highway; car headlights brighten like shafts of morning attempting dawn.
Leaves Down
Over the bridge across the river to stand under trees where leaves fall down.
Squirrels scamper up wrinkled tree trunks when rafts float on top of rapids following gravity beneath cliffs jutting outward in a valley seen from above.
Stand Still
If I stand still, will my feet sprout roots and dig into the soil? If I raise my arms, will bark crust over my skin and branches solidify? Will my open eyes change into knot holes staring at cousin trees? Will my hair grow leaves or pine needles depending on my choice of trees? Will I hear a tree fall if I stand still?
Diane Webster lives in western Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. Her haiku/senryu have appeared in failed haiku, Kokako, Enchanted Garden Haiku. Micro-chaps were published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Diane has been nominated for Best of the Net and three times for a Pushcart. Diane retired in 2022 after 40 years in the newspaper industry. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com
You can find more of Diane’s work here on Ink Pantry.
The ocean is like us It carries storms inside its chest and still learns how to shine. It holds whole cities of feelings Beneath a calm face, Seeing the sea wearing sunlight Like a crown of blue daylight, Tides pull the way memories do, Back and forth, and never gives up Just watching for the moon to speak.
JoyAnne O’Donnell is author of five poetry collections on Amazon. JoyAnne loves to go out in nature and write poetry. Her latest poetry is in Ultramarine Review.
Before I wake, the crawling dreams learn to sleep. In the rain shadow of mind, light becomes a shade of darkness.
Wild flowers dance on graves, unbothered, and I carry the wreath with thorns, unperturbed. Grief, bright as a bug zapper, glows in my room like religion.
The voice inspects the house, then leaves — noisy breathing, unfinished thoughts. Only memory remains, pacing.
Border/lands
Seeing the child draw a squiggly chalk line, I realise that borders are just squiggly lines, drawn on maps from a hundred years ago. A hundred years ago was before radio, before phones. The squiggly lines remain like mountain ranges. Cutting people into shapes, slices, into teams, into enemies. The child erases the squiggly line with the back of his hand and I’m amazed. All borders are dotted lines. There are gaps that we are trying to squeeze our way into, And out of, aspiring for a better life, beyond the bottleneck of borders.
Falling with Buoyancy
Where others sail with ease, I strain to stay, choiceless tides deciding my course.
Hope, once bright, dissolves in moth-white spray, a ghost of faith dispersed upon the air.
Like turtles turned, I flail against the ground, yet learn to fall before I dare to glide.
Wrists clasped close, lest brittle bones be found; odd snow-angels mark where dreams have died.
Still I drop as autumn petals drift, as fading blooms whose sighs dissolve in frost.
A silent grace, the only final gift, when sound and shape in winter’s hush are lost.
If fall I must, let the end be mild, as though the earth embraced her fallen child.
The Ship
Vaishnavi Pusapati is a physician poet nominated for the Touchstone Awards. Her work has appeared in Dreich, Prole, Roanoke Review, Presence, Ink Pantry, Molecule, among others. Her haiku book, Afterlife:haikus, is forthcoming.
You can find more of Vaishnavi’s work here on Ink Pantry.
From a place of trust I glimpse your magnificence, your harnessed race of complexities in harmony, slow moving, more powerful than a hundred suns conjoining.
From a place of faith, being wrong is just as exciting as being right – a longing to know you, knowing I will never know you only know the minute aspects that flip and twist and rewrite as my knowledge grows, while keeping some laws fundamental.
From a place of love, your love is gathering in bright awe-inspiring displays, terrifying in their brilliance and in their magnitude. Nothing is personal. Everything is individual, overreaching galaxies into galaxies, twin dreams.
From a place of exploration, finding inspiration where paradox consumes, invigorates, illuminates all places, gloriously shifting.
Surrendered
In the middle – steady, harsh waves, salty flavoured ocean, stranded, treading. Love comes smiling. It is a ghost. Joy comes and passes by. Purpose comes but floats by like a jellyfish riding the momentum.
In the middle, tired of treading, no escape, just the ebb and flow, surging, retreating waters. What lies beneath makes no difference because nothing is above except the burning brutal sun, cloud cover occasionally, and only air to eat.
Skin cells, bloating. Eyes, unable to keep open. In the middle of an endless abyss, all my happy days behind me.
I hold my hands in prayer position, arms raised over my head. I stop struggling to not go under, I go under and let that weight, the peace at last, take me down.
She
Fear is splendid in making the body inflamed, bloated on trepidation at the news of many meadows burning.
She hurried and found a healer inside herself, willing to go the distance and forfeit personal power for a greater acquisition. She understood the traveller and the sit-at-homer as one in the same, especially on a stormy day or a year of upheaval.
Faith is the bullseye with no point-marks gained unless hit dead-centre, directing every focus to only that centre. Faith is the wave to ride to the shore, removed from other moving sources, like wind and arm-strokes.
