Bound to North Not home nor far Made by escape, A hope to fight
Trust lantern lost Believed or touched Fade made by dark, And light by light
When cold turns warmth And prayer divides Be either sail in storm, Or spark from night
Made Up in Laughing
Frame half-open windows Slip out of billows Stomp on the sunlight stamped in the sidewalk Dry and kind
Call off a shadow Tripped up in meadow The sere breath is casting, made up in laughing Holding all chance others left behind
When day drops to fair-low Return not its sparrow Its echo’s in moonlight, verve in the clockwork Draped in the caul of what we can’t unwind
Port of Call
Damp stains Beneath a starlit sky
The gutter is calling For all memory; it’s time
Let go The winds already fled to leave behind
A world not falling Port of call and not again
The Pronation of Shangri La
Bellowed to the threat of any falling leaves Softcore Shangri La is gone but far from freed Caught in the tired idea that petrichor is wrong
Upended by some heathen in the scattered steam A valley that’s been dried out yet not quite cleared Cross-eyed, unremarkable garden forms a path
Retreaded by many so-and-sos just like me To the beacon of kingdom con and its seams Whatever’s being kicked up stains twice, and
there’s no going back
Trading Post at the Edge of Known
Empty more mistaken pearl to curl fate
and find oneself
somewhere with no stars and no fear, no knots and no ends
The varied cost not haggled, just peaked and tipped
Traverse naught and koan, and trust the seed into the flame
leaving only an epitaph of sand
Go without stars Go without fear
Joe Albanese is a writer from South Jersey. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in 12 countries. Joe is the author of Benevolent King, Caina, Candy Apple Red, For the Blood is the Life, Smash and Grab, and a poetry collection, Cocktails with a Dead Man.
I’ve picked up skills from unlikely sources Some starker than others The strongest lessons coming from those With challenging circumstances
I’ve found it difficult to learn from anyone That never had to face adversity Didn’t have to hustle, at some point To keep food on the table, or a roof overhead
Those that didn’t have to wonder if things would ever improve
I want those in the liminal spaces That navigated the underground That know how to see in the dark And can find light in the most unlikely places
Those who speak the truth And give voice to the silenced Finding strength to keep moving forward Even when hated by the the bandwagoning masses
Skaja Evens is a writer and artist living in Southeast Virginia. She edits It Takes All Kinds, a litzine published by Mōtus Audāx Press. She’s been published in Spillwords Press, The Dope Fiend Daily, The Rye Whiskey Review, and The Crossroads Lit Magazine.
I turn another page. To an article. About the beach. Specifically, how to walk your dog. At the beach. Okay. This I know. Not about walking dogs. But the beach. That’s what I know. Now. But not always. When I left my husband. Ten years ago. When I got in my car and began to drive. Through one state. And then another. And another. And another. Driving, driving, driving. I finally reached the ocean. And that’s when I stopped. Not that the ocean was my destination. It wasn’t. There was no destination. Just escape. I stopped because I was driving a car. Not a boat. And cars don’t float. Actually, I’d never seen the ocean before. Or the beach. I mean, there isn’t an ocean or beach in Kansas City. And that’s where I’m from. But now I’m at the ocean. On the coast of North Carolina. Far away from Missouri. And my husband. (Thank God!). So I decided to stay. Here. In Wilmington. But just for a while. Not long. Just a little while. I found an apartment. And a job at a beachwear store. Selling bathing suits to tourists. Selling tacky souvenirs made from seashells. Selling t-shirts. And I still work there. Ten years later. Believe it or not. Selling beachwear to summer tourists. Selling golf paraphernalia to winter tourists. What can I say? I like it. It’s a job. It’s fun. And it pays the bills. Speaking of beachwear. And the store. We received a shipment of t-shirts this week. Lots of new designs. And one is a Chihuahua. Really cute. I’ve been pretending it’s Max. My imaginary dog. I should use my employee discount. Get some of those Chihuahua t-shirts. In different colours. One for every day of the week. Just for fun. To wear. To work. I mean, why not? They really do look like Max. And he’s such a good dog. My Max. My imaginary dog. Now I can pretend I walk him on the beach too. Thanks to this article. In this dog magazine. But okay. Enough of that. Enough pretending. My lunch break is almost over. Got to get back to the store. And selling, selling, selling.
