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GHAZALS
THE PATH
Erin A. Thomas
Sometime ago I found myself before a woodland path;
it twisted off away from view, an ever winding path.
A weathered trailhead marked the edge between disparate worlds
where one can learn significance beyond the wider path.
How many times have people passed and turned their heads to see,
bestrewn with twigs and fallen leaves, this little wayward path?
How many times can one ignore the calling of his heart
before he’s left with nothing but a bleak and withered path?
I saw a choice between discovery and death, and so
I stepped into uncertainty and left the worldly path.
It crept up ferny canyon creeks where inspiration thrives,
and promise walked with every step along the woodsy path.
It faded though the valley’s marsh where dreams fall to decay
and wicker willows closed around to dim the waning path.
It rose to cold and windswept heights of solitude and doubt,
yet still I strove to persevere my long and weary path.
It ranged where sagebrush haunt the moon, by fleeting springs of hope,
and passes scorched by time where dreads bestrew the wizened path.
It vanished at the city’s edge and forced a desperate search
for where, beyond the steel and glass, I could reawake my path.
It wandered off among the thorns, the poison oak, the mud,
and yet with stirring vistas proved itself a worthy path.
And still it leads to spectacles that move the mind and soul
and drive me on to grasp the nature of this willful path.
Whoever spies this scratch of dirt that leaves the multitudes
will find it haunts his thoughts until he leaves the worn-out path.
To each who hears the quiet call, the journey is unique;
no other soul will ever tread the same bewildered path.
And as for me—I’ll carry on beneath the changeling skies,
convinced within my nature that I walk the wiser path.
Haiga by M. Morrissey-Cummins
QASIDA #18
David Jalajel
white lilies rise like fire through the tight red light,
the stained glass empties out facts you can’t ignore
in corporeal ambivalence you’ve planted your feet
on bouquets of limp leaves that will never be yours
has your body forgotten its nephew-like perversions,
do you disavow the drawn faces you’ve mutely implored
& do you doubt the truth of their canonical scrawls –
look – how a lily petal falls of its own accord
it’s so droll, the way you’ll retreat down odourless bracken
past the lilies, past where the cats have marked the door
it’s yet too early in the morning, no one’s really awake,
but look how the sunlight crawls across the floor
QASIDA #19
David Jalajel
you freeze on the road with the words pent inside you
to hear bare ground erupt, roots swell up & fuse
alas, nothing will change – you’ll still pine for home:
that puerile fairground where you pranced with your muse
we’ve watched you resist it – how you kick up the leaves,
scraping out the culled lyrics your eardrums refuse
but the words remain yours – they leech from your bones
long calcified laughs, lovers’ names you confuse
now listen: it’s the cacophony of roots creeping
near
to the song in your throat, to the holes in your shoes
QASIDA #20
David Jalajel
let a lesser desert sky tame your feral head,
weather your sterile pleas & nightly demand
to meander aimlessly through a backlit oasis,
derelict where your payoffs spill out over the sand
go sidestep real money, you’ll just have to fidget
to divulge each entangled & unravelling strand
of overheated thought, tumbleweeds too soon
smouldering while a bushfired emblazoning brand
is doused – so go squint at the moon sidling up,
stroking your star chart with an indolent hand
QASIDA #21
David Jalajel
away – your illuminations have long since scattered, fled,
who springs the flameless shadows your illusions fed
who staged this too trite vision, who goes to silence death –
nothing’s said: all’s ill-conceived on a featherlight bed
in smothered covers, downy-bleached, a scant retreat
from exposure’s dread – who wilted, wept & buried their head
watch you go blind, domestic, schooled: who kept their feet
plodding pathways sketched in lead, all wavelengths shed
& whose form engulfs the shadows into which we’re led,
who – at least – declaims your style among the dead
QASIDA #22
David Jalajel
affect a fallen face, flinch in tense open-mindedness –
through your pores, your body pleasure-shakes in play
but dries out, fails to feel the spanking-new temperance,
slinks into restless chanting, twice-removed from the fray
falling forward, sliding down, a spent virgin-forest idol
unfulfilled, but thrice-refreshed – why won’t you pray
with the pedestrian throng, deprecating the body, or
with that roadside dog licking up rain-drenched clay
or to the dull light – so easy to misconstrue, & not unlike
the first experience, nor those others who’d have their way
ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-SEVENTH
Shelia Murphy
He safely, safely has removed her from his sadness.
