Staring at the walls of solid, fixing my gaze at the vertical behemoth. Making sense of the chaos stolid I assess my situation.
It remains unbent despite strokes of age layering upon the face. Greying its colours to pulpy dents, soaking the nails without a hint of pain
My own personality crumbles, a bundle of nerves at the first tumble, the face sullen and the head stricken, the winds toss me into a feathery form,
The examination reflection shudders the soul, family ties convulse the spirit. The remaining verve is trapped in a hole dug at work and realized at home.
Shahzad Ahmad may be regarded as an undefined voice stuttering frenziedly at opportunities that knock hard before disappearing without giving definite answers. Something in him refuses to budge even when the torrents of rejection begin to bite at long held promise. The gift craves for acceptance and tries its hand at first experimentally, then with experiential hindsight and eventually like a battle hardened individual. The art of writing is a matter of responding to the world in a pretty much individual way that may allow other people to revisit that moment of truth.
“With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl,” sings Leonard Cohen of the streets whose stories still enthrall, so I pause to decipher the seal of Solomon his ode evokes.
The six-ponied star is at the peak of Saturn, the Lord of the Rings, and it was a ring with which Solomon bound the demons that reigned beneath, with which he commanded the wind and the sea and communed with animals and trees.
“Yes, one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose.” I continue listening to the song that haunted me in Glasgow, where one hand was on the ringed cross, and one hand on the unicorn.
The Hourglass
The sand is trickling in my mind. I recall when I last flipped the hourglass. I was only a ten-year-old, measuring my diligence against the world’s.
I had created my hourglass with molten marbles, the marbles that used to stud my playground. I coaxed them into shape, in the furnace of my dreams, those dreams of transcending the banal, then filled it with sand, collected from our ancient shores, the shores on which saints, prophets, and priestesses walked.
Each grain of sand has become a memory, a moment of triumph, a moment of grief, a translucent bead, encoding my past, mirroring my present, and predicting the end of my days.
Pleiadiens
Pursued by the lusting Orion, the seven daughters of Atlas, the Pleiades supplicated Zeus for interference, and hence became immortalized up in the spheres, a cluster of stars, out of Orion’s reach.
As I look out for them every evening, my pal insists that some of us are their distant relatives. Like Pleiadiens, telepathy is in our genes. We heal with music, but are sensitive to whatever screams and computer screens. Seekers of solitude, we relate to animals and trees and are vegetarians. We are enamoured with the ocean and Atlanteans. We occasionally experience déjà vu and rely upon our own instincts. We are teachers, helpers, and geometricians.
Eights
When I was a child, I was instructed to despise the number eight in this numerical garb: ٨ simply because its very two arms point downwards to the ground, whereas those of the number seven: ۷ benignantly point to the heavens. But then the Arabic numeral 8 is identical to the symbol of infinity when it is held horizontally.
In Greek the name of Jesus, the Christ, adds up to three eights, 888. Besides eight are the points of the Templar Cross and the petals of the Buddhists’ lotus flower. To Pythagoras, it is the symbol of victory. To me, it is the freedom from bigotry.
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.
Whoever he may have been, once, way back in the long ago, the wind must have just come along, one day, and absconded with his identity and his social standing all together, leaving him far from home and his friends, and only getting farther with each passing day, like a drunk man chasing his hat off the edge of a cliff.
Kick me (for David Floyd)
Strange to find, that all this time, you’ve been riding the donkey that you’ve been looking for (a kick me sign taped to your back, your glasses on your head, (as usual)).
I am a lineman for the county…
Now this is some old school elevator music says the guy riding up with me (each to our own individual vertical destinies (with no resting place for either one of us on this shared journey to what- ever private fates await us, respectively)), and it seems to be a sweet and syrupy string arrangement of Glenn Campbell’s Wichita Lineman, and we both just sort of Zen- out and mumble the words to ourselves while watching the floor number go up (and, apparently, old school elevator music is not without its psychological effects).
