When I walked into the room, they poured lava on my head and told me I was fired

but I couldn’t hear because of all the ash
in my ears and the room was packed full

of people I didn’t know—a librarian who
said I stole a book back in 1968, a penguin

who said I made half its family extinct,
and my boss who looked like a hole in

an animal—and they were lined up, all
with notebooks, all ready to slice me in

half, but I thanked them, because now
is the time where all can collapse, so

you have to be gracious and smile and
accept them shoving a mountain deep

into your guts, and I walked away after,
heading nowhere, ending up in a grave-

yard where someone mowed the lawn
like they had rivers of madness in their

lungs, just circling and spinning and
weaving that machine into sand and

puddle and fence and I just stood there,
jobless, watching this guy with a job,

tearing up the earth as if he wanted
to erase every single thing in sight.

I’d chop off my eyes for a kiss

that’s how lonely my eyes are,
my memories like rope, so god-

damn garden-level beautiful; I
should have died for her, but

instead I just wrote poems. My
God, I should have died and come

back to life. I should have done
everything. Everything.

The magician who lives below me comes home

and looks wrecked, destroyed by magic, this slow trudge, and
I’m a peeping tom, slits in the blinds, but so curious to see this

body, bedecked in motley, and so old and so young at the same
time, a man-boy who’s never smoked, never drank, but greyed,

youth-aged, starving for money, gambling for fame, but coming
home to this metal neighbourhood where crickets don’t even come,

just the soft sound of traffic in the distance, blending in with his
footsteps, so tender, like rabbits that have been forgotten in hats.

I went to Niagara Falls

I didn’t get it.
All that mist.
I got back in
my car and
drove one
thousand
miles, to
Kansas,
where my
ex- lives,
happily,
without
me. I
told her
about
Niagara.
She drank
coffee in
her kitchen
that was
the colour
of the Civil
War. I said
I didn’t get
how people
could go
down that
thing in
a barrel.
She told
me her
ex- would
be home
soon. They
still lived
together.
Nothing
in this
world
makes
sense.

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, and 2022 Pushcart Prize.  Right now, Riekki’s listening to Nanci Griffith’s “I Wish It Would Rain.”

A Woman’s Tears

A woman’s love is an extraordinary treasure!
She will give you love,
She will give you loyalty,
She will give you, her dreams.
She will give you, her future!
She will give you eternity!

But many a man never knows
the value of that treasure.
He will possess her,
He will desire her,
He will rest his heaving passions in her.
Like a plundering warlord he will only take again and again,
And lay the remains to waste.

He will grow large from that tree of love,
Not watering the tree with any affection.
He will grow vines of neglect
Subsuming her identity with weeds,
That sap her of her strength and love!
He kills the woman of her spirit,
And dines off her carcass like a bird of prey.

And the woman’s heart is crushed,
Like a river run dry
No longer fed by the rain of affection.
Violated day after day like the earth,
Into whose wombs wells are bored relentlessly,
Deeper and deeper,
In search of the elixir!

The saddest sound in the Universe,
Is the sound of a woman’s heart break!
In the silence of the night
She quivers and thrashes unseen!
Gnashes her teeth at the impotence of her fate!
Weeps soundlessly for herself,
Longing to escape the coils of a loveless union,
That trap her soul.

Tales of a River

She is a river of gold,
Flowing swiftly in the golden dawn.
The sun rippling beauteous in her joyous being
She whooshes exuberantly over the rapids,
As one by one she clears them,
In her flow.

Worshipped by man
Desired by man
Who always sought to control her
To contain her
Fight over her
For exclusive rights!

She is the river of discontent
In whom waste has been dumped,
by toxic relationships.
She cries for release.
The waves of agony crash
Against the high rocks of indifference!

She is the turquoise river,
Below the cerulean skies,
The woods behind her,
The shores distant.
With a sky full of stars,
She flows!

She is a ribbon of silver
Sparkling in the moonwake,
With the wisdom of the ages
Running in her veins!
Nurturing life,
Healing the wounds!

She is a river emptying soundlessly into the sea
Between existence and non-existence!
In her existence, exists her identity
In her non-existence, she loses not
Just different ways in which she emerges,
Her essence ever fragrant in her tributaries!