She looks at her watch and waits for someone who is late.
The painting on the wall is a young furnace.
Neighbors continue slamming doors as though an emergency.
Choices on the hospital menu pale compared with how efficiently
the nurses transport tray on tray, and respond to well-timed signals.
Face first is how an individual who has reached age of majority
dives into a pool and collects potential movement.
Sun fall, and depths of feeling in relation to subtraction,
the kind of morning each one feels despondent, letting go possessions.
ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-EIGHTH
Shelia Murphy
She passed one too many joints to the person on her left,
and, marking the occasion, promptly turned sixty-five.
Cinder sound approaching the cherry tree meant
a white dessert of some kind, following sweet corn.
Picket fence can be transformed by Photoshop
into a row of pointed faces of one's children.
Just after the sheep have jumped over the creek out back,
I count my blessings in their stead and drift to rest.
My father's pipe, a muted cherry flavor, conversation
about happiness, as if it came in tiny packages.
SYMBIOTIC POETRY
THIRD TUESDAY IN NOVEMBER
Steven Carter
Where to begin? The night of her death, yes; but that was nearly fifty years ago. What, then, to share with her? My marriage, of course: the birth of a son who, from certain angles, looks like her; twin grandsons; my teaching and writing careers (I’m retired seven
years now from the university); forty summers spent in Montana on the ranch and at the lake.
But all this is incidental to the darkness, the pain, the fantasies, hurts inflicted and received, sleeplessness and dreams of sleeplessness: the inner life—no, lives—of a stranger disguised with my face.
In our last home at 1420 Hearst, she slept off the kitchen, behind a closed door. When I heard her snoring, I went to the window over the sink, stood on a footstool and, on a pre-arranged signal, watched as the green-eyed girl next door bared her beautiful breasts to me. What if she had seen? Would it have mattered?
. . . .The night I came home from classes at Cal prattling about Nietzsche; the half-amused look on her face; my sudden anger at being patronized—or so I felt.
The Navy pilot she loved before my father appeared in her life: a young officer killed in an aircraft carrier mishap. His yellowing photo fell out of her Science and Health after she died (a year earlier she’d confessed to me that she adored this lost boy
more than my father: my initial shock and resentment was replaced by a strange friendly pity for all three, fortuitous ghosts who are now, literally, an eternal triangle.)
Where to begin? No, no, in my beginning is my end, as the poet says: the starless, moonless dark of that November night: fog, neon lights shining in pools of rain on Shattuck Avenue, the damp and cold I wanted to feel but could not.
fog forms on the Bay
therefore
I am
PRECIOUS STONES
Steven Carter
I once compared memories of witnessing her death to an amethyst, her favorite stone: every facet etched by the clear colors of my precise recollections of that night. The funeral, on the other hand, was a lump of jade: memories impenetrable: faint, muddy light obscuring everything. Now, as I flirt with age seventy jade, so to say, has gained the upper hand, so that, while I divvy up the night with an insomniac moon, my
mother’s appearances are less mnemonic than poetic: as if in death she’s become, not an angel, not even a muse, but a Virgil, guiding me through the hell, the purgatory, and yes, the paradise of our souls.
starless night
no tree, no wreath, no gifts
the last Xmas
VIRGINIA K
Steven Carter
I know my mother never liked you (you did like her, however). Part of that was a deeply-rooted family prejudice against Catholics, which I never shared. And your parents, both
alcoholics: you used to worry about being born under a bad sign because mom and dad conceived you after a night of heavy drinking and carousing in Vegas.
. . . .Awful, the memory of when Mom came home and caught us naked on the fold-out bed in the living room of the Hearst Ave. house. She was right: you weren’t meant for me, or I you; but half a century later, my nostalgia for both of you is unabated.
