Bones in my chest show through skin, hidden by layers of winter drapery. Boots click cement paths – a delicate sound. It’s all part of the show! The audience member heckles, “Are you going to eat that?” and my bones burn in my chest. I say nothing – I’m a vicious thing.
Smoke and Mirrors
The box, decorated with question marks, is alive with sound. Within eight vertices, a harp strums. The rhythm is off, but my curiosity summits. I lift the lid, you jump out of the box, darting – here, there, everywhere. Cannot be caught, except in a lie.
Ban This Book
If I could be anything I’d be a banned book. Simmering with newspaper headlines, (some that didn’t make the front page) crowded with images of people Being And Expressing Themselves (their real selves). If I could be anything I’d be the rainbow in a storm, the tiny sliver of hope found in a truth-telling banned book.
Linda Sacco lives in Australia. Her poetry has been published in Ariel Chart, Bluepepper, Dead Snakes, Dual Coast Magazine, 50 Haikus, Haiku Journal, Haiku Pond, Inwood Indiana, Mad Swirl, Poetry Quarterly, Poetry Pacific, Tanka Journal, Three Line Poetry and Track + Signal Magazine.
In 2022, her poem River was nominated for The Pushcart Prize. In 2023 her poem Conversations with Trees was nominated for a Best of the Net award.
She is the author of the Which Is Your Perfect Pet? ebook series with titles on Dog Breeds, Designer Dogs, Cat Breeds and Birds. Rabbits and Rodents is due for release in 2025.
ballast blast in fog rendered Rembrandt grey and brown
bird-girdered bridges, damp with smog and expectation
soaking dream reflects the mirror of endless water
passing in the steel soaked bay
the roar of copper and spidery wire
to an arachnid the web is a fishing line exponentially strung
in the keys of pianos are remains of ivory teeth, black sticks of nightwatch,
strings and hammers
I want to feel your bosom thoughts the humid streets you take at night
there is new blood to be invented there are new words for flight
hills
when the sun breaks clear of its shackles bareback reveries memories of shame hang in blackened frames
we disembark watch the sun glitter on the skirted hills
tetractys
I pound with hollow hands wicked strawmen swirling in the storms gradually clear
mighty oblivion invites me in but I step back and blow down the dark (what?)
I dreamed at my canvas in a dense blue I drew a cloud and from it a thought Grew
Whence A phrase Makes no sense And will not rhyme It’s time to make its meaning in reverse
Play with the words for a while, examine The rise and fall of phrases in your Mind
Putting on the dog was never such fun A mystery of barking in the Night
Day brilliant in its sky shining proudly As the tempest swirls in the blue distance
our septic night comes down like eggplant skin or something fine and easily embraced
it steams its butter in the waxy light the only eye not sleeping under dreams
I behold sleeping moon open iris down the night of smiles to the fierce violet
Doors barely open; sleeping in our greys House of no smiles Wind-drenched streets black sun Blind
Moon In the Fatal skies I saw two clouds walk on green water in the failing dusk: Do I see where I am going? Look sharp – This black curtain, Timeless mask Reveals moon
Landay Land
I thought you were going to pieces But it appears the pieces are all mine to give you.
When the flowers rustle in the night You sneak away to see me; moon in front of my eyes.
Love is never as it appears, love; No shutter-snap can capture its essential tonic.
Phases
New Moon. I am the crater you cannot see I am blind to war, to peace.
Waxing Crescent. My first blade, cut to precision.
Second Quarter. Half is what you want, Half I determine for you.
Waxing Gibbous. My pregnant labors yearn for completion, apotheosis.
Full Moon. I am lone wolf roaring in the sunset.
Disseminating. Return trip; runaround, a brazil nut. Egg.
Last Quarter. Slow motion blink. The second is my first face.
Balsamic. Sitting back, eaten slow
New Moon. I am the eye again that can see only itself.