Avantika Vijay Singh is a writer, blogger, editor, script writer, poet, researcher, and amateur photographer. Poetry is her song from the heart to express her thoughts and emotions. Dancing Motes of Starlight, self-published during the pandemicin 2020, is her debut ebook on poetry.

She enjoys a good laugh, especially over herself, and her blog “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives”. She loves taking long walks in nature, which germinate the idea of many of her poems.  

She is a lifelong learner and holds an M.Sc. (Zoology), an M.S. (Biomedicine) from BITS, Pilani, post-graduate Certificates in Sustainability from Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden and Digital Marketing from MICA.

Slowly Crept

Charity to the neighbour absurd
Wolf in Sheep’s clothing
Monks and Friars slowly crept
Bearing Palms and Harps of the Blackbird
Patrons of holy youth sleeping Bluebird
Women blessed symbols slept
Dragon Lilies robes we kept
Ink horns eyes of Lady-dove

Sonnet CDLXXXXIV

Dumpy sort of a gait bone due trench
Two flashes of presumable ships rum from Maine
Gurgling noise shrewd suspicion pain
Day of reckoning Mono Publishing conservation bench
Best jumpers and racers wrench
Skin the goat an Ax to grind throbbing forehead vein
Loudly lamenting Galway Bay rain
Slightly disturbed in her sentry-box stench
Facial blemishes treasure
Effusion the redoubtable gravel
Dropping off into a restful measure
Silence all around we try to unravel
Manicure counterattraction female pleasure
Rum explodes piers and girders travel

Sonnet CDLXXXXIII

White tipped New Guinea’s chip
Wispy quiver and dance trouble
Poniards Gibraltar bubble
Muensters Boston weather drip and dip
Ill-fated Irish Times petrified drip
Weathered a monsoon Daunte’s rock doubled
Rumpled stockings showing her stubble
Impetuosity isosceles triangle flip
Temperaments at the door in trio
Passionate about the Ten Shillings viol
Visit coincidences Kilaru Museum in Rio
Washed in the blood of the sun denial
Spaniards old Leo
Exception here and there trial

Sonnet CDLXXXXI

Enlightened men morbid mined shrug
Buys dear and sells cheap her money amplify
A slow puzzled skin-Berean Butterfly
Old Meldish squeamishness drug
Super human effort as she dug
Shrugged his shoulders to deny
Dizzy-Billy all-be-plastered high
Coffee in a cheap-eating-house mug
Sticker for solid copper Tumour
Tee total skipping rocks rube
Fa-r-reaching circumstantial rumour
Piano playing cell-mate in a cube
Not listening at a yarn humour
Blunt horn-handle tube

Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. 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, LKMNDS and Elavation.

You can find more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Spring is colours, sweet heavens that
clothe, March you like
fresh wind and rain
a celebration that buttons
you up
stomps in puddles like
boots
like taffy coloured
rainbows
and a sunny yellow coat
as flowers pop open like
balloons and trumpet
bumblebees— be buzzing
busily. This is me, my songbird sings.

Autumn in the Wings

Twigs’ lush medium is converting to
calligraphy, the dismissal of leaves
to launch its winter forewarning. Laden
with late acorns, squirrels chuck-chuck meaningless
memos, counter-balance full bellies, tails
unfurled. I am embracing—keepsaking—
the unscrolling calendar, harvesting
days tossed my way, the prodigious burden
of nows. Hunters will bruise this calm soon, but
until then it’s choirs of jays, cranes, and crows.

If Only I Moved by Instinct

Life has been a grand migration
to where you are today!
            —well known wisdom

I didn’t know!

Otherwise,
when those raggedy squadrons
clamoured overhead last evening—

three V’s disarrayed
like frayed arrow feathers,

their leaders insistent as clowns
with braying horns, honking
for plane geometry—

I would have taxied, sprinted,
lifted arthriticly
from water’s edge (granted

more dodo than goose,
my splayed toes just scuffing
the webbed crests of waves),

and elbowed my way
into a rhythmic wedge

to claim my slot
in that mindless rotation
toward the life-saving draft.