Of course part of that nostalgia is fake, rose-colored. But which part? You looked a bit like my mother, and I wonder what that said about our disparate feelings about you?
in the window
winter elms
all reflections
A LIGHT OF HOPE
Gerard John Conforti
Like the burning sun, our hearts love to love and our kisses shine with bliss. The morning unfolds the flowers as the rain of sorrow blows across the meadows. When the snow falls we hold each other in our arms lying in bed while the moonlight turns around and the day unfolds with a blazing sun of spring
a petal falls upon the earth when the flower dies its own death
WALLS 2
Gerard John Conforti
(for Rev. John Budwick)
There is nowhere to go unless I walk out the door into the wilderness. As I go out there is only one path to follow through the meadow. The mountains are on the other side, spread about the meadow there are many flowers and weeds and a clear horizon ahead of me, so I head for the endless horizon and walk the meadows day after day. There is nothing else, but the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
I'm, so lonely I begin to talk to myself the words not making any sense at all. But I know one thing. I am slowly losing my mind. I gaze around me for people, but they are not there. So,I continue on my the way. As night approaches there is a full moon ahead.
I lay down on the dewy grass to fall asleep. The dream I dream is short; nothing but a nightmare.
I wake to the sound of waves falling on the shore. Now I know I have reached a dead-end. I walk to the edge of the meadow and stop at the top of a cliff.
I gaze down and view the surf crashing and withdrawing back into the sea. There is no sandy beach – only the tides coming and going. My instinct is to jump, but I just stand there minute after minute wondering what I should do.
I turn around to face the wind blowing against me.
I decide to walk all the way back to the cottage that has only walls. As I am walking I am glad to be alive, but still there is only one path. A cloud in my head oppresses me. I wish for someone to talk to.
I arrive back at the cottage by nightfall. I gaze at the stars and view their beauty of them. Then I walk into the cottage where there is a cool breeze blowing in the single window I had opened to get some fresh air.
I lay on a bed with a very soft mattress and fall asleep. This time the dream is a pleasant one. I wake suddenly to the rain pattering on the roof of the cottage.
I close the window and then I cannot hold back the tears. They run down my face and I realize that all my life I have been alone.
between the mountains all solitary flowers
A LOVE THAT DIES SLOWLY
Gerard John Conforti
Laying in bed an old man stares at the ceiling above. As the daylight fades into night the moonlight closes his eyes forever.
a sunflower bows its head away from the window below his eyes full of tears
RETURN TO MONCTON
Ruth Holzer
On the way back a few weeks later, the same sights look much less interesting than they did the first time. This is just another medium-sized city with the usual congestion. I’ve been to all the parks and museums. Last night, there were shots outside the motel, then sirens.
gray afternoon—
homesick now for
a foreign country
BREADBASKET
Elizabeth Howard
based on Abandoned House,
photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt,
Oklahoma, 1942
In the 1930s and 40s, photographers traveled across the United States recording the effects of the great depression on families and individuals. They depicted the loss, pain, devastation in barren fields, migrant camps, soup kitchens, dilapidated shacks, in broken-down jalopies, boarded factories.
Eisenstaedi has captured the plight of the farmer in a single photograph, a deserted house sitting alone on a hilltop, no trees or shrubbery, nothing but one post, the remains of a broken fence, and weeds as far as the camera can see. On an Amtrak trip across the Great Plains recently, I saw the same scene repeated over and over.
a scruffy coyote
lopes up the hill
toward sunset
TANKA PROSE
Alegria Imperial
Weather report: Cloudy yet again. The haze on my dresser mirror dissipates on my weary eyes. I watch my spirit sag. What weighs me down so? The faded green of oak leaves, perhaps? Shadows on the dwarf cypress? Darkened roots I imagine on a patch of listless marigolds on a curb across the street?
Swishing water on the sink reminds me of rain. Periods of sun, the weather reporter adds. As if it matters. What matters for me is to leap out of this mirror image. The eyes of someone obsessed at withdrawing. Its soundless whining. Not me, I cough. Loudly. The image on the mirror leaves. Sinks into its darkness.