Steven Stone has been writing for a long time and has worked with many styles. Steven writes about different subjects, but seems to always come back to metaphysical type work with a generous amount of imagery.
You can find more of Steven’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I would have loved thee more I wished thee stay for aye Gripping my arms in breast of yours So dimmed my wits that believed this life But failed to notice its shadow. Now I score thy grave to see thee more And sleep with thee in this dark meadow. My prose for thee have grown into weeds So stiff, so pale… With lifeless views. My blood had shrank in inks of nibs That sketches the ribs of yours. I smell thy hairs I smell thy torcs And kiss it over and over To cry in thee, To be in thee, To fade in thee forever.
Srijit Raha hails from Berhampore, India. He is an English Honours graduate from the University of Calcutta. He is an avid reader of poetry and historical books. He has his previous works published in various international journals and newspapers. His books FALLEN BLOOMS ( Poetry Collection) and CALCUTTA BURNED ALIVE (Historical Read) is available worldwide in the market.
There was something about the funeral It was poorly attended. There were three of us; myself, my wife, and her son in all. It took place on Long Island surrounded by the sea. Beth Moses was the cemetery name. The grounds were bare. We did not have a rabbi, so I was given a book to read in English what were Hebrew prayers. I made it short and spoke instead. At the grave I looked. It was freshly dug and I smelled the earth. Softly, I said: “My father was always there for us. He was honest and we were never misled. He was a simple man who will be missed.” As we prepared to leave crows were gathering in the evergreens.
Unnamed
Because we sat down and the lights dimmed the film started. Because we had not seen the film before we were attentive. Had we seen the film before we would have walked out. Because the night was unpredictable, though dangerous, it was interesting. We watched the credits, though we forgot them immediately. We stole a quick glance at one another, even though we knew each other. The man sitting in front of me was tall. I only saw the topmost part of the screen. It was enough to get the gist of the movie. It was a mystery, I think. It was a foreign film with subtitles. I could only read the ends of the dialogue when it passed the tall man’s head. I think it took place during wartime because there were so many shots of planes and the men wore hats. It was a period piece, you understand. I jumped. There was a sound like the backfire of a truck; someone was shot. The audience gave way to sighs. My date pressed my hand in reassurance. The tall man got up and left. I was glad even though someone had to die for it to happen. From then on, the pace quickened. They were Germans, alright, Nazis; you could tell from the haircuts. In the city square, people swarmed in. A man on a platform addressed them, pumped his dominant arm and they cheered him. The tide shifted. It was our turn now. The Nazis ran. They bought tickets to South America. They tore off the thunderbolts from their collars. The square was littered with death heads. The people started dancing. They formed broken lines in circles like the farandole. The camera lens was wide angled. The dancing swelled to the edge. Then off it went. The audience was dancing. We were dancing. We moved in and out and turned in a circle. We danced into the street. There was such laughter, it almost sounded like tears falling, like planes passing, and I wore a hat.
The Arms of Venus
Venus, of the House of Xtravaganza, was a young boy who was a young girl who walked the catwalks of the Ballroom Culture of Harlem. She was sure sinuous, blonde, light- skinned, thin as any model was and as she said, there was nothing masculine about her. She wanted what all girls want: a home of her own, a family, a man who loved her, children. She figured in the documentary Paris Is Burning. It was the highlight of her life before a camera. She was a natural for it. She was 23 when they found her. It was a Christmas morning when the police were called about suspicious circumstances. Venus’s body was shoved under a bed in a seedy hotel room in Manhattan. She had been strangled. Her birth mother and her adopted House Mother are still looking for the killer. No one knows who did it. Another culture, antagonistic to the Ballroom Culture, was responsible. There exists an Executive Order that denies her existence, that scrubs her from the Book of the Living. Poor dear, she was enchanting in all those scenes where she lay in bed even in plastic curlers.