She opened herself to fear not denying it but seeing it as just another entity under the canopy, smaller than the giving sun.
Out
I asked to be let out from that unwanted accomplishment. I asked to shed my shame, my duty and the hard-core call of doing time.
It was taken down and away from me, along with so much more. Guilt, and worldly bondage also fell along with security, along with a strange, twisted pride.
Knuckles down, hands still folded. In my head are ghosts of patterns dissolved but are still haunting. Ways of being I don’t have to carry are dropped, but my empty arms are stalled in position, humbled by uncertainty. Set free and starting over, but not yet started, just starting to try to etch out different possibilities, a solid surging becoming.
Whiffs of passing currents, rich aromas that entice briefly then fade. Whiffs I cannot capture and keep, not now, maybe never, let out, dumbfounded, helpless, screaming, just born.
Allison Grayhurst has been nominated for “Best of the Net” six times. She has over 1,400 poems published in over 530 international journals, including translations of her work. She has 25 published books of poetry and 6 chapbooks. She is an ethical vegan and lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay;www.allisongrayhurst.com
You can find more of Alison’s work here on Ink Panty.
Deep, dark chocolate the shade of walnuts with a hard, shell exterior, when bitten down on, cold brushes the tongue— the chill of fresh, sweet strawberries.
Frosting like a heart—pink and red atop a brown, foiled pastry, and adorned with sprinkles on each curve and the elevated centre. Sprinkles like hearts, shades of red.
Small, carmine sausages in a thick bread roll had darkened edges and crispy tips. Altogether, gathered in a white, stubby bowl, like pigs in a blanket, rolling in the snow.
Maroon and aureolin mingled in the beaker, and when raised to the shimmering, shining sun, every bit of pulp is palpable to sight. Ice cubes jostled, fruit slices swirled.
Alongside candles, forks, flowers, and wrappers, the plates were placed on a cerulean checkered blanket, enveloping the mat, like a nourishing, fulfilling labyrinth of desserts and blossoms.
The blanket rested atop a soft, fluffy patch of grass, and the maple tree above, with bunches of leaves like clouds, shaded the desserts before me, and the flowers around— a picturesque, sunny, tranquil summer day.
Spry and Bright
Ten candles on a ten-layer cake A cake so tall a dentist wouldn’t approve Each flame the shade of rouge So I blow out the candles
Then the year after, eleven candles The flames are spry and bright I blow out the light
Next year, the cake will be crowded Lighting twelve candles seems like a chore, But extinguishing feels like rejuvenation Inhale, exhale, I blow out air
The year after will be thirteen Then fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen It may seem like a chore, But I will blow out each one.
Pulled In
Maroon red, lilac purple, amber gold. Aurora colours on the swooping wings Of fragile butterflies. It jumps from leaf To leaf and flashes its grand wings to watchers. A beautiful bright view, the watchers say.
If only their eyes shifted to the side: A moth with dull greyed wings sits on a wall. It is the dark sky—twinkling stars surround it. It is the canvas on which butterflies shine.
Its eyes spot flickering red flames on candles With shining vivid shades like sunset glow. Dull wings take flight, petite feet land on the Melting wax stand. It tiptoes closer, then Too close.
Flame touches, then spreads, then envelopes it. Fire eats its wings, thus forming deadly sheens. Fire steals its limbs in a colossal blur. Remains then sprinkle down as smoky ash. A startling bright view as it fully burns.
Now, I approach the dark tight alley that May be my flame. My mind is on fire, and My daring burns away. But people flutter Around me, mingling, giggling, and make me A shadow like dull gray smoked ashes, yet I am pulled in.
Grace Lee, a high school student in Seoul, South Korea, is passionate about words. Whether crafting stories or poems, she blends her unique perspective with Seoul’s vibrant culture. Excited to contribute to the literary landscape, Grace’s writing reflects the universal themes of adolescence in a big city.
You can find more of Grace’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Rosie, Rosie O’h stared back at her in the grubby mirror. She wasn’t an unclean person but she didn’t invest in the proper materials or possess the inclination really to do the due diligence on an awkward surface, like a mirror. In any case, the reflection peered into her world, thin, not as in ‘skinny’ but like hollowed out, a whittled down version of herself (ready for some craftsman to use a more supple tool on, to add some defining detail, a maker’s mark or patent).
A thoughtless exhalation escaped her frame, measured breaths couldn’t accommodate the weight of her preoccupation. It had felt heavy coming out of someone that slim.
A grunt of acknowledgement from her other half (a relationship that had sustained itself three months to present). They’d only toyed with the idea of co-habitation a little while. They got on well and bills are crippling, it had to be a win. She’d given her future some thought and it’s easy enough to change personal pronouns from ‘Me’ and ‘I’ to ‘Us’, and to ‘We’.