Nothing and Everything
A fat, blue Buddha moon is smiling and reflect- ing upon nothing and everything in the smooth glassy surface of an old horse trough full of rainwater.
Rowing Myself Across the River Styx
While I was busy drinking pink champagne from the silver slipper moon and snorting pixie dust off the plastique tit of a fallen angel type, I suddenly noticed my burial shroud didn’t have any pockets (having been snatched up rather unexpectedly by the deus ex machina of fate from a some- what tense and precarious moment like one of those Magic Claw toy machines descending from the clouds) and, apparently, I was gonna have to row myself in my own damn coffin across the river.
Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe and part-time sand wonderful woodland critters. Somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.
You can find more of Jason’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Each sunrise I measure myself against the shadow by Braille touch of warmth and cool along my stalk forced to accept a bit of afternoon bask stretching my head higher day by day as I seek my namesake, my maker, my God until I open my eyes, flourish in multi-headed frenzy to grow, to tower, to steal all the day’s sun because October creeps against my roots, and I must shine, must seed, must shiver a lone offspring to journey year after year against this iron sculpture, this metal perfection perpetually blooming under January icicles or July heat waves.
Silent… now in November after frost slowly pulls its shroud across my leaves, my heads, my stalk sucked hollow brown until I bow to the ground in drooping, withered pose unlike the ever-frozen sculpture that never feels sunshine full on its face or changes under December snows or disappears in park worker’s truck bouncing … waving goodbye.
Then Silence
Fog on the pond – a crow perches on a blurry branch. It caws a foghorn… then silence.
Open Choices
The door opens to choices – come in, see for yourself or walk past imagination intact.
Grandpa’s Gatherings
Grandpa’s house gathered from street-corner-free piles and last days of yard sales shimmed up with barn wood, covered with mismatched cushions and thin bedspreads.
Flattened tin cans nailed across cracks and holes like a train lost without its tracks to sit in rust.
Watched over by a black cat clock with eyes panning left, right, left, right every second as its broken stubby tail wags back and forth like an accusing finger.
Moved out to the curb a “free” sign hangs around the clock cat’s neck hoping its cuteness finds a new home.
Car Body
Abandoned car with hood, doors and trunk yawning wide for eyes to assess threat.
Abandoned car with hood, doors and trunk closed tight like a killer refusing conversation.
More afraid of the closed than open. Imagination conjures theories of opening a door to a mummified head bouncing out like a deflated basketball lolling between my legs. The trunk popped in jack-in-the-box surprise! with a corpse dangling from the lid. The hood conceals a severed arm jammed between bent fan blades; its fingers trying to crawl across the motor.
I dare not spread the weeds imprisoning the undercarriage; a leg bone splintered mid-thigh hangs toes in gallows foot suspension.
Diane Webster lives in western Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and elsewhere. Her haiku/senryu have appeared in failed haiku, Kokako, Enchanted Garden Haiku. Five micro-chaps have been published by Origami Poetry Press. 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.
Then he told her he’d been a carpenter all his life.
Which weren’t.
He were a postman for thirty-two year. He knew every street in Oldham by name. They gave him a plaque when he retired.
We put it in the loft when we moved him.
There were nowhere to hang it here.
She wrote down carpenter. I let her.
***
Eli pressed his face to the window. Out in the garden, three residents sat in plastic chairs. None of them moving much.
“There’s a cat,” he said.
There weren’t.
I did the labels the night before. Masking tape and permanent marker. Raymond Holt pressed into every shirt collar.
Every pair of trousers.
The comb he’d kept since before I were born.
My mam used to say he’d take that comb to his grave.
I wrote his name on the plastic. The first one smeared, so I wrote it again.
Forty-three labels.
***
The coordinator took us to the room. Dad sat on the bed.
He pressed both palms into the mattress—that same flat-palmed bounce from the Sunday furniture sales, his face set like he were gathering evidence.
That were still him.
Right there.
He looked up at the coordinator. “Have you met our lass?” he said. “She comes Thursdays.”