Leaf Fall

Asymmetric chandeliers instigate
their rhapsodic drop, the ruddling scumble-
trove of falling leaves and epiphanies
whose sillage shellacs paw, pelt, and breezes.
Trapezes sling these acrobatic hues
into bold arcs, risky spins, pronounced turns
before alights the wind-borne troupe of the
trees. Stippled bark akin to camo backs
the show, and cursive limbs announce the new
season: caesura ending summer’s song.

For Therapy, I Mix Metaphors

From a frozen wedge of machine-split pine,
tossed on this settling fire, one frayed, martyred
fibre curls back and away like a wire, then
flares, a flame racing the length of a fuse.
Imagine this my innermost strand, a barely-dirt
two-track off Frost’s road less traveled, a thin,
trembling thread of desire, the uncharted blue vein
of a tundral highway. Or in some dread cloister
it dreams, and a sillier spirit suddenly moves—
like four fresh fingers over flamenco frets,
like dumb elegance uttering Old Florentine,
never meaning one of its crooning words.
It might dance—Tejano, Zydeco, any twenty
Liebeslieder Waltzes, any juking jumble
of a barrel-house blues—wherever arose
an arousing tune, the thrum of a Kenyan’s
drumming, the merest notion of Motown soul.
I do know: there must be this lost but lively cord,
an original nerve, perhaps abandoned, or jammed
as if into an airless cavity of my old house.
It waits, to spark, to catch, its insulated nest
punctured by the stray tip of a driven nail.
It craves some risky remodelling, that annoying
era of air compressor, plaster grit, dumpster,
and the exuberant exhalation of ancient dust.

Slackening Observed

A cardinal, its heaven’s sound, the winter’s
effervescent rag with salutating
gait. Notes etch, sun foils, and cathedralic
miles enlarge the whispering. To centre
oneself, to murmur, to intercept the
synchronizing run that’s rioting, is
as longingly still as the slope outside
the city’s heaves, the barn-red-confetti’d
woods, the uniform crisp of autumn days,
shallows iced to the shoreline, valley’s dream.

A Moment Depends Not Just on its Moment

You’d like to move on beyond mean memory,
skirt that peopled, hollow squalor, pack up
your numerous mind encampments
whose smoky cook fires now flicker, now
flare on this or that nostalgic hillside—
sometimes like coded reminders, sometimes
like brash blazes arousing anything
but simpering gratitude for a brainscape
stippled with so-called love. But then
a random moment’s rush of fragrant pine
rises also from vague beds of heady needles
in your rural past. And today’s savouring
of your young son’s self-liberation emerges
from its oblivious storage of almost forty years.
And the resuscitating pulse in a flagrant poem
owes a measure of its happy current to your
decades of emotional prohibition, your
suspension in the numb ice of wordlessness.
A generous peace depends on your history’s
stingy drudgery, and a restful season
of seeing who you might really be
depends on the eons of not letting being, on
the contrast with not knowing you didn’t see.

After the Gale

Ivory spines disguise the oaks’ south sides,
slivers of sunshine lightening their rough
trunks. What furrowed pallor, what dignity:
spires anchored to all others underneath,
delight clad in the plucked bones of winter.
What diligence, what staid bystanding: a
throng of distinct ascetics, enmeshed horde
of collective loners. It’s as if they’re
avowing how steadfastness, soon resumed,
enroots in you your essential locale.

D. R. James, a year+ into retirement from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives, writes, and cycles with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared internationally in a wide variety of print and online anthologies and journals.

You can find more of D.R.’s work here on Ink Pantry.

steve zmijewski asks me a question

“quick question hot shot
when you’re a feature, how many
poems do you read”

on asking melissa: wanna walk?

she says: “i’m knee deep
in organizing my desk,
do you ever work?”

on receiving a job promotion

boss asks, “do you own
anything other than jeans?”
I laugh, then say “no”

on telling Joseph Fulkerson about receiving scathing rejections because I title my haikus

he says, “of course people
are upset, tohm… you’re
challenging tradition.”

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world.  He is the author of twenty-four chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023).  He is the editor of Between Shadows Press. 