Out on the window, the oak wriggles. Tickled by the breeze. A spider web catches a glint from someone's eyes. The Rhodora bursts into a hot pink. Wind chimes break into a cheer. Someone chuckles. Not me. The mirror does not say so.
find me
among leaves turning
this and that way
always uncertain what mood
the sky dictates
RELEASING
Ramona Linke
there is the familiar smell, as she opens the front door. . .
she takes a seat in one of the basket chairs, closes her eyes
and thinks: memes
in the attic
. . . the noise if the bolt
locks down
LOSLASSEN
Ramona Linke
beim öffnen der haustür schlägt ihr der vertraute geruch entgegen,
sie lässt sich in einen der korbsessel fallen, schließt die augen
und denkt: meme
auf dem dachboden
. . . das geräusch wenn der riegel
einrastet
ONE IS TOO MANY
Chen-ou Liu
When the fire dies out, she rises, picks up her torn wedding dress from the floor and puts it on inside out. She turns and meets his indifferent gaze. For a moment, silence darkens the room. Finally, she runs out through the back door.
village well at dawn...
the bride penetrating
a winter sky
Haiga by Dennis M. Holmes
NO COUNTRY FOR FIREFLIES
Johannes Manjrekar
That brief stab of light in the darkness – I’m sure that was a firefly.
I’m sure it wasn’t. This is no country for fireflies.
Beyond the garden fence, there is the sharp little sound, like a tiny explosion, of a match being struck, but most of the light is trapped in the smoker’s cupped hands. Then the beedi takes over, its red glow waxing and waning in the dark.
midnight –
without a moon
the silence deeper
3:08 IN THE MORNING
Scott Terrill
I get out of bed and on the laptop check Facebook. The Americans are up, busying themselves on the other side of the world; not much for me though. I turn the computer off. It is dark, silent, except for an air-conditioning unit humming in the room somewhere, humming. I quietly make my way to the toilet and urinate. I stare at the stream. It reminds me of a headache. I turn off the light. The digital display on the clock tells me it is 3:08 in the morning. Angles catch and I notice something; the led light display is illuminating two glass bottles and the clear liquid they contain. Both bottles, bedside, one filled with cologne the other aftershave, are for the briefest of moments, an instant and a lifetime… It is 3:08 in the morning.
whale voices
strike an iris
in the face
A LEAPING FISH
Jane Reichhold
a leaping fish
a door opens
in the lake
Is that a haiku from Paul Célan?
Did he write haiku?
He was French. He surely had access to French translations.
He was not French; he was Romanian. Born in what is now known as Chernivtsi, Ukraine.
But his name is French.
No, his birth name was “Antschel.”
But he spoke and wrote in French.
As a second language. He first learned to speak German.
I still think it would be good to accuse Jane Reichhold of stealing that poem from him.
The haiku is too good to have come from him.
The idea is sensitive enough to be one of his.
But is it his? I don’t know but isn’t it a great idea?
The lake with a door in it or needling Reichhold?
Getting back at her. That bitch needs to be taken down a notch or two.
You would do that by accusing her of something she did not do?
Sure. How else?
What if the haiku is truly hers? What if she sues you for slander? or libel? or both?
Do you think she would?
I would.
SEQUENCES
COUNTING CROWS
Ed Baranosky
One crow sorrow
Two crows joy
Three crows a girl
Four crows a boy
Five crows silver
Six crows gold
Seven crows a secret
never to be told
Anonymous
One crow sorrow:
My mother’s passing was anticipated
All week long the crows’ clans
had been massing in the park.
One morning a diving crow, opened
its wings inches from my face.
Two crows joy:
My departure to the airport
was attended by a fluid flight
of birds gradually breaking off,
leaving just two to guide us
directly into Departures.
Three crows a girl:
Waiting for a lift at Logan
in Boston, I noticed a nearby
light stand with three crows
perched beside the gulls
as my niece opened the door.
Four crows a boy;
Welcomed by my brother
near the stairs to the driveway,
I looked back to see four crows
settle in the off-shore breeze
into the nearby black branches.