I were three feet away.
Eli turned from the glass. “That’s me mam,” he said.
Dad looked at me.
His mouth opened, then closed again. “Diane. I know it’s you, ya daft ‘apeth.”
He said my name. The one he’d chosen. He said it with the stress on the wrong syllable, sounding like a question he already knew the answer to.
Then he turned back to the coordinator. “Good lass, our Diane,” he said. “She comes Thursdays, don’t you, pet?”
I locked my knees to keep from swaying.
***
We walked him to the dining room. He sat across from a stranger and told him he’d been a carpenter for forty year. Built some solid stuff. The man said that was something.
Dad picked up his fork. He wrapped his thick fingers around the handle and started to eat, looking like he’d sat at this table every day of his life.
In the car park, our breath came out white. “Does Grandad know where he is?” Eli asked.
I unlocked the car doors. “He’s settling in.”
“He didn’t know you, though,” he said.
“He did. Just for a minute.”
Eli went quiet. He were six. A minute still counted at six.
***
At the junction, I kept my foot on the brake.
In the rearview, Eli stared back at the building. Waiting the way he did when a film finished, expecting something more to happen. On the back seat were two shirts with no labels. I’d run out of tape.
Dad’s own father were a carpenter.
Died donkeys ago.
There were no photographs of him in our house. No old chisels in the shed. Just a name that dropped out of the air the day they buried him.
Dad had spent thirty-two year wearing the map of Oldham into the soles of his boots.
He came home smelling of damp wool and exhaust fumes, his right shoulder permanently dropped from the canvas strap.
Not a speck of sawdust on him.
And now here he was, building himself from whatever parts remained.
Carpenter.
Father of three.
Raymond. Which were still true.
I hadn’t put my name anywhere he could find me.
Not on a label, not on anything.
The light went green.
I just watched it.
Ashley Mangtani is a UK writer whose work explores ecological and social collapse, and the roles people inhabit in moments of crisis. Drawing on an M.Sc. in Environmental Science and a background as a civil servant in digital media policy, he crafts stories shaped by inevitability and loss. Blending literary realism with slipstream elements, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Litro, Washington Square Review, Literary Garage, Half Day Moon Press, CommuterLit, Mercurius Magazine, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and Expat Press. Read more at ashleymangtanifiction.carrd.co
Unshed tears to cry Rich silk stockings strafe Beer burnished carafe Green silk butterfly Steel skies Fire Fly Ghost woman epitaph Hobbling a paragraph Faintly urine scented, passerby Blue dusk twilight Sabastian’s bark Dark lady fair man’s, plight Yellowstone national Park Mottle affairs moonlight Old sloppy eyes patriarch Gloaming grey midnight Such is life in a spark
Sleepy Whale 340
Woman’s receding hair Good for nothing me Ghost woman’s ecstasy Night after night nightmare All night playing solitaire Alabaster silent Poetry Butt of old Cigar absurdity Old man’s stare was unfair Dark lady and fair man’s Street Organ Steely sea Iron Bay Snot green, running gorgon Dark maze betrays North of Morgan Sewage breath decay
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Mottle affairs at work Sleepy Whale’s ink Unshed tears eyes pink Milk oozing Jerk Rich silk stockings lurk Sabastian’s rink Sheeting sea tide Brink Ghost woman’s quirk Crying at a yarn Grave yard dead cheap Wine dark Red Barn Lace fringed Bar-keep Weasel rats, darn Knock-kneed sheep
Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years; now he paints with words too. Poems in Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed. Winamop, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, Adelaide Magazine, Variant, the Writing Disorder, Ink Pantry, In Parentheses, Ariel Chat, New Ulster, Glove, and in Pamp-le-mousse, North Dakota Quarterly, Barzakh, Urban Arts, Wingless Dreamer, True Chili, LKMNDS and Elevation.
You can find more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry.
There is a room without windows. a man cracks the glass doors a woman drops a pearl earring.