‘Shall I just order?’ He reclined his head right back against the throw, thoughtfully tucked into the creases of an otherwise rough and decomposing sofa, he could feel the stuffing inching in and out of place beneath him as he sat, completely vulnerable to it, his jugular region tenderly exposed, extended yet at ease toward her back, and facing the other Rosie in the glass.
‘Sure’, Rosie reacted slowly, patting then gripping at her notably flat belly gently and repetitively, still somewhat staring into the inverted room. She eventually recoiled from her own gaze, turning to him properly, with a miniature ball point change onto her tip toe from the hall to the living area they’d made, to lean over the back of the same sofa- stowing a hand familiarly between his poised neck and the top of the sofa to corner off what might have been a harsh angle.
She’d grazed the trail of a now healed burn on his neck with the action, from a one-year stint on the other side of the planet, fruit picking. The sap had oozed from above as he interfered with the plants, hacking at whatever was in reach to amount to the quota. It was then left to rot against him in the sun, keenly acidic, until the last of the bounty was collected for that day and he’d got to the shower. Needless to say, it festered but the high temperatures were hard to distinguish from fever, he’d pointed out to Rosie, and it hadn’t bothered him much, just left him with the wish it was a more lucrative trip. Others had worse infections although he’d never caught up with them properly about it. The thought of them being carted from the main accommodation building, lingered on his brow sometimes.
He smiled back at her, ‘I fancy a Pizza but I’m easy’.
‘I need the calories I guess’ probing at her inners again, this time harder. He pulled up the relevant app and clicked through to order, taking her hand from her stomach and putting it playfully behind her back, as if she couldn’t reengage it herself to form the same habit. She radiated warmth on account of the contact, pleasant friction of skin on skin.
They tracked the Delivery rider, keeping his phone out with page loaded, so as not to miss him. The video breathed through the phone’s microphone, the advert, was becoming familiar now. The tone had been refined from what was originally a bit creaky and Jehova’s Witness-ish to something that packed a bit of punch, drew on a half-formed thought and completed it in a hue you couldn’t have painted yourself without some time and stamina. Words swung loosely around a concept that gave a tip of the tongue effect, words rang out something tuneful along the lines of,
Health Optimization and Precision Economics:
If you could contain and commit the most valuable, but equally that basest portion of yourself and all its impulses, to absolute shrinkage. The part that deludes itself with passing fancies, idealises others yet ultimately undermines itself on a daily basis in the modern rush to have it all, to provide digital ticks against some inventory lacking any concrete, sustainability; That part, secured instead for the time when you’ve achieved its gratification.
Clinically reduced, it can be, until you can afford to be monetarily present, without suffering the loss of any of your physical vitality. So, between guaranteed shifts (of higher purpose), duty streamlined by this medical process- emotionally. Welcome to the Health Optimisation and Precision Economics pathway.
Anxiety, depression, self-induced crises spiralled by
Drink, drugs, worse even debt, gambling and such, coffees, brunches, flights and exploration (distractions) overseas, the Japanese and Kiwis, avocados, family- before you are truly ready, making work for idle hands, a life time of struggling financially, for what? Appearances? Escaping,
The road to consistency and therefore, happiness- Scientifically.
All these drains on your resources avoided convenient and easily- safety, ready to spring in spring, stowed for safekeeping under the umbrella of a truly respectable company, a 9-5, a family, of course all leading to when, one fine morning, you clock out and make the commute back to a home, not rented, not mortgaged-
your very own. Stamp Duty and taxes all accounted for,
Immune from the sticky claws of expectation where it’s not due, beaks with social media presences, hope-less competitions for historic houses, chain smoking or vaping under the duress of unsustainable social niceties- Long neglected as defined Privileges
It is sweet and natural, that these are elusive to you at such a tender age, and will be forever if you continue your wreckless course, pretention and anarchy, exposing your moral vulnerablilty on whims, matcha and oatmilk Lattes, so readily in ‘down-time’?
Wouldn’t you too, make that two to a mere five-year plan, your reality? Compressing all your most valuable qualities for when they have the proper place and timing to flourish, comfortably, affluently. A measured, a holistic vision,
The reasonable kind of newspapers all call it: A Triumph! An economic advance unbridled by lagging infrastructure that allows every Worker to feel, real, true and authentic -benefit.
Routine Economics and PPE
There were conspiracy theories floating about that graduate interns were being drugged? Kept in some kind of human meat packaging, until work rolled round for them to earn a decent living. Rejigged for the 9AM with zero expenditure, debt- the green.
It played during new movie releases, even at those artsy cinemas that would ordinarily maintain a distance from any thing remotely, or at least explicitly, political. It was a collective feeling. Dawning on them painfully slow, inevitable and big, even within the confines of the small domestic bliss where bills kept dropping in.
‘You think I don’t know what goes on wid you an’ all dem boys you have comin ere all the hours of the day and night?’