Laura Stamps loves to play with words and create experimental forms for her fiction and prose poetry. Author of 43 novels, novellas, short story collections, and poetry books. Most recently: CAT MANIA (Alien Buddha Press 2021), DOG DAZED (Kittyfeather Press 2022), and THE GOOD DOG (Prolific Pulse Press 2023). Winner of the Muses Prize. Recipient of 7 Pushcart Prize nominations.
Louder than the island’s traffic cicadas’ shake a tinder percussion from long, straying grass.
They are as unseen as a writer, who years away, will tap at a keyboard
and listen to a printer scuttle over paper in the hope of recapturing the fizz of you and me waiting
for a bus amid buzzing cicadas -burning with songs more ancient than lyres joking about the bus being as mythical as Pegasus or Persephone
before scrunching the poem of it back into the blankness of letters hissing as they flicker out – incompleting a neon cocktail sign outside a city window, while miles away
your hand is still tightly holding mine as we clamber aboard a bus and pay drachmas for our tickets.
Trauma
She has no words in school today. To match, I make mine tiny, firm stones; imperatives placed next to pictures to round their requests,
balancing the real on a surf of swaying meaning. She responds, tracing sounds to her own.
Reading opens and closes its booked meanings. She decodes words into elephants, heavy, andante, stepping sense slowly from the page to something new from thumbed pages.
Her body folds beneath a uniform of crumpled grey polyester, as she hunches at the desk, skin prickling with webbed scabs, self-scratched; still raw, still red.
The bathroom’s razored blur smudging at the back.
Jenny is a working mum and writes whenever she can amid the fun and chaos of family life. Her poetry is published in several printed anthologies, magazines and online poetry sites. Jenny lives in London with her husband, two children and two very lovely, crazy cats. You can read more of her poems at her website.
You can find more of Jenny’s work here on Ink Pantry.
We think of the fascinating charm. We fantasize about wizardry. We ponder on the amazing bard. We reflect on poetic beauty.
We muse about astonishing moon. We dream of the surprising vessel. We philosophize about fair throne. We describe awesome Indian summers.
We ruminate on the brilliant pearls. We remember overwhelming sun. We commemorate impressive tides. We daydream of bewildering souls.
We recall the staggering sailor. We contemplate the breathtaking storm.
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.
Dream of the Vulture the night before Find an eleven by fourteen inch canvas Sharpen a true H Pencil Sketch the outline of the Vulture between your tears Paint the white first and last Paint the sky blue of her eyes Drink a pint, let to dry Three yellows and two Reds Paint the beak, the eye Blood Red for her Head Paint feathers using last night fire ash Highlight the beak and eye so to speak Paint Cliff and toes with shades of sorrow Pen your name
Sleepy Whale 412
Gallivanting around Like Vultures hunting in the wet straw Driving dusty old Macintosh Cadillac Vulture-ugh subsequently ride Freely cracking with her Guffaw in the back seat Saints and Sages fly over like Hopscotch See-Saw Tiger Lilies Three half ones in a stack in the glove box Horns Dragon-Lilies Zodiac lie in a bunch on the floor Taste her Irish Brandy sniffer lips in Awe
Sleepy Whale 415
Spiritual condition of a Vulture falling slowly Eager anticipation drinking communal Wine Emunctory field of blue Apricots Haunting remorse with holes in her blindfold Motley affair nightly with her robot Solemnities of the very new sun rise Shiny used white flint pocket knife She covers the Biscuit Tin’s full of gold
Sleeping Whale 387
Humours of her midnight criticizing Dancing at the book release ball Dark woman, fair man’s brawl In the dark Gun Powder Cigarettes appetizing Life after life baptizing Eager anticipation for all Golden poop slips and falls Blue Irish eyes apologizing Drink a Pint to heavenly blessed The last come first Weasel rat pest Alabaster silent outburst Like a cat to its claws dressed All wind, piss with the worst Nobbling his last pint best Always knock first
Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. Has Five Amazon E- Books. 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 Milk Carton Press.