My father’s face rises from my sleep. He tries to say something but his silent words turn into paper lanterns.
In the portico, autumn sunlight pools turn into squares, a crimson splash, a riot of colour in the trees.
The chaos and noise make a kind of sense, a few streetlamps cut the twilight, the city outside is geometric and bare.
Inside the shadows spilling into a rectangle are we wormholes to the other planets? No one speaks above whisper.
There is no clear path, clear surface, not all footprints echo, nor shout I stand before myself before a broken mirror.
Auburn Moments
I love cupid’s bow lips, rumpled forehead and untamed hair.
I love watching the butterflies’ yellow wings on peonies and red roses.
I love dancing in the open courtyards of Meenakshi Temple.
I love to visualize his bare flesh and bones traced into anonymity.
I love to see brushstrokes of the starry night creating smudges on the surface.
I love to compare border and boundaries with windows and willows.
I love to soak in the golden evening rays painting my moments auburn.
Whiteout
There was silence all around and then the growing sound. I went down and found my dining hall was flooded with snow. Pure white spontaneity.
The Patio door was damaged, allowing icy wind inside the hallway. Frosty fronds simmered in the windowpane.
Ice crystals were suspended in the ceiling. All my tables, chairs, sofas, bookshelf, floors were covered with white sheets
From this hallway I couldn’t tell if the swirling sweep of snow broke my walls outside the window.
I imagined walking into a kind of ground strode many times, and searching for inklings you could have left behind.
I remembered you always wanted to write a few lines for your existence in this muffled, mounted whiteout.
In your absence my world remained frozen forever. It’s white all around.
Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 33 books published, including eight solo/jointly edited books. His poetry is published across more than one hundred fifty journals and anthologies globally. His poems are translated in 18 languages and published in 17 countries. He has been nominated forPushcart Prize for poetry in 2021 and Best of the Net for poetry in 2025. He has been conferred First Jayanta Mahapatra National Award on literature in 2024 for his significant contribution in Indian English Writing. His poems were included in the Penguin Book of poems on Indian Cities. Some credits- The Madrid Review, The Poppy Road Review, Amethyst Review, Ink, Sweat & Tears, One Art Journal, Poetry Breakfast, Shot Glass Journal, Indian Literature and elsewhere.
You can find more of Gopal’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I walk through the park’s greenery, blink at the limpid cool of the water in the sudden burst of sun, as if it were the first time.
I cut through an alleyway, pass terraced cottages, walk under the arch, up the city’s incline, as if I have never ever done so.
As I press on, the streets open up, and suck me in, as if I have never, in the glare, ever seen their mishmash filmy coloured blur.
The sun chilled in the still evening air, I retrace my steps through the bustling market, down the alleyway, across the park, glance at its trees, sweeping green and glistening pond. I let myself be swallowed within its virginal embrace, and the thousand other times, as if I have never, through the tears and the sin, and bewildered staring eyes, ever strolled through the park, fresh and full in the bountiful newness of spring.
And Again Dust
The driveway, pummelled by relentless heavy tyres, yields up ghosts. Below today’s shifting tarmac lies another age’s stone-embedded off-white mortar, crumbling, I brush up, with dislodged pebbles, ready for rubbishing.
It collapses into elemental dust workmen once made pebble-dashed solid, curling into faces and clothes. White smoke drifts into my nostrils, and throat, chokes.
The disintegration of their works, the funeral pyre of that moment vanishing into air recreates their animation, and sweat, constructing into firm matter a time and space from the fumy grains they had at hand.
All Her Dreams
That’s where they said goodbye, and the gangway he walked down, never turning round.
They stood close, she said, he didn’t stir, till she gave him his cheek-kissed adieu. He turned, ticket in hand, joined the long, long queue travelling to distant lands.
He never looked back. She left, the busy, busy world of journeys, and trysts, to others.
She said goodbye, to nestling lovers’ bye-byes and, their swift welcome back. She’s missed that train.
