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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

Jaden Pierce

      Bath Soak me in an acid bath As I seek to test my limits For pain I do not fear And want to conquer Like the great warriors who have Come before me Performing magnificent feats Showing mind over muscle Sitting in the midst of a blaze Yet calm and...

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Jamie Woods

      PTSD / IET Guidance Notes for Registered Electricians Too many residual memory devices Trip again, over and over Breaking circuits with synaptic transmission Neurons activating Molotov cocktails She says:             Love yourself Be kind to...

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Michael Durack

      How Way Leads On To Way Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. (Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken) Knowing how way leads on to way, lane to avenue, boreen to boulevard, It is unlikely I will get to go back, take...

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Sarah Terkaoui

      Elegy for The Tumbledown Dick It burnt down twenty years ago. Landlord’s stealing ran it down. New management couldn’t fix a sticky-carpet sea of broken glass each night. Nor dare to clean the toilets. Dealers’ trade kept high in cisterns. Punters...

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Shaniqua Benjamin

      The Village after Ryan Calais Cameron A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth, skank around flickering amber hues that singe eyelashes of a soul cracked and popped, barely a speck of him to sign-point that he was...

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Jay Mitra for Father’s Day

      Lockdown Hospital Visit I’m used to seeing my father’s frown— he’s always been an angry sort of man. He demands respect, silences others and takes control whenever he can. My father and I were never close— there is a lot he hasn’t apologised for....

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Robert Hirschfield

      Automat Chicken sandwich widow in a cave Edward Hopper edible so lonely it wants to bite off a piece of itself and eat it. * Nothing More To Say The stout aunt says,  His coffin is small.  He was small. Heaping upon him her scoop of dirt.  ...

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Sally St Clair

    The Road Our father taught us kindness, bringing home speechless men to sit watchfully at the table, their wild hair and swollen fingers mysterious on the white damask, staring as our father gestured with the family silver, leaning in towards the...

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Pletts & Berger

      Chernobyl : past, present and future tense   It all feels sepia; liquidator-faces filling the coach windows dust in the air, that grainy hue that will etch into their bones, scrape its mark on their lungs, turn their complexions a...

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Meg Pokrass 

      The Forest This has something to do with the adoption of that unwanted animal, right there in the living room. Her husband watching telly, drinking beer, not looking at the animal dancing around. The animal gazing into her eyes, finding her...

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Noel King

      Burying the Husband As your hearse stretches the road we walk, trying to be respectful. My shoulders heave an ease at their freedom, my bruises will heal now there’ll be no fresh hits. Our feet turn, our bodies sideways themselves through the gap...

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Hannah Linden

      By the Time I Learn about the New York School Poets I Can Walk Around their Neighbourhood Without Leaving My Living Room   for SD It’s six thirty in the evening, going dark I’ve zoomed to the other side of an ocean been helped to understand what...

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Olivia Burgess

      April Showers In the spring, we wait on overblown grass, trading false promises of a golden summer. I cry at the sight of swathes of daffodils, parading their freedom in joyful orbits of propagation. I cry over exams because my heart’s poison is...

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Stephen Claughton

      Wu Zixu (after Hokusai) The warrior, Wu Zixu, tries his hand at writing poetry. Perhaps he thinks it won’t be exacting enough. Cocking his head to one side, he dips his pen in the ink, while at the same time holding a brass pot above his head....

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Meg Arnot

      * her black eye . . . red scarf muffles the sting of the north wind * muddy gaiters – Coniston Water in my wardrobe * lamb in the talons of a white-tailed eagle time of the tide     Meg Arnot’s haiku/senryu and tanka have been published...

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Pat Edwards

      Various kinds of pin and their uses This pin is for piercing the tube before we medicate the cat in the fur on her neck. She hates us for doing this, senses we are coming for her with our toxins. This one is a safety pin. I open it, slide five or...

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Marty McKenna

      i excuse myself from you tonight. there is low cloud on the fields as the sway carries these hands between this and the next stop. i’ve fallen for an other, make eye contact; deliver it through sight. i recognise my place by the trees; wonder...

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