The Abstractaphy Initiative

Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA

I remember my mother telling me how she felt on the frigid night in 1953 when Stalin died. A little thaw of hope. When she mentioned it years later, I was only a young teen growing up in a free country, so I didn’t fully understand. But more than seven decades after that historic event, with ice thick on the streets of our cities and a chill in my bones—I know. 

pale moonlight
falls on the road ahead . . .
and on my hearth 
        wild goblin flames 
                  are dancing

Jenny Ward Angyal
My Books
Inkstone Poetry Forum
The Grass Minstrel

Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

She knows how to swim. She does not want to swim.
Her hesitation is more than about wet hair. Her gut
feels the diasporic trauma of her African ancestors’
relationship to water.

time-space conundrum

Before 2015 the watery graveyard of hundreds of
slave ships in the Middle Passage was a murky void.
Maritime archaeologists with the Slave Wrecks Project
now explore the ships. Divers—many of them Black
women and men new to scuba diving— touch the wrecks,
bring up mud, wood, iron objects (kettles to cannons) for study.

the past before

Linking these finds to historic records, the teams name
the ships, map their points of origin in Africa, and locate
the slave owners’ plantations. They find and interview
descendants of the formerly enslaved. The Slave Wrecks Project
is more than the history of the slave trade and its material artifacts
It memorializes slavery’s contemporary legacy.

a future behind

Drifting Sands