‘Mind your own business. You live on your side of the yard, and I live on mine.’
‘Ah gwine call the police. A big white man like you behavin’ in such a low brow way. You should be ashamed of yourself.’
David Hawkins pulls up in his car outside Michael’s front door.
Michael invites him in. Holds up a half bottle of gin. ‘Care to join me?’ David shakes his head ‘No’.
‘It’s not like you to miss a rehearsal Michael, and you’ve missed two.’
‘She’s gone’
‘I thought you were expecting it.’
‘She didn’t recognise me.’
‘But that was part of her condition.’
‘It all feels like such a waste’.
‘What do you mean?’
Ten years ago, my father had an accident, and needed help looking after my mother, I thought it was an opportunity for us to finally live together as a family.’
‘You have never really spoken about your family to me. I only know that your mother was in the sanitorium after your father died.’
‘My Grandparents disapprove of my parents’ marriage. they thought my father was beneath her socially and he had no money.’
‘You mentioned that your father was a doctor and your mother’s mental health had always been fragile. Medicine is a highly respected profession, surely, your father would be seen as ideal.’
‘In those days psychiatry was new and suspect and very poorly paid (pause). I’m sorry if I’m going on. I just feel the need to talk.
‘I don’t mind listening,’ said David. ‘But as the director of the extravaganza, you can’t miss anymore rehearsals.’
‘When I was born, I was never the child they expected. I liked playing ‘dressing up’ in my mother’s silky undergarments. I didn’t like playing ‘rough and tumble’ with my male cousins. Instead, I liked to play ‘dolls house’ with my cousins Mable and Jane.’
‘I guess they all were at a lost as to what to do, and how to react to you. And you must have been bewildered as to why you were so different to everyone around you.’
‘Things came to a head, when I made an entrance at a Christmas party dressed up in my mother’s pearls, and a pair of her high heeled shoes.
‘I think I will join you in that drink Michael. Not gin, something soft.
After taking a long drink, David asked; ‘So how did your parents end up in Jamaica without you?’
‘As I grew older, and all attempts to interest me in manly pursuits failed, my mother’s health deteriorated.’
‘Were you ostracized within your own family for it? How did they treat you?’
‘They blamed me and I blamed myself. But they offered to help, by paying my fees for boarding school and getting a post for my father in Jamacia, where they felt the climate was more agreeable for her health.
Michael wiped his cheeks on his sleeves. He takes a deep breath.
‘I was bullied at boarding school. I just did not fit. I was a leper. I thought Cambridge would be an improvement, but I was wrong. That’s when I thought of suicide. As it turned out I was good at figures, and the war intervened.’
He pours another shot of gin. Drinks.
‘I got into intelligence, due to my talent with numbers. I enjoyed the war’.
‘You enjoyed the war!’
‘I was assigned to the Ghost Army, which was a technical deception unit that used inflatable tanks, fake aircraft, sound effects and fake radio transmissions to mislead and confuse the German military.’
‘The Ghost Army conduced more than twenty deception operations in Europe after D-Day, often working just miles from the front line. I went on twelve of those missions, completely confusing the enemy with fake radio transmissions, that resulted in victory for our troops well beyond D-Day but while other officers who participated far less than I did, got recognized for their efforts, I was overlooked with the filmiest of excuses.’
‘That must’ve been tough. Poor you.’
The experience was another blow to my self-esteem, but I learnt I had other talents; entertaining the troops. I found I could use the knowledge gained in the Ghost Army for stage craft. Set design, stage management, props and lighting.
‘Did you decide on the theatre as a career after coming out of the army?’
‘I had found my calling. And, of course, that’s where I met Kevin. The love of my life. The first meaningful relationship I ever had. But I believe Kevin loved being an actor more than he ever loved me.’
‘It’s great that you stayed together after all these years.’
‘He went to New York as an understudy to the lead in a major West End play and stayed on. He’s still chasing his dream.’
‘Was that about the time you left for Jamacia?’
‘It was. He said we would be closer.’
‘I get the impression that Kevin loves you as much as he loves acting. Afterall, he moved to New York, so he would be closer to you. And he’s kept faith with you all these years.’
‘Do you really think that?’
‘I got a letter for you; I picked it up from the theatre.’
‘Why didn’t you say? Only Kevin writes to me there’.
‘You were in such a state, I forgot.’
Michael reads the letter, a smile spreading over his face as he does so.
‘Kevin has landed the lead in a Broadway Play and expresses the wish that I could join him in New York on his journey to becoming a star.’
Tears rolled down his cheeks, and he wipes them away with the back of his hand. He collects the gin bottles from the kitchen cupboard, and pours the gin down the sink.
Veronica Robinson is Jamaican/British. She started writing in Jamaica for the evening newspaper, producing stories, articles and an advice column. She contributed in two short films and a flash fiction story to City Lit magazine ‘Between the Lines’. For the past ten years, she has been attending a writers’ group and focusing on writing short stories and flash fiction.
