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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
Richard Leise
The Ewer Once upon a time, a young man and a young woman almost discovered a genie in a bottle. The Genie, trapped inside a ewer older than Narmer, was a steal. Set on a shelf inside Endwell Antiques, the artifact, competing with pretty vases,...
Marc Woodward
Hope is for a smile. Not the cheery smile of The medication is excellent these days but the broad smile of You can go home now, everything is fine. Hope is getting up and checking yourself knowing that one day soon you'll be worse - but not today?...
Kurt Sweeney
Forest Facial If I’m not rock, then I’m depth letters, If I’m not stone, then I’m clean persuasion, If I’m not dark, then I’m chisel and mallet, If I’m never cerebral, then I’ll be static weather. So blow in my direction, Wear down my features,...
Heidi Beck
Self-Portrait as Road Runner You with your elaborate schemes of entrapment, your hunting parties, moonshine and shot-gun weddings, your Sunday-school socials for girls to glue birdseed and pasta on prayer plaques, sew aprons with Singers– this desert was...
Shakiah K Johnson
What Comes After Death? A duck stood on my grave the other day I felt my wits travel up my spine And settle between my shoulder blades Each one, pulling further from the other Until I am split down the middle After a moment the feeling is gone And...
Sue Finch
Hare Witch After midnight put your hand on your chest and wish. Call then to the pull of the moon. Wait to feel that shrink, that all over body tingle that takes you down. Let the wild one come the one that runs the fields for the cold soil, the...
Remembering Charles Christian, Founder of Ink Sweat & Tears
The sad news has just reached us of the sudden passing of Charles Christian, IS&T’s founder, last October. Charles created IS&T as a platform for new poetry and short prose, and experimental work in digital media in 2007. Charles ran the...
On the Twelfth day of Christmas we bring you Molly Knox and Kayleigh Jayshree
I am made of ice When I say this please know me. Know that it has taken months. Believe me. They’ve noticed. Another student house to fill with snow and boxes. One more fight to pick. I am no longer phased by damp. Or mould. Or unexpected calls from the landlord....
Debbie Strange.
a new year how long before I stop missing you Haiku originally published in #FemkuMag 9, 2019. Debbie Strange is a chronically ill short-form poet whose work has been widely published internationally. Her book, The Language of Loss: Haiku & Tanka...
On the Eleventh day of Christmas we bring you Alex Mepham and Adriano Noble
To the Salmon I Ate at Christmas I honestly thought it would be fine. I’d eaten other salmon—years ago—and thought I could eat you too. The tin was pink and fit snug in my palm as I carried you home. I admired your sleek vessel as you sat on my shelf...
On the Tenth day of Christmas we bring you Jennifer A. McGowan, Tina Cole, Lucy Dixcart
The Singing Ice Some stories tell the truth. Some stories lie. Make sure you can tell the difference. When the youngest sister killed the eldest for daring to be the one to inherit and court the man who should by rights have married the youngest...
On the Ninth day of Christmas we bring you Oliver Comins, Terry Quinn, Simon Williams
A Star with a Star on Top This year’s tree has some kind of Viking heritage – you can smell sea on its breath and smoke in its hair. We managed to disarm it upon entering the house, after discovering three broad swords and a hammer hidden among...
More Word & Image from Helen Pletts & Romit Berger for our 12 days of Christmas feature
love symbols spoken in a chinese winter I am grown tall in the telling of the yellow that the dance leaves a signal for, finishing the ridge in a luminous squall, wanting your white elk-breath and the hoof-pound at my door. I am the first blade turned black in winter...
On the Eighth day of Christmas we bring you Patrick Slevin, Bethany W Pope, Georgina Jeronymides-Norie
Christmas 1978 We didn’t ask him to play dead. His record was three days. But we kicked each other over like he’d told us then cleared the battlefield. We spied his advance, inch by inch, the big shoe dragging, polished beneath a sharp crease....
On the Seventh Day of Christmas we bring you Ellora Sutton, Sue Burge, Catherine Naisby
The Angel Gabriel Visits Mary in Bedlam (Ecce Ancilla Domini!) After Dante Gabriel Rossetti look at the dove so wide a suicide against the wall wrap it up in the blue cloth I’ve been keeping it unwrinkled for such a purpose long blue...
On the Sixth Day of Christmas we bring you Sarah Salway, Sharon Phillips, Pat Edwards
Christmas is the end of the world It took some adjusting but we’re looking forward to it now. Next door have hung the bunting out, lines and lines of LOVE and PEACE which would have cost the earth until we realised there was no point in money any...
On the Fifth day of Christmas we bring you Beth McDonough, Sarah L Dixon, Liz Lefroy
Decorate our tree in ASD From Here to Epiphany I must wear four scarves, touch-whispery in tinsel, to wrap – no – not quite tight enough to cover the trunk in shine. Let me leave the room for my staccato happenings, test flickerings of white wee...
For our 12 days of Christmas feature we bring you Word & Image from Debbie Strange.
sudden flurries the Christmas star inside every persimmon Haiku written originally for Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, 2020 Holiday Celebration Debbie Strange is a chronically ill short-form poet whose work has been widely published internationally. Her book, The Language...
On the Fourth day of Christmas we bring you Louise Taylor, Diana Cant, Helen Kay
Noel After Sasha Dugdale Christmas is coming. December is amber with last month’s leaves and fairy lights flutter in the high street. The fir tree beside the Buttercross is naked, fenced-off by railings anyone could topple – and, look, here they...