Jack Galmitz was born in 1951 in New York City. He attended the public schools from which he graduated. He holds a Ph.D in American Literature from the University of Buffalo. He has published widely, in print and online journals, including Otoliths, FIxator Journal, Utriculi 2025 issue 2, Offcourse #102, Former People, and others. He lives in New York with his wife.
The statue of Apollo stood in the museum´s hall, in the midst of the sculptures of the brightest antiquity-time. The man visited it with the clearest Arthurian grail, so that Phoebus awoke, with sheen of the first moon and star.
That Apollo was a friend of the museum´s warden,
who knew in moony dreams the petrified tears for ever. Apollo in the dazzling stone meant a whiff of the time. Nobody felt like eternally tender morn – a dream.
However amusing miracle of midnight happened. The Phoebus became like a German-human, the soft man, when Apollo was awakened through the enchantment. And his heartlet was manlike as well as so immortal.
Apollo was able to think and muse such an oracle. And he sent meek sagacity into the gentle spring. The oracle showed only worlds like tenderly made pearls. Apollo and this oracle had the souls from star-wind.
He was in position to dream like eternal dreamer. His dreameries had epiphany of the hot wings-tides. The souls of the divine sweetheart could bewitch hearts and tear, perpetuate thus – softly the spell-like feast for the eyes.
The God could write poetries such night ovidian offspring. He adored the spell of moonlet and tender shooting stars. The enchanted distant night shone dreaming, gleaming, glinting. His soul was close the gracefulness of the benign homeland.
The envoy of Elysium wanted to philosophize. The ontology of miracle became most lovely. The naiads became fair she-friends of the eternal things. The celestial eudemonia became just so dreamy.
Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is poet who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku as well as long poems. Paweł has published his poetries in many magazines. He writes in English and German.
You can find more of Paweł’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Out of the apartment, striding down East Eden Street, I note how it might feel to be homeless— desperate free-
falls into nothingness. I’m also gladsome I’m not homeless yet; desperation, thankfully, distant, inaccessible.
Yet also inaccessible is the warmth of a life richly lived, which I used to know well. As the sun rises,
something or someone other than “I” sees the whole tableaux, meets me in the middle with it from above—
wires, row-homes, branches, lights— the latent morning tense, trying, East Eden still asleep, I’m awake—
Apparition Poem #2051
Each day, I’m hollowed by the Recession’s vacuum, & either create my life or perish— no sense of safety or coherence from a storied past. As I walk Conshohocken’s streets, I note the sky, just before dawn, amusing itself in pastels— ice on branches over tiny front/ back yards— all held self-sufficiently in time’s objective indifference, which I now feel passionately about, for & against, December’s circuits—
Adam Fieled is a writer based in Philadelphia. New releases include the re-release of the Argotist Online e-books The Posit Trilogy, The Great Recession, and Mother Earth. A magna cum laude Penn grad, he edits P.F.S. Post.
You can find more of Adam’s work here on Ink Pantry.
In the car my trainee says I like Chick-Fil-A but I am not devout in response to the chain’s
construction across the street from the Panera we deliver food for. And I want to say
If you care about gay rights how can you stomach the roadkill they sell? It is disgusting
and we should spit on it. Spit on McDonald’s, too. McDonald’s always spits on us!
I ate it up through childhood. You know how some say they don’t care until someone hurts
someone they care about? Be brave enough to care
about the person more
than the sandwich.
Strip District
You work the pole– sweet iso, that gig, mix of propyl and pyro and sweet sixteen, blown out birthday candles– in the Strip District. That works, the arrangement invoking higher powers (Catholic because the universe placed you in rural Pennsylvania). You have recovered enough for so & so. Got your mind back, your gig’s a block from mine, by Uber, by auto, by ware -house. Before sun sets I am ready to quit my office job again, but I’ll think of you when I pass your work so dark when it’s dark, so warehouse when it’s bright, you bright? I’m worn as a shoe I wear the same ones every day for years and years and years.