You can find more of Tohm’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Like sparkles of dreamery – fantasy,
born from hundreds of thoughts and from memories,
you encompass the world of mythology.
Here and there plenty of effusions.

Fairy – she-paramour of druids, priests,
kiss a fairway of starlets and the moon!
In you a hope of dazzling, wistful bards.
Ancient is the myth like cave of Plato.

You go away and fly away such eagle.
The mirror of ontology shows time.
Your poetries so delicate such flax.
Eudemonia will live softly in us.

You are autumn fantasy, born from oak.
Like rain of demand you fill chivalry.
Stars of non-destruction need your verdict.
Thoughts with miracles – vast eternity.

The soft-mossy tombstones are only yours.
Such rook you sing song – bards-desperados.
I adore Kant’s heaven – it is my time.
The bards honour the autumnal fairies.

Such refreshing yesterday-rain you are.
You are inspired like dreamy Erlkings.
You narrate myths, legends – having a glaive.
You glare at a mirror of timelessness.

In clouds of homeland dreameries come true,
when your romantic tear – fay-like tear-gem,
becharms a world of the Morningstar – whole.
Pixie, your canzone is crystal clear.

Midnight, the winglets of dreams carry you,
when the thousands of kings of oaks wake up.
Sparrows, magpies think of heaven – it’s blue,
filled with comet-dust and star-dust of mine.

Monuments of distant and drunk nature,
praise your meek, amaranthine liberty.
You are sprite – she-guide of Nature-mother
Through, like rainbow-shine, dreamed eternity.

glaive – archaic: sword

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.

The patio is open to the sky.
A tangerine coloured sun singing
The wakeful anthem,
The lulling buzz of
The mother’s song.
Motes of emotions
Resurfacing with
The breeze of time.
The mother’s song
Performed by the happiest lady
Of the world for her home
Ticks and rhymes with the background
Of an old Grandfather clock.
The song speaks of heard future affections
Which is shareable among her children.
Butterflies rise close
To the feathered approach
To perform an unplanned
Choir of life,
The rising reflection—close to wonder.
The air of spices
In the open patio,
Hullabaloo of children’s play.
Every far crier must know that
Voice is the genesis of performance.
The children play with voiced joy.
The sunflower is also a performer
Outside the wooded window
When it faces the sun.
The window also performs to see
Along with me.

Sushant Thapa is from Biratnagar, Nepal. He has published four books of poems: The Poetic Burden and Other Poems (Authorspress, New Delhi, 2020), Abstraction and Other Poems (Impspired, UK, 2021), Minutes of Merit (Haoajan, Kolkata, 2021), Love’s Cradle (World Inkers Printing and Publishing, USA and Africa, 2023). He is an English lecturer to undergraduate level students of BBA and BIT at Nepal Business College, Biratnagar, Nepal. He holds an M.A. in English literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has been published in print, online, school book and anthologies around the world. He also writes Flash Fictions, Short Stories and Book Reviews. 

You can find more of Sushant’s work here on Ink Pantry.

  

You did remember you and I; we
both took birth under the same sky.

And one day my shape was under threat; let the dark turn
more dark to disappear my fate.
What’s the fate?
You wrote as per your choice.
To kill my unborn child, to tear off my privacy, you went wild.
I am also that mother’s daughter, a daughter who had to stand in fire.
Let the fire raise, let my ashes fly
in the same sky under which
your mother was born.
You tore each of my petals,
my limbs and my soul too.
But you forgot I can rise again
from the ashes where
you ended the lust of your dick.

I forgot we once took birth
under the same sky.
I only remember you tore my strap and left some pieces of brawn.

But I won’t pray for your mercy,
I am not crippled any way; don’t expect any light from me- I chose
to rebel in dark
against your forcing rape.

Sonali Chanda is an eminent poet/writer/reviewer from Kolkata, India. She pursued her Post graduation degree in English literature and language from Burdwan University. At present ,she is pursuing her Phd in Post modern English Language, Indigenous Language of India, different usages of phonetics in Language. Her three books published and running successfully in Amazon and Flipcart Platform. She won the Nissim International award in 2020 for ” the excellence in Writing” for her Debut Travelogue Ladakh- Enroute Tibetan Taboos “.