I’m standing here contemplating the cool clear water. The splash from the pebble lasted only a second and the ripples cleared so quickly.
I had thought your ripples would last forever but nothing can last forever and only the clear water will follow me.
In my solitude I’ll leave no trace at all.
Chaos Theory
On this canvas of my life it looks as though butterflies were flapping their wings and flitting about at every opportunity making trouble having fun and shaking things up a bit.
I struggle to discern underlying patterns. It’s regularities and irregularities were left to the butterflies and their flitting and flapping. In the end they flapped the clouds away.
So tomorrow I shall paint a new canvas. On this canvas, I am the butterfly. I can make the patterns, the order or disorder. Others may
make of it what they will.
Cycle
I felt such bright energy flowing I couldn’t wait to move with it and be transplanted and reborn at the time when all of nature was recreating itself and starting afresh, I too would feel the new buds open bursting and shooting into a new life.
I would open up my blowsy petals and let my heart show through pulsing, exuberant, ready to turn towards the summer sun, not believing it would destroy my bloom, make my petals fade and fall when the shock of the new wore off and the fresh green shoots grew brown, preparing for the season of wrinkles which always follows.
I am only one part of nature’s cycle where nothing will change, except that summer will have gone, winter will surely follow fall
and spring will be a long way away.
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes. You can find Lynn at Blogspot and Facebook.
You can find more of Lynn’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Marc’s apartment was on the ground floor and Paul said handing out candy would be a good thing to do even though Marc had avoided it all four years here in the city.
The two sat on Marc’s stoop.
“Halloween used to be my favourite holiday,” he told Paul, who’d picked up three bags of Mounds from CVS. They sipped from tumblers of Fireball. The wet cinnamon on their tongues, along with the smell of damp leaf petrichor, transported them home. They were two white boys who’d fled the white suburbs for West Philadelphia. Marc’s stoop had a view of the Avenue, and the young men watched nearly three car crashes and one subway trolley accident transpire.
“Looks like people are dropping kids off on the…gentrified blocks,” said Paul. “Can’t blame them.”
“When I was a kid, we’d put out this gaudy dancing skeleton flag. Sometimes a Muppet cat,” said Marc. “Seasonal ‘90s shit. The other neighbors would put them out too.” Marc drained his whiskey. “Nothing like that here.”
A group of teenagers, who were Black, approached Marc’s stoop with their bookbags swung over in front.
Marc asked, “Where’s your costumes, guys?”
They held out their bags and stared. Marc didn’t ask again.
Paul and Marc had exhausted all three candy bags well before 8:00 PM, when Marc suggested food. He pushed himself off the stoop, knocking over his fourth tumbler of whiskey, sliding an ice pearl on the porch.
“How many drinks is that?” Paul had tsked when Marc had reappeared with his third.
“Kill the lights before any more kids jump down our throats.”
Marc was drunk in a way in which, when he squinted, streetlights became segmented bars, like the white cells around orangeflesh.
Another trolley boomed. They hurried to the south side of the Avenue.
Across the street, moonlight shone on the upper bars of the geodome jungle gym.
Three teenage boys chucked Good & Plenty boxes at a man in a cow costume. Had the teens been one of the groups Marc had wanted to refuse? He cursed at them – loud enough for them to hear.
“You want to get us shot?” said Paul, who still read the university newspaper’s crime column. He pushed Marc down the Avenue. Then an African American man hunching in front of the liquor store beckoned, saying he needed something to eat.
Paul said, “Sure, friend, I got you,” and dug into his pocket.
“Anything helps. Anything. I’ve gotta eat.”
Paul gave the man a fistful of change. Marc stormed away.
When Paul met him a half-block from the liquor store, Marc said, “He lied. He’s going to go in there and buy booze. You’re not helping him.” Paul only thought on the surface of matters; when Marc turned he saw, sure enough, the man strolling into the liquor store. After another streetcar bumped past, Marc and Paul walked into the Green Garden. In the last four years, Marc and Paul had ordered from the Green Garden about once a week. They’d eat sesame tofu on Marc’s porch and drink.
Instead of a crowded store, Marc saw only the family who worked there, sitting at the lone table, enjoying something from ceramic bowls and plates. The store was completely empty.
No one ever dined at that frail table and chairs. A tall, gray thermos with a silver ring around its base stood in the middle of the table.
Marc had assumed a friendship out of mutual nods and smiles with the Green Garden owner, a woman whose name was Li Ming, but her American name was Emily. The family’s environment contrasted with the teenagers in the park. The family sipped from deep spoons, their expressions peaceful, statuesque. It all appeared like a Norman Rockwell painting, something from Nighthawks.
“Look at that thermos,” Paul said, pointing.
“Yeah. Bet there’s some high-grade ginseng in there. You could go for days. Like a steam engine.”