Stand
I am begging for you to be well. At Spirit in Lawrenceville. Lung cancer I can’t stand this for you. I love you enough to know this world is too crowded without you & me standing around, heads bobbing, at another live show at a smoky dive bar, asking each other what we want next & how much more dearly in this life can we stand to lose?
At Jozsa Corner
You show me your ring from across the table at Jozsa Corner purple glinted trophy a fern to see you over table just fingers stretched endlessly in the wooden field of my eyes I didn’t try to find you allowed only the vase of petals to interrupt us eucalyptus without features I wanted to stop with this pot of gold display but I am becoming beyond my means more materialistic too waiting for flicks of phone to tell me what waits at my doorstep nothing so glamorous as commitment nothing but capitalist tendencies thrust in my face everywhere
In Line
Seconds pass. Butterflies wing, a note floats spring sprawled across, cursive, swarming into new jazz harmony to -gether in the melting lease of body.
James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. His latest chapbook is A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023). Recent poems are in ITERANT, Stirring, and The Indianapolis Review. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville, Tennessee. Instagram. Bluesky.
You can find more of James’ work here on Ink Pantry.
It should’ve taken only that scouting, squawking jay to get the word out.
Framed in a pane, on a perch, he was posed, a post card, puffed
against the brittle cold. His stylish scarf feathers flicked an impatient face,
and his scruffy topknot signaled who knew who in the neighborhood:
“Easy Supreme and Sunflower Mélange swinging free off this deck!” See, he’d need
some wirier guys to stir it up, to urge the tiny silo to flowing so he could
swoop in, scoop out the run-off: “Anyone game enough to give it a go?” But, no.
And now, not a single soul for supper.
Mallards, Mounted on a Chimney Wall
I’ve a vague idea how they ended up these two hundred lovely feet from shore, this side of the tall double panes, veering
over the owners’ photos propped on a mantle, over an old golden retriever twitching now on his sheepskin rug. So I doubt it was due
to the wrenching updraft depicted in their implausible contortions, the bunched shoulders of their posed wings.
As mild chili simmers and Mozart saws an easy soundtrack, they strive flat against fine brick, forever matching
their sapphire chevrons, the shriveled orange leaves of their feet. Meanwhile, the drake’s clamped beak and his
wild dark eye seem to be carving today’s northwest wind as if to permit his trailing hen her subtle luxury
of squinting—as if, in wrestling her fixed pin of fate, she entertains the greatest questions: Why are we here? Where are we going?
Will we ever arrive? And, in a far softer thought that has me perched on this hearthside chair, my ear tiptoed to her dusty brain:
Why does it have to be me?
Lakeside Bird Feeder, Squirrels
Now if I had ambition I’d be this kung fu squirrel, this lighter one, this Jackie Chan, scaling stucco
to ledge to chimney to the hovering skid of the evil whiz kid’s waffling chopper, perpetual motion my only gear,
my sidekick wacky as this blacker one, who tries but can’t quite nab his half of the substantial stash. Their
choreography is manic, their fight scenes replete with wall-walking, roof leaping, jumps across gaps and gorges—all
their own improv’d stunts, every feat a fleeting, one-take opportunity. It’s those reflexes that make the difference:
when gravity catches their rare missteps they can spin around an inch-thick span of diagonal steel or the slippery rim
of a seed-spill dish, always squirming all four feet first—whereas I’d just drop, back-ass-down to the unforgiving earth,
my spindly claws and my mangy tail spread like a shredded chute, a plea for anyone at all to catch me. So,
I’ll leave these antics to my friends, for today, the squirrels, until I can find a way to foil them, deter them from
this wintertime welfare I’ve intended for the birds, whose more manageable business will give me the docile pleasure
I’ve been seeking: sitting here in a chair, swathed in luscious listlessness, slinging these escape lines toward anywhere I wish.