Five crows silver:
A sliver of silver moon
attended the morning and evening
of the memorial service. Five
silent crows followed the last limo
into the cemetery lane.
Six crows gold;
Returning as before,
the neighbor’s cat had left
a mouse at my door.
In that week the trees had turned
golden where six crows watched.
Seven crows a secret
never to be told:
The morning after I watched
a clan of seven crows line up
to dive and soar one at a time
in a secret game. I featured that night
reading the series, “A Foot In Both Worlds.”
PARTY OF ONE
Ed Baranosky
dusting old poems
no remains of snow shadows
among these old clothes
Ed Baranosky
always too close
to my birthday
Groundhog Day’s
recurring nightmare
for the golden marmots
even the chocolate migraines
of Valentine’s Day’s
disillusioning memories
can seem a brief relief
to the Promethean nightmares
constructed of heart-shaped
doilies pasted clumsily
on scarlet cardboard
scrawled with the inevitable
naïve blushing verse
to test the haunted
courage of too cute for words
losing taunted honor
to more damning embarrassments
assuming the others must know
the first unlabelled date
misunderstood disappears
stood up or forgotten
always too close to memory
as the last party of one nears
NAUTILUS NINETY NORTH
Ed Baranosky
Things are always at their best in their beginning.
-Blaise Pascal
Herring gulls, glaucous gulls;
black-headed gulls, all-white arctic
gulls; fairy terns and kittiwakes,
the sailors are in port, shore-leave
from the big ships lying-to,
drawing the land sharks
camp followers, barracuda
and the big gray vans of the Shore Patrol
picking up the early
unconscious and the lost late wanderers;
breaking up overlapping brawls
from train to bus to Back-Bay pub
rolling from door to door, listing to port,
and listening to the
scuttlebutt, the loose lips that can sink ships.
A high soaring albatross
cautiously turns into port
following the Navy wake
while calling to its missing mate
weaving among the flocks.
In the dark corner of a bar,
a massive sailor kicks back alone
against a table; depth-charge in hand,
a beer with a whiskey chaser, a
submariner insignia.
A dark shadow slips,
silent running, deep under the arctic
ice, sonar’s constant searching
for the point with one way-out
rotating with the planet;
Secret AWACs shuttle
their awaited signals
from the surface code readers;
silence then a loud murmur crosses the bars;
and even the brawls pause.
The submariner has departed
the beer glass unnoticed as the chaos lingers;
overturned whiskey
glass placed by a gull’s feather leaving a damp scrawl,
Nautilus Ninety North.
Haiga by M. Morrissey-Cummins
THINGS TO DO IN N.J.
Ruth Holzer
Interstate, Turnpike—
hold a steady course
due north
run round
and round the pocket park
white girl
return
another tube of lotion
to Walgreens
climb
high above Hemlock Falls
without the Scouts
attend Seders
in due season
attend funerals
listen to jazz
all night on good old
WBGO
SUMMER DREAMING
Joann Grisetti
opiate dreams
not the ones I have
summer afternoon
hammock swaying softly
touched by warm breezes
loud enough
to close the window
cicada song
fills the oak trees
summer twilight
one bat
then several others
hunt at twilight
buzzing mosquitoes
disappear
shattered pieces
of the carnival
on to the next town
lying in the rain
until next summer
SLATE AND CHALK
Autumn Noelle Hall
first day of school...
I mask my saddle shoes’ scuffs
with sponged white polish,
their laces—like my tanka—
tied up in knots
how many books?
how many pedagogues?
how can I ever
cram all of this into
a tanka backpack ?
winks and whispers
giggling from behind
the cloak room door
this tanka has a secret
it refuses to share
vintage desks, their
hinged writing surfaces
paired to their chairs...
alphabetical seating
puts “T” for tanka last
on the diamond
the captains taking turns
choosing teams...
odd man out in the dugout—
my tanka warming the bench
a brazen bully
in the cafeteria
elbows me hard
cutting his way in front
to nab the last sweet tanka
recess—puzzling,
the way light leaks through the cracks
between these pieces...