Alan Hardy has for many years run an English language school for foreign students (in UK). He’s been published in such magazines as Ink Sweat & Tears, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Envoi, Iota, Poetry Salzburg, The Interpreter’s House, Littoral, Orbis, South, Pulsar, Lothlorien, 100subtexts, Fixator, Chewers, Fevers of the mind, Suburban Witchcraft and others. Poetry pamphlets Wasted Leaves (1996) and I Went with Her (2007). Though he has just recently started submitting again (after a little pause), he has always kept writing (and reading) poems.
“Next,” the stage manager called. I looked around to be sure it was my turn, and she repeated impatiently: “Next.” I took a deep breath, put on my combat face, stood up and walked to centre stage, struggling each step of the way to control my nervous trembling. Only the work lights were on, so I could clearly see the people running the cattle call. There were five of them. Why did they need five? Could this be one of those democratic collectives, where everyone argued instead of working? The stage manager handed what I assumed was my resume and head shot to who I assumed was the director. He briefly scanned it, then passed it onto the others.
I waited until the last person was finished reading and comparing me to the picture, trying to appear cool and confident. The director had been looking me up and down, lingering a moment too long on my breasts, which I resented, even though I should have been used to the unwanted attention by now. “Sing,” he said. I looked at him in surprise. “I was told that I only had to prepare a monologue,” I said. He ignored my feeble protest and said: “Sing.” “What kind of song would you like?” “Anything.” I took a deep breath and sang the first two lines of ‘Greensleeves’. I thought I was pretty clever,
since I was auditioning for a Shakespeare play and it might impress the inquisition panel. A lot of good it did. They stared at me blankly.
“Dance a beautiful dance,” he ordered. “I’m not a dancer. I’m an actress.” Once again he ignored my objection. “Dance a beautiful dance.” I briefly considered telling him to shove it, but I hadn’t done Shakespeare since college and I had learned that there were very few opportunities. So I did a beautiful dance. At least I thought so. It was some kind of cross between a waltz and a fox trot. It was the best I could do. There was no reaction from the inquisitors and I was beginning to get pissed off. If they wanted a prima ballerina they should have said so in the actor’s call in the trade papers. Part of me wanted to walk out without saying a word, but another part wanted to do the show. Besides, I didn’t want to give the assholes the satisfaction of watching me slink off, tail in the traditional place, another defeated actor.
By now I knew that something unexpected would be next on the menu, so I smiled pleasantly at the inquisitors. I got a quick rush of pleasure when some of them looked surprised. After all, it was obvious by now that they were trying to freak out the auditioners. They probably assumed by this time that the auditioners would be agitated and in the process of losing their stage persona. I had no idea why they devised this torture session. It was different from any audition process I had been through. Maybe they had already cast the show and were getting their rocks off by torturing some needy actors. Stranger things happened in theater. Whatever. I was here and I certainly wasn’t going to break down for their viewing pleasure.
The director gestured to the stage manager, who handed me a sheet of paper. It was in French. The director said: “Read.” I knew what he would say if I told him I couldn’t read French, so I read. Maybe Charles Baudelaire would have objected strenuously about my pronunciation, if he was there, but I was beginning to enjoy myself. “That’s enough,” the director said, staring at me expectantly. I guess he was waiting for me to ask how I did. I just stood there silently. He looked me up and down, again lingering too long on my breasts. “We’ll call you.” I just nodded and left. I knew they would call. I had seen that lecherous look before. Now it would be up to me to decide whether or not to do the show. Part of me was hungry for Shakespeare, but these were weird people. I wasn’t sure if I was up for any more bullshit in my life. Then I laughed. I didn’t have to worry about it until I got the call.
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theatre director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theatre. He has also been a tennis pro, ditch digger and salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction, essays and plays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. His traditionally published books include 46 poetry collections, 18 novels, 4 short story collections, 2 collections of essays, 8 books of plays and 16 Poetry Chapbooks. Gary lives in New York City.
You can find more of Gary’s work here on Ink Pantry.