Field Notes from an Old Chair
Well, they’ve come, these early crews though it’s only March, which in Michigan means maybe warm one day, the few new tender greens making
sense, then frigid and snow the next four, fragile bodies ballooned, all fuzz but feeding and competing just the same. Who would’ve ever guessed you’d be happy
anticipating birds? Since you’ve taken up the old folks’ study of how certain species seem to like each other, showing up in sync like the field guides specify, your chair’s
been scribing the short, inside arc between the feeder and where you’ll catch a bloody sun going down. Then, mornings, if you forget, two doves startle you when you startle them from a window well,
and as if the titmice and chickadees, finches and nuthatches can read they trade places on perches all day— size, you notice, and no doubt character
determining order, amount, duration. At this point you could’ve written the pages on juncos or on your one song sparrow so far, plumped and content to peck along the deck beneath.
And that pair of cardinals you’d hoped for? They’ve set up shop somewhere in the hedgerows and for now eat together, appearing to enjoy each other’s company, while all above
out back crows crisscross the crisp expanse between the high bones of trees and the high ground that runs the dune down to the loosened shore. Soon hawks will hover,
and when a bloated fish washes up overnight, luring vultures to join the constant, aimless gulls, you’ll be amused you ever worried that the birds would never come.
Lakeside Bird Feeder, Wet Snow
Like the trusty railing, the congenial patio table, the steady deck itself, and every firm crotch in every faithful tree, the feeder’s become a sculpture.
I should have black and white to lace into the camera to capture this transubstantiation, this emergence from the overnight dark and storm, an aesthetic thing in itself, dangling like an earring from the gaunt lobe of a different day— a white arrow, squirrel-emptied, aimed straight for the flat sky.
The first little bird to find it, sunup, can only inquire, perch and jerk a nervous while, then quickly move along in wired hopes the other stops around the circuit will service his tiny entitlement, will be scraped clean and waiting like a retired guy’s double drive.
By tomorrow I know this wind and another early thaw will have de-transmorphed my feeder to its manufactured purpose, its slick roof and Plexiglass siding once again resembling an urbane enticement to things wild, some Nature available outside a backdoor slider.
And I know I’ll have also lost more impetus for believing in permanence—except of the impermanent, its exceptional knack for nourishing the dazzle in this everyday desire.
I Don’t Know the Biochemistry of a Hummingbird
I can only wonder at this blurred whir of evidence, clouded in the blue fan of a thousand wings. I want to feel their million beats per second on my beard and lashes, reel from each swig, the dozen manic intervals, stomach a zoom to the forsythia, whose scream of tender yellow faded and fell last week. How can mere filaments in tiny shoulders flex and reflex so fast? How can miniscule sipping, the sucking through a needle beak, fuel a miniature tyrant’s relentless burn? Then, in the resting, which is not even a breath, how rapid the saturation of liquid sugar into blood, into wing muscle, into instinctual motive for a horizontal life? And how rapid the depletion?
D. R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching university writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan, USA. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his work has appeared internationally in a wide variety of anthologies and journals.
You can find more of D. R. James’ work here on Ink Pantry.