my tanka, not unlike
this fissured picture
here lies my tanka
amidst the pencil shavings
and hall passes...
perhaps the janitor
might pause to read five lines
dusk and snow falling...
outside the clubhouse door,
my tanka shivers
in squares of mullioned light,
the password forgotten
TANKA FOR MY BROTHER
Leslie Ihde
with his iPod
and a pillow
he settled down
for his longest sleep
just part of a song
in your brief stay
did you enjoy
the open sky and
these blue gray waters
my distant brother?
young friends with dark faces
move slowly to greet
your aged parents
they too ponder
the silence you left
those stupid nurses
don't they know
when someone is sleeping?
may this son
awaken to another life
the plants that froze
when the gas was shut off
I remove them now
at the centers
tender fronds of living green
on skis your wings
sliced cold air and snow
why did you fly
from this world?
~ your broken mother
FIRST NIGHT CAMPOUT
Jeanne Jorgensen
white wine chills
in a mountain stream
hardly there
her 'baby bump'
under his warm hand
a long kiss
before they spread out
a picnic lunch
beneath an ancient pine
lots of time to cuddle . . . enjoy
their slow paced honeymoon
WHEN WILL SPRING COME?
Chen-ou Liu
petals on pink
she asks, what will happen
after I die
her cat got your tongue
lingering in my mind
those summer kisses
harvest moon...
a shadow shifting
across my poem
the recurring dream
of the mouth in Not I
winter light
THE PORTRAIT OF AN ATTIC POET
Chen-ou Liu
I yell out
I'll stay drunk on writing
her silent tongue
like a scissor
cutting my words to shreds
rain pelting
the windows of this rooming house
I hear voices
rising towards the ceiling
jostling for survival
my mind complains
it's hard to live by words alone
tongues of fire
lick the flesh
and stay for a while
I conduct
the Fifth Symphony
inside my head
the doctor sees nothing
but a poet's failed dream
a wolf
howling at the cold moon
alone
face to face
with my own demons
after wishing
on a shooting star
all that remains
of my attic room
a shadow on the wall
ONCOLOGY
for Phil
Hannah Mahoney
clouds drift
behind the half moon . . .
diagnosis
the drip of chemo . . .
a siren wails
in the distance
deciding
to stop the treatment . . .
late-winter snowfall
the midnight call
with the news that he’s gone . . .
as I walk to work
a butterfly flutters
at my chest, then flits away
RECLAMATION
Hannah Mahoney
my mother draws the drapes
my father checks the locks
unaware
that the jackal lurks within
waiting for the quiet, the dark
the creak of a stair
the turn of a knob
I grope on the nightstand
for a talisman, a charm,
but the kind old witch was a dream
a shadow in the doorway
a path of light across the floor
steps, weight, breath, grope
the freshly laundered sheets
still smell of the summer air
on a moonless night
I wake in a sweat
trying to scream
gagging
on my own silence
* * * * * * *
my fingers trace the names
on the cool stone
of my parents’ graves
a wind chime murmurs
in the apple tree
deep in the woods, a hut
from her pouch, the hag
extracts a blue stone to repel
all those who prowl and slink
I take its smooth heft in my hand
she leads me to a clearing
a sacred spring
in its steaming waters
old myself now, I finally reclaim
all that was snatched in the night
SCELIPHRON CAEMENTARIUM
(mud dauber)
John Martone
books on his floor
extension cords
sweat streaming down —
mud dauber
legs dangling – longer
than sapiens’
mud dauber
circles his window-sash
home
all yr generations
come to this house
mud dauber
all those lives
lived alone
mud dauber
no struggle w/ solitude mud dauber
mud coming to life mud dauber
spittle & dust —
anthropos
mud dauber
are you drawn
to my sweat
mud dauber —
anthropos — lost
in mud dauber’s
nest chambers
people evolved
to build houses too
mud dauber
mud dauber
searching my house
for spiders
mud dauber —
a wolf spiders cowers
in the cellar stairs
wolf spider
solitary too
mud dauber
NEW ORLEANS
A French Quarter Vignette
Kathe L. Palka
Lenten morning—
in magnolias on Decator
the gleam of beads
near the Café du Monde
kitchen plaques for sale:
beignet done that
on Jackson Square
a young drummer beats
an empty bucket
St. Louis # 1—
counting the XXXs on
Marie Laveau’s tomb
riverboat tour
the guide points out what’s left
of the Ninth Ward
midnight blues
along Bourbon Street
a police horse dances
FOR MY FIRST CAT IN AMERICA
Nu Quang
November chill
the last ray fades
behind the pines . .