You can find more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry.
That cold cube of ice against a flurry of fire escape lips, naughty rap rap knuckles so far beyond initial infraction, dead batteries for a dying world; I am twisted nerve endings like internal ponytails on the pull, and feelings don’t mean what tuk tuks mean, the data could not be less clear; sciatica for the flimsy paper plate rapture – Ostracism is a vast love of distance above all else, corrugated rooftops catch distant rin tin tin rain, this retina detached outlier behind weepy ronin pink eye sabbatical; unbroken briefcase cyphers so file folders can stay on the lam – you cannot touch me for I am unquarried stone on salamander prowl: biting, glacial, indifferent as a mild pooling blah.
Strictures
And who among you would censure moth for flame, spire from bell, who among the narrow-numbs should be first to fasten the restraints, limit passage, lob cannonballs of criticism? Count my absence as a disavowal, you who manage rank with truncheon-exact priggishness, wall in that wretched wild Thunderbird of ideas; from my wilting lamb’s lettuce, hissing radiators of this balding Rapunzel tower – listen to the plethora horns in the swelling streets below: all awe, all awe… toot toot toot toot.
Market Man
No need for the maudlin insincere, the man at market names his price which is never the price if you know better, the way he crosses his arms, closes himself off and prepares for battle; the barter system is total exhaustion if I am to be honest, my heart and head and more generous foibles never really in it, that absurd dizzying way bountiful hypochondriacs imagine themselves afflicted with every ailment known to medicine and a few the white coats may have not thought of, and the way my last monies leave my hand hurts more than any lover that has ever retired from once warm beds; that wrecking ball shame of heavy feet, of being taken again.
The Daily Catch
On one of my many chuffed-lung walks, past boxed-ribboned confectionery, beyond mossy breaker wall protections, the smell is what you notice before anything else; those large industrial pails below various trawler net-tangles, the daily catch on the death squirm, saucer-eyed dilations unaware of the descaling knives just feet away, the numerous yellow-smocked men with vicious nicotine faces, ashing down over the creaking wood haunt of the salaried man, unsavoury jokes exchanged in strange mother tongues as I nod half-friendly, pull my collar up for the cold; shuffling by in a Salvation Army Peacoat to the end of a rotting dock where the circling gulls squawk over the dead and dying throwaways from this morning’s briny fog-soaked haul.
Voila & Other Silly Little Miracles
Humiliation, yes yes, there is plenty of that & brackish homestead guile & voila and other silly little miracles so small you almost miss them, trip over your own feet and blame the laces of your premature birth, even the eagles in the trees bald before too long, squatting as much as nesting; nature is everyone’s landlord, the bees and the birds & chimney soot faces with glass golden briar hoppers for hands… the zipper on my change purse suffering from inactivity, Swan black Thomas Mann as clunky dialysis machine, it’s calipers squeezing infant brain juice from apricot dayglow, breakdowns along Bullshit Road – mold in the hinges of the kitchen cupboard now caught under nail; what I have is mine so long as a man is willing to catalogue his entire existence: Roman nose, Irish liver, enough beard hairs to invite a thousand men to the gallows.
Secrets Never Cease
Plucked treasure hunter eyes befall you, secrets never cease: the crimp, the golem, this patch-played foil derived which should offer exits for a saving face, whirling tango divots into lined gymnasium floor; I’m the poster child for posters, no eight ways around it… procrastination should be an Olympic sport, or at least a local watering hole with recycled beer and creaky wind-chattered windows.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Ink Pantry, Impspired Magazine, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
You can find more of Ryan’s work here on Ink Pantry.
the long and short hands move in synchronous precision sand flowing seamlessly in realms of truth and reality
time, delicately sacred, yet essence lost and wasted in a game of algorithm, chasing shiny bugs and trolls down the winding rabbit hole
where the long and short hands dig a graveyard of morrows where sandstorm hits the eyes with biases and lies
the cure
wind from unknown seas beckon to leave the harbour sail into the uncharted, the peregrine’s heart pumping salt water comes alive… heals
Wake up!
Hear, hear! Captain’s missing Oh dear!
You clown, Take the lifeboat. Or drown.
You cluck, This is a plane. What luck!
Lorelyn is a self-published author of Twin deLights, “Haikuna Matata (a collection of haiku) and Hainaku! It’s Pundemic! I am Balot. Acovida dito (a collection of word plays and puns).” She is also a member of the Write Your Legacy community in the Philippines, working overseas as a medical transcriptionist. Her poetry has been featured and published in several anthologies and journals like The Haiku Foundation and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
In accordance with night-time tradition, the granaries were lit in unison to forge an awakening of honey, and there we were on our knees: punctual in thought, with the body in horizontal delay. Tongue, huge tongue, angular and yellow, flaming pagan tongue speaking the abstract language of colour, thundering to the ice dormitories of the mind, tongue as still as the extinguished rifle which, uttering a sound delivers to dictionaries “flock”, a winged soup of living swallows which only a short while before was freezing in the nests. But wanting to improvise the day in the middle of the night, sacrilegious anticipators in the tradition of every sleep, we were woken by a false mechanical god each in his bed, sweaty and expelled from the dreamy hut, unworthy of the Halakhah and therefore branded with tufts of wheat entangled in our pyjamas, waking up, rolling on cliffs of pillows, falling on mattresses of icy water, foaming with desire for the light coming, coming in carousels of neon, pale at first, sanguine later, fading sleep in ridges, in the chorale of dissenting senses. In awakening, head swooping to the ceiling, tufts of wheat between his fingers.
The copper tree builder
He roamed at night in the narrow hollows of the streets, twisting through the fires his crackling hands. From here his industrious crime moved into railway stations: He would steal copper from the depots. Filiform foxes accompanied him, at night, swinging on his back. At the window, I would watch him and learn to know how to run in the dark like swimming, on asphalt that before my eyes does not exist. In this way I learnt to know how to cook a thought à la cocque that perhaps exists and shines, white and orange – when light has no other role than to distribute arms, legs, nerves, fingers and hands, under a face. But under the occipital river when there is total darkness, he insists, he works. And here is the branch, and the flower sprouts, and he twists that tip on his finger. I watched it weave the bloody texture of the roots, and make them converge in the centre, inside the trunk, then vanish again into branches: the wind sniffs, approves and escapes returning to the sky, and then comes the light. And here is the branch, and behold, the flower sprouts, and at that tip, along with the copper, he twists me.
Mauro De Candia was born in Italy. He studied Modern Literature at the University of Bari. He lives in Lombardy where he works as a teacher of Literature.
In 2018, he made his debut on the literary scene with the syllogue ‘Le stanze dentro’ for Edizioni Ensemble, a book that was runner-up in the 2019 Nabokov Prize and a finalist in the 2020 Carver Prize. In 2021 he published, again for Edizioni Ensemble, a second syllogue entitled ‘Sundara’, which was awarded second place in the Nabokov Prize 2021, with live television broadcast.
Somewhere under the Bixby bridge, high off the spirit of Kerouac, I formed words with the letters left in the sand while you stood silent. At the time, it felt like a new beginning, where we could start over, to recollect the words the tide spit back up onto the shore. But, it was the end of an article that took two years to read, the headline: Man Searches for Himself in Other People. Then you would creep so far into silence, apathy would engulf me, and all the things I thought were important are what drag me under the ocean.
My ears still ring, and my chest still aches from standing waist deep with my back to the sea when the riptide whipped me under.
So when I think of Big Sur I think about all the cars that have driven over the cliff— whether intentional or not.
And I think about how they’re abandoned, rusting below the waves, clawing upward against the rocks. I think about the couples who vanish from the shoreline, consumed beneath the morning fog. I think about what it takes to stop searching, what it takes to give up hope, and where the hope goes when it eventually slips beneath the sand.
I picture Kerouac sitting beneath Bixby rummaging through grains of sand searching for a sense of sustenance in a life he felt was insignificant. Then I think about all the lives lost underneath Bixby bridge, the minds that wandered over the edge hypnotized by its beauty. I think about us running back to the car, and the words we left, how the tide eventually came back to claim them, and how I found a part of myself that was never missing.
David Blake is an educator, musician, and someone who pretends to be a serious business person Monday through Friday.