My distaste for myself turned slowly to self-hatred as the rich and powerful kept shitting on me. Poor me
Every time I stopped at a gas pump or a supermarket and looked at the jacked-up prices as I filled my cart or the tank of my beater my stomach tightened The rich got richer at my expense, sucking the life out of me My salary was always stretched, like an old industrial rubber band always on the verge of snapping I wondered why their greed was so justified Some people have permission to do whatever they please regardless of its effect on others while I’ve got to get permission for a lot of things from my wife My world is negotiation and compromise— that’s the work of marriage Only the divorced escape it and I don’t think I’d enjoy the loneliness Very few people can stand loneliness
But greedy business owners and the corporations who own them and the corporations who own them and the Jews behind it all screw us over every day (though the angry man tells us that we’re not supposed to hate Jews anymore even though they killed Our Lord) But it’s ok to hate Palestinians
And one day our giant American bulldozers will do their work, supervised by Israelis and then the angry man will put us all up for free at the Grand Opening of his Ultra-Luxury Gaza Riviera Resort all the walls covered in gold all the toilets made of gold and me and my wife will have incredible sex like we haven’t had since we were teens on the most spacious bed and the most comfortable pillows ever made
And in the summer, we’ll float through the American Canal and turn north to Greenland where we’ll drink champagne and eat caviar and enjoy fantastic spas and be served by the darkest of Eskimos and the Ukrainians will shower us with brilliant minerals and Rare Earths
And where will the Palestinians be? Dying of hunger and thirst and broken hearts, they will wander in the same trackless desert that the Israelites once crossed until their God told them that they were His chosen people, superior to all and that they were free to smite everyone who stood in their way Now the Jews, bloated with pride and revenge, worship a mystical, powerful number: six million
So I held down my rage against all the exploiters, and, in my favorite bar drank my Budweiser from a Mason Jar and waited for the glory days when America would be great again and I would be part of it
I smiled at my wife, I kissed her. She also found it hard to smile. Her lips felt hard and chapped, and her cheap, peachy lipstick looked ugly She’d been fired from her federal job They’d sent her a letter saying that it was because of her lousy performance but all her annual reviews had been as sparkly as diamonds and pearls even the last one
Only later did I remember that the angry man loved saying: You’re fired It had been the core of his TV show
I’d voted for the angry man the man who has as much hatred as me, including hatred of himself Not everyone could see it, but I could We were brothers Mine was a mere trickle, but his self-hatred was a flood
We’d surfed that flood together yelling Beach Boys lyrics in each other’s faces my face gross pocked with teen acne scars and the scars from my accident, a face only a wife could love, but he forgave me for my ugliness. He was forgiving as Jesus, his face as haughty as a king’s, eyes piercing his orange face like a life-giving sun We sang together (I wish they all could be California girls) until I was thrown off my surfboard (he tried to catch me but failed) and then I gripped branches which tore my hands as I tried to keep the current from sweeping me away
He’d told us that we were being screwed by the “woke,” and by the Marxist elite who controlled the deep state, which was an endless swamp and that the last president was the devil, always hiding in the brambles, devoted to doing us harm and what the angry man said had made sense Black and brown women and men who’d turned into women were the only ones who seemed to matter anymore An avalanche of them and another avalanche of illegal immigrants It all crushed me
My dislike of myself turned to hate like a slice of Wonder Bread dropped into my malfunctioning toaster popping out so black, it was untouchable, inedible I think I’ll donate that shitty machine to Goodwill and smile, thinking of some other asshole getting all frustrated first thing in the morning
Drugs, entertainment, professional sports, my team moving up in the playoffs, almost getting the trophy and those big gold rings none of that eased my pain and hangovers made work worse Too much fucking noise, metal grinding against metal I wore a grimace all day I could see it reflected in my buddies’ faces I vowed to quit drinking, but knew I wouldn’t I needed the brotherhood and the hilarity of our bar, drunk and laughing until I was bent over double, helpless to stop, tears falling from my eyes, unable to breathe As Toby Keith’s beautiful, simple song goes, It ain’t too far come as you are I love this bar
Get this— my wife says I’m an optimist That’s a hoot, but I can see me through her eyes and there’s a little something there She holds onto me like a life raft which is also funny, as the angry man’s flood already swept me away leaving my hands bloodied and temporarily deformed making it even harder to work But we do the best we can, helping each other survive That’s marriage too
I still have hope that life on Earth can be different, that when we finally meet the aliens, they’ll envy us
Anyway, someday I’ll wake up and I’ll be in Heaven, trading high fives with Jesus
Mitch Grabois has been married for almost fifty years to a woman half Sicilian, half Midwest American farmer. They have three granddaughters. They live in the high desert adjoining the Colorado Rocky Mountains. They often miss the ocean. Mitch practices Zen Buddhism, which is not a religion, but a science of mind (according to the Dalai Lama). He has books available onAmazon.
You can find more of Mitch’s work here on Ink Pantry.