Hermia dreams
of tomorrow
at the vet's
I pat her head
one last time
telling her:
we love you
December sun
too soft to warm
the space
where she left
her footprints
by the lilac tree
I throw a handful of dirt
over her urn
wishing her
a happy afterlife
Haiga by Ramona Linke
SINGLE POEMS
summer grasses
my dreams extend
into night
Máire Morrissey-Cummins
from this rocky hilltop
the clear, blue sky above me
west . . . across the bay
a stinking brown haze drifts
from the pulp mills of Crofton
Jeanne Jorgensen
on pointed toes
like ripples, why not?
if floating
the way we do in void
we find what matters
Alegria Imperial
oh tabby cat
you are content stretched
on cool grass
in this garden which is yours
all your nine lives long
Giselle Maya
haze
like the opaqueness we dread
a crust
the guise soft hearts
take on to survive
Alegria Imperial
enveloping
the juicy plum
her painted lips
Rachel Sutcliffe
hermit crab--
where can we exist
beyond this cloud?
Alegria Imperial
on the prayer mat
the hands raised in vajrasan
couldn't contact God--
the prayer was too long and
the winter night still longer
R.K. Singh
tortoise
sand in my eyes,
what pain
Alegria Imperial
my pen
dips into shadows
of the boat people. . .
endlessly I search for words
to paint their ordeal
Nu Quang
your early
morning run …
my pillow
Joanna M. Weston
deaf child
penetrates the room
with his smile
Máire Morrissey-Cummins
is stillness
on the unlit moon, or the mute
rocking waves?
Alegria Imperial
tough choices -
buying clothes
for a friend
Joanna M. Weston
Christmas time
Salvation Army’s bell
in the air
another year passing
without revisiting my hometown
Nu Quang
bare branches
I borrow a pen to sign
for the loan
Rachel Sutcliffe
until i lay
my head on your breast
humpback whale
Alegria Imperial
one tree not cut down
the farmer takes a break
under its shade
der einzige Baum, den er nicht gefällt hat
der Bauer macht eine Pause
in seinem Schatten
Brian Robertson
a butterfly sits
on a bench in a playground
stretching its new wings:
a little girl waves her arms
catching her mother's keen eye
Alexander Jankiewicz
before you were born
telling my granddaughter
about her mother
ayaz daryl nielsen
golden rod
in full bloom
her blond rinse
Joanna M. Weston
husband and I walk
to the haiku conference
these street kids we pass
seem so cocky, sullen . . . rude
are they afraid of us too?
Jeanne Jorgensen
full moon eclipse--
everything dark, unknown
yet filled with light
R.K.Singh
first aid box
buried beneath plasters
a dead fly
Rachel Sutcliffe
blood moon
the ruby eye
of a dove
Máire Morrissey-Cummins
thin cloud
election
promises
Joanna M. Weston
at the flea market
we share a cigarette
then he drops the price
auf dem Flohmarkt
teilen wir eine Zigarette
dann senkt er den Preis
Brian Robertson
sun dappled day
boats on the river
ripple
Máire Morrissey-Cummins
picnic in the park
we nurse our ice cream
toothache
Rachel Sutcliffe
a step-stool
just enough for a boy
and candy jar
ayaz daryl nielsen
peach pie and ice cream
for the third night in a row
old classmate and I
smile and talk . . . talk and laugh
such a marvel good food good friends
Jeanne Jorgensen
the drying trees
live my age:
autumn
warms of new day
hot tea and singing birds
R.K. Singh
front porch
a rustle of leaves
rattles the door
Máire Morrissey-Cummins
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