“Go get me two spring rolls,” said Paul, frowning.
Marc pushed inside while Paul stayed out.
The table was set under a small sunbleached poster of a soft pretzel. The woman, Emily, her husband, and then her daughter turned; she wiped her mouth with a beige cloth. The teenage daughter, who Marc called by her American name, Natalie, wore an Eagles crop top. You’d never see Natalie out trick-or-treating. “You’re not closed, are you?” he said. Questions heated his forehead. Why were they here in the customer area?
“No! Come in!” Emily’s husband blurted. He strode through the door behind the counter.
Marc stared at the broth, at the four oil pearls clustered into a comma. The food he couldn’t recognize either. The thermos was tall and rose almost to Natalie’s chin.
At the window, Marc ordered sesame tofu and Paul’s rolls. Emily and Natalie still sat over the soup, the cups of hot tea, and the gray thermos. “That tasty? I bet it’s why you’re so…successful. Not like,” and he nose-motioned to the boys in the park. Emily and Natalie stared at each other. Finally Paul entered. The two moved near the flickering ATM. “That,” Marc said, “it’s the whole package. It’s not on the menu either. Not the stuff we get. This is the authentic shit.”
“Let’s get our food and go.”
“I feel like I’d eat an animal if I could harness this.”
Marc had convinced Paul to go vegetarian in high school; Marc liked to say how he himself bothered to give a shit about animal rights. The two had met during Wednesday meetings for the school’s literary magazine. Then at college, Marc enlisted Paul to attend protests: on Chestnut for protected bike lanes; on the Parkway for the Women’s March (Marc always had Paul take pictures of the two in front of those crowds); until, finally, their activism evolved into something resembling a working love relationship.
Emily took the plates, bowls, and cups, walking them back behind the counter, until only the gray thermos remained. “Think I could grab it and go?” Marc pointed.
“Do not,” said Paul.
Marc strolled to the counter and grinned at Emily. Then Natalie peeked out, and Marc gazed at her, smiling when she turned his way. Then a familiar voice bristled the air.
It was the man who’d been begging outside the liquor store – the man Paul had given money to. The man asked Emily for money. She shook her head with a curt smile. Then he asked Natalie, who also said no. Something brown-mustard color dappled the man’s long, tobacco-smelling jacket. Marc glared into his eyes which appeared yellowish, with scleras the color of eggnog. “You can’t come here asking for money. This family’s trying to run a business. Get your drunk ass out.” Marc’s face heated and reddened. The man seemed to quiver in front of him. Then, as slowly as the man had slumped in, he lurched away.
Marc couldn’t help smiling and swaggered back to Paul. He’d expelled a trespasser. Saved their business!
The husband said their food was ready.
“You think they saw how I kicked out that rando?”
After Marc settled up, he clutched their bag and asked, “What were y’all eating?” He smiled wide. “What was in that thermos? Can I buy that?”
Emily and Natalie exchanged a few words in Chinese. Then Natalie turned to Marc and said, “I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time.”
“Don’t listen to her!” said Natalie.
Emily glared at Natalie, then tapped her fist against the table as if she were doorknocking, brushed her hair back over her forehead, and stiffened. “Go,” she said.
“Whatever,” he said, and pushed past Paul with his bag.
—
Earlier that night, Li Ming had meant to discuss Li Nan’s behavior here in the store, with her husband. She’d reached into her own bag, pulled out the thermos, and set it on the table where it clanked in front of her daughter. “Your Father and I,” she began in Mandarin, “Want to know what you had in the freezer. When I caught you and Dwyn.” Li Ming had caught the girls smoking something in there the night before. Now she unscrewed the bottle. “I know you got this from Dwyn. What do you think we should do about it?” Dwyn was a 17-year-old like Li Nan. The two went to high school together and, the times Li Ming talked to Dwyn, the girl self-promoted. Li Ming might ask, “So what’s going on with the school construction? Are they just paving the lot?” Dwyn’s parents sat on the Board. But Dwyn would only talk about how the bulldozers made it harder for her to park her E-type.
Li Nan eyed the missing ceiling tile above the ATM. “I don’t know,” said her daughter. “Say we can never hang out anymore?”
“You don’t have to do that!” her husband said. What a fool. Li Ming exhaled. “What is this in the bottle? Another drug? Because if that’s what she gave you, you’re never seeing her again.”
Li Nan shouted, “You don’t love me!”
Li Ming tapped the table with her knuckles, twice. “It can mean whatever you want it to.”
Then that boy had charged in like he’d wanted to make love to their food.
