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The archive is a separate site formed from all the posts from that original Ink Sweat & Tears website, it consists of everything we have published up to the end of 2019.
Recent posts
Edmund Prestwich
Winter Weathers Rain, persistent rain, and the last leaves falling. Voices twittered feebly. What anxious shadows blue tits seemed then, fluttering through the bare trees’ foodbanks of branches. How I wished a luminous green bee-eater,...
Isabelle Thompson
The Romance Languages My mother is learning French in stumbling little phrases. Bonjour, Julien. Bonsoir. Who is Julien? Merci, Julien. Salut, Julien. Bonne nuit. I imagine a man dressed all in blue, drinking a glass of Badoit. ~Bonjour~, Julien,...
Ken Evans
The Passenger Via hand to hand and hand to mouth, they pass a line invisible. Via blast of air, puff of smoke, handshake, warm embrace, the tourist shares a secret, without telling us. Via soft-soled tread in airport lounge,...
Isabelle Kenyon
Yeah that place is a dump Tastes like poverty: wide roads, no one with fuel to ride them. Casinos and bingo- coins like wishbones, dream of swimming in them. Even here, shiny leaflets and theatre lights, the floor cries dust balls, DIY people for...
Congratulations to Beth Booth whose poem ‘To the Occupier’ is the Pick of the Month for April 2020
There are a myriad of reasons as to why voters chose 'To the Occupier' by Beth Booth as the IS&T Pick of the Month for April 2020 which is a tribute to the many layers in this fine poem. Some found it haunting, melancholy, rich with emotion, some identified with...
Morag Smith
River Teviot, Borders, 2020 The Bridge Guest House is peeled open, emulsioned walls still hung with summer landscapes, boys fishing, bedroom doors politely closed against the swell that excavates my sleep, unearths the time our neighbourhood was...
Lesley Burt
Capital ‘A’ Arches to begin: a gate, open to possibilities: a tree, sea, person, storm, war, religion, a nameless rose, as yet, unclaimed by labels. Are not divided by ‘The’. Lesley Burt has been writing poetry for about twenty...
Jacques Groen
WHEN an attic becomes garret SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 and we move away the furthest we can from street life coughs and kisses handshakes, smiles of love, in love and fear makes us shrink...
Kathryn Alderman reviews ‘Hex’ by Jennie Farley
As with her previous collection, My Grandmother Skating (Indigo Dreams), Hex explores ‘the extraordinary with the everyday […] myth, magic and fairy tale’, but goes darker. It quotes Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984) ‘She was feeling...
John Doyle
Besançon : October 1991 Motorways in France stripped to their flesh of cars, of trucks with names of families who run small to medium fruit and veg companies near the Swiss border. France is mine, though - I'm almost sleeping, I know - France is...
Grant Tarbard
A Field Guide of Our Skin This invisible body is a lithe sacrament of flora, bluebell petals reel dizzily from our thick drench of pores, lilac deaths reek in our morning peeling. This ill-lit musculature of fungus is in a state of grace,...
Sally Michaelson
Tzedaka box On Friday nights I slipped a coin through the thin lips of the blue box. It was satisfying to hear it clatter ; I could feed the tin but not myself. Sally Michaelson is a recently retired Conference Interpreter living in...
L Kiew
Today everything is on fire & it’s dangerous the wind claws crimson back & forth running across grass trees catch leaves ember & cinders *** I pray please rain save some green there’s a grasshopper poised for flight at the bottom of...
Cecile Bol
Where you took me I had never cut my fingernails; would only retouch occasional casualties – cracks on thumbs, hooks on index fingers, too long witch-like pinkies. Not once did I sit down with a pair of tiny curved scissors to trim down all ten....
Robert Beveridge
Cold Cream If there’s a record for the consumption of celluloid, you’ve made it a life goal to break and, of course, there is a record for everything on the planet from smallest fish consumed by a tiger to most daffodils snorted by a Catholic...
Jane Pearn
what is missing is touch — is cotton to wool, sheer to slub is holding hands is hug — forms moulding each to each, body to body rise to hollow what is missing is skin warm against cool, is the cheek-scuff of familiar stubble is rough sunbrown...
Brian Rihlmann
On the Dangers of Re-entry on my long list is the “borderline” thing— it is said that there are few male versions of the species (my experiences in group therapy can attest to this) maybe most are locked up— a fate I’m not sure how I managed to...
Vote for your April 2020 Pick of the Month
When the pandemic movie is your own reality. It is not surprising that most of the poems on our shortlist for April 2020's Pick of the Month hover on the edge of dystopia. Is it Sam Wilson-Fletcher's 'Blue' that colours your world or what is lost in Anna Kisby's...
Tom Montag
from The Woman in an Imaginary Painting Do not stretch your imagination so far the world flattens. Do not stray farther than your promise reaches. State only your belief about true matters. Light is light -- don't stretch it. Color is color. Line....
Nika
Nika is the pen name of retired educator Dr. Jim Force. His haiku and haiga have been widely published in print and online journals and anthologies.