The Abstractaphy Initiative

Caroline Giles Banks – Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Mother maples, and their promised seedlings and saplings, filter pollutants from the air.

Printed on paper—trees’ shrouds—The Associated Press reports that the U.S. Forest Service will terminate a $75 million dollar grant allocated to replace hundreds of thousands of trees lost to Hurricane Katrina, many in an historically Black community in New Orleans. By Executive Order, environmental justice initiatives that assure a percentage of climate investments go to disadvantaged communities “no longer meet government priorities.”

agnostic buzz saws pulp 
Latin<—-> English primers
DEI<—->GODS

The Last Oak Leaf: Haiku, Senryu and Haibun Poems, Caroline Giles Banks. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Wellington-Giles Press, 2025.

Caroline Giles Banks – Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

sun and wind
unfunded
what on earth?

tsuri-doro #27 (May/June 2025)

lilacs re-bloom
spring
discombobulates

bottle rockets #52 (February 2025)

the Rio Grande
trickles down
to a misnomer

tsuri-doro #13 (Jan/Feb 2023)

Caroline Giles Banks – Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

The Eye of the Beholder
In the Company of Burtynsky and Basho

Edward Burtynsy’s photographs are stories of human alterations to the Earth. Taken using drones and fixed-wing aircraft these depict large-scale industrial projects and their effect on the environment. I am especially drawn to a photo of the tailings pond of an African diamond mine. Seen from the air, it appears almost beautiful, like a massive flower with its black-and-white petals opened and impressed upon the ground. I am reminded of Basho’s words:

How admirable!
to see lighting and not think
life is fleeting

Translation by Robert Hass
The Essential Haiku: Verses of Basho, Buson and Issa.
New Jersey: The Ecco Press, 1994

First published in Drifting Sands Haibun #19 (January 2023)

See “Edward Burtynsky. Over 40 Years of Bearing Witness to the Impacts of Human Industry on the Planet.” www.edwardburtynsky.com

By Subhash Roy Choudhury – Cuttack, Odisha, India

revolution square—
a beggar steps aside
for the parade

By Theresa A. Cancro – Wilmington, Delaware, USA

milk moon . . .
in the migrant camp
a child’s swollen belly

By Wade R. DeYoung – Haines City, FL, United States

Agents of Apocalypse
        –very loosely after Sandra Simonds’ Orlando

Many folks champion humans,
with bombs, bullets,
intentional infection policies.
Humans aspire to this position
prestigious,
but no.
They rank as amateurs.

Might reptiles qualify?
Crocodiles and caimans
with ivory teeth and jaws
like snap traps
or rattlers, mambas,
cobras, copperheads, cottonmouths
oozing venom villainous.
But no.

Arthropods are close contenders.
Mosquitoes, tsetse flies,
tiny flying vampires.
Ticks, hypodermic needles of death.
But no.

COVID, AIDS, smallpox, yellow fever,
dengue, Ebola, measles, rabies
—caused by viruses,
just two vector-borne.
Anthrax, botulism, diphtheria,
leprosy, syphilis, cholera,
bubonic plague
—bacteria-borne,
but one vector-borne.
Malaria, sleeping sickness
—both arthropod-borne
but caused by protozoans.
Millions of microbes,
malevolence in mind,
preserve the prize
as the agents of Apocalypse
and Ragnarök.

By Caroline Giles Banks – Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Silent Waters 
An Installation by Pritika Chowdhry, 2023

Chowdhry’s 101 larger-than-life ceramic feet placed on opposite sides of a twisted line memorializes those who died in the violence during the partition of India in 1947.

jet black containers

Once filled with salt water the hollow clay feet are lined with the residue of crystallized salts.

 the dried tears

I want to defy the museum’s security system, to step over the rope barricade, and place my feet

next to theirs. Together to jump over history’s crooked lines.

 of memory

Cattails (October 2023)

*See “Conflict Between India and Pakistan/ Global Conflict Tracker.” www.cfr.org February 18, 2026 for information on recent relations between India and Pakistan.

Theresa A. Cancro – Wilmington, Delaware, USA

police siren . . .
the hard stare
of an inner-city kid

First published in #FemkuMag, May 2019, Issue 12

By Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

In 1947, when time was kept in a pocket or worn on the wrist, the artist Martyl Langsdorf was tasked by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to visually represent the idea of time running out to avert nuclear disaster. She sketched the round face of a clock not unlike those mounted on kitchen walls or placed on mantles. Using artistic license in her drawing of the clock, Martyl set the hour hand close to twelve and the minute hand at seven minutes to the hour. She chose this placement of the hands because, “it looked good to my eye.”

In January 2023, influenced by the the war in Ukraine, home of Chernobyl and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the “Doomsday Clock” to 90 seconds before midnight. 

Which of these arts—language or martial, liberal or fine—will they draw on next?

Earth’s eruptions classified|
active, dormant, extinct—
how simple!

Drifting Sands Haibun #22 (July 2023)

For current information on Chernobyl see “International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day” Geneva Environment Network.