—
Li Ming had endured Marc for about three years. On good days, he’d leave immediately after paying. One balmy summer evening, Marc had annoyed her with a story of when a man came up to him on South Street back when he was a freshman. “I told the guy, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t give you money,’ he’d said to her at the counter. “And you feel big when you get to say money before them. They always start in with something vague.” His voice aped: “‘Can I ask you a question, man?’ Or, ‘Can I tell you something?’ Then the guy asks me for a subway token – said he’d pay for it – I thought he was telling the truth.” Customers behind Marc glared. “So I dig around,” Marc said, “all while the guy just goes off in anticipation of getting his stuff. How he needs to take a bus to see his daughter, and how he’ll pay me back. ‘Anything would help, my friend, anything you can spare.’ And I gave him a token. The guy searches his pocket and then puts his hand over mine.” Marc winced. “But when I open my hand there’s just a penny. The guy had tricked me. Can you believe that?”
—
One night later, the subway streetcar thundered above ground at the 40th Street Portal and bumped onto the Avenue. Marc stumbled off the trolley at 50th. Paul followed, comparably more sober. “We’re going to get some food?”
“Some special food,” said Marc. “Off-menu tonight.”
The Green Garden smelled of fries, cherry blunts, and perfume. Six other customers congregated by the table and chairs. Natalie stood by the door to the workers’ area with her white female friend, who Marc sometimes saw hanging around the store. (This was Dwyn.) Customers were lined up at the window. The friend wore one of those puffy jackets common in late ‘90s R&B music videos; she had trophy-blonde hair as if she were transplanted from the white suburbs Marc and Paul had also deserted.
Marc cut in front to get to the counter and knocked.
Paul rushed to him and grabbed his wrist. “I cannot deal with you right now.”
Natalie appeared in the window.
Marc said, “The…meal you were eating last night. Whatever was in that thermos. I want to order it.” He smiled and slid to the left, facing Emily. With all the charm he could mobilize he said, “That…dish you were eating yesterday. The tea, the soup, whatever was in that thermos.” Emily shook her head no, smiling. He waited for a look of recognition. “Not a problem,” Marc said to Paul, “this is a cultural difference. Living in a city we need to recognize quirks!” But when he turned, Paul was halfway out of the door. Maybe Paul was saying something about Marc’s drinking again. He turned back to Emily. “You, you know what I’m talking about, Emily,” he said, trying to enunciate. He inhaled and spread his shoulders wide, taking up all the space he could.
“That’s not for you,” she said.
“That’s,” his head shot up, “not what you say to me.” His voice was drained of emotion.
“That’s not for you.”
“Tell me!” Marc shouted. “Tell me what it was. I can get it somewhere else, God.”
Someone behind him shouted. But Marc stayed anchored. Then Natalie strolled out and Marc smiled at her. Emily rapped her knuckles on the register twice, exhaled, and said, “Just a minute.” Natalie slunk back to the register. The door separating the restaurant and customer area opened. Emily waved him in, flitting her hand while glowering at Marc and Natalie.
The smell of soy sauce and floury deep-fried food swamped him. The orange subway tile appeared dappled with droplets. Emily led him down a cramped hallway toward the freezer. Marc made a fist, but she only motioned for him to wait and then emerged with the thermos. Excitement crackled in his cheeks.
“I’m not sure,” she said, “please, don’t drink. My daughter and her delinquent friend had it.”
Marc ripped away the thermos. He unscrewed the top, swirled the bottle around, touched the cold opening to his lips, and swigged. It was icy. He tasted – ginseng? Some dribbled onto his stubble and he wiped with his sleeve.
She still had her hand out for the thermos. But he drank the rest in four gulps and shoved it into his hoodie. Now the wind was gnawing his cheeks like he’d just shaved. He was waiting in the rain for the trolley at 50th and Baltimore Avenue. As a dump truck passed the park, the space its haul bed left revealed a figure brooding on the geodome. It was the man who’d been begging for money in the store. Emily gripped his wrist. The man’s long, ratty coat whipped in the wind. Perhaps it was the same man who’d tricked him for a subway token all those years ago in college, maybe. “Oh my God,” said Marc. “There he is. O-on top of the jungle gym. I’m gonna kill him.”
“What?” said Emily.
“On the jungle gym. Disrespecting you,” he whispered. “They do! Always.” Now he tasted blood.
The man atop the geodome clamped his hands to his patchy beard. He grunted, and his leg flinched over one of the steel poles. It looked as if he were struggling to open a heavy door. Then the man split off his face, and a u-shape of droplets spit across the gravel. The man had a tiny skull like a Saint Bernard’s. His body slumped over the jungle gym and collapsed into the rocks next to a toy turtle.
“We need to take you to the hospital,” Emily mouthed.
The trolley clanged up, its headlights cutting through fresh rain. When she followed him onboard he said, “We need to go to Chinatown,” and he knew that she knew all about the delinquents in his life.
They sat together near the middle row. Rain surged in the trolley floor’s grooves. Emily stared up at him. She must’ve known he was flying. The face of a lawyer in the trolley ceiling wailed, asking if he was having issues with workplace harassment. Marc said to Emily, “You’re not taking me anywhere but Chinatown.”
He reached over Emily to pull the cord to signal his stop. He jerked her up by her wrist. The trolley swung left as it neared the Portal, where streetcars plowed underground to head to Center City. He rocked into her; she smelled of deep fryer. He wanted to tell her to move, but his jaw felt wired shut. He activated some confidence to stand as the streetcar approached the Portal. But Emily was yammering on about the Emergency Room?
And then they stood out in the cold rainy wet at the Portal. Wind breezed in his armpits. “You wouldn’t,” he whimpered, his voice teetering, “trick me, right?”
“What?”
“This,” and he tried counting the stops to get to Chinatown in his head but it all blurred. “This is my vision quest.”
“You need the hospital. Now. Give that to me,” she said.
“Fuck what you think I need,” said Marc.
—
There was something about that thermos glinting in his clutches. He was sick and he had learned. Everyone relied on Li Ming but they pushed her aside. She was turning to walk back to her restaurant when Marc howled, “I’m sorry I told you guys you needed costumes,” he screamed. “I’m sorry!” And in moments, he was running, scanning behind him as he went, deep into the subway tunnel, as if some unseen force were chasing him.
Perry Genovesi lives in West Philadelphia, works as a public librarian, and serves his fellow workers in AFSCME District Council 47. His first book, Skintet and Other Tales of the Brassican American Experience in Philadelphia, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag. His work has won the O:JA&L Weitz Prize, and has been nominated for Best of the Net (2025), and Best Microfiction (2024). You can read him in The Santa Monica Review, Bridge Eight, BOOTH, and collected on tiny.cc/PerryGenovesi. He wishes the Good, Bad & Ugly theme would play whenever he faces someone at the other end of the sidewalk & there’s just a hairline path shovelled in the snow wide enough for one person. IG and Bluesky.
It is a grey day in November as I sit here, across from a sleepy woods, The trees as naked and denuded as barstool dancers. The trees shoot out limbs and branches that crisscross as they puncture the sky, And the limbs are as sharp as the Popsickle sticks that I sharpened against the sidewalk when I was just a wee bitty kid who would got lost in the sharpening. The dreariness of the woods in November overwhelms me, Suffocates me. The trees outside my window are moldy and lifeless, The bark on their outer shells tracks like naked ancient ribs that transgress up and down the trunks, which feel leaden and stiff and impermeable. It’s a long afternoon in one’s life. Time tumbles around the nude trees and comes to rest in a seemingly dead or extraneous branch or a limb. The world is dormant, waiting. Outside another condo unit, Christmas trees lights are visible. They shine pathetically against the dark urgent grey of the day. It is a dead time of the year. My soul feels dead. Limbs and branches spread from the trunks of the trees Like veins carrying sap.
The River
The wily Des Plaines River flows and seeks its way south, Originating in Wisconsin and toddling through northern Illinois Until it reaches Ryerson Woods, where I am now standing In utter delight and astonishment at its quiet and slurky beauty. It is a modest river. It is not the Mississippi. It is a river of quiet charms and hidden wisdom. It makes its shy and incandescent way, taking its time. The river is much cleaner than when I was a kid and could smell its putridness as I approached it at Dam No. 2 in Des Plaines. I stand near the riverbank and gaze north, and before me, a tree of mystery has plummeted into the river, its limbs and branches broken and bending into the plane of the quiet river and interrupting the silent wisdom of the river. The dead limbs are black and tangled together like a neurosis of nature as if they had some mysterious incestuous spirit. Before me, a great blue heron perches on one of those dead limbs, its neck like a stovepipe, its body as slim as a whisper, its legs like pencils. A leftover from the Age of the Dinosaurs. The sight of the bird flies me against reason and memory. I walk farther north, tracking with the river, and see that about a quarter mile further, The river bends elegantly to the west and takes its current and due course, The bend is impossibly sophisticated, and trees tip like sharp-eyed witnesses to hover and protect the river. I think immediately of the Potawatomi people who once danced and fished and canoed on these ancient waters, And lived on land that we absconded, that we took without asking, that we took with mischievous treaties written in obscure and legalistic language that should and does cause shame. I hike along the river in the ghostly footsteps of those Potawatomi and hear the faint and cursed echo of their ancient presence and the chant of spirit that refers the river to evanescent enchantment. The river glides with resurrectionist spirit and rids me of the ancient screams of significance. The river glides like making love, with thoughtful and steadfast and regal insouciance and lack of care for the ways of us mere humans. The river holds secrets that barge into my soul and calm my dispossessed head. I fall to my knees and feel en-humbled.
Christopher Johnson is a writer based in the Chicago area. He’s done a lot of different stuff in his life. He’s been a merchant seaman, a high school English teacher, a corporate communications writer, a textbook editor, an educational consultant, and a free-lance writer. He’s 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 his first book, This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains. His second book, which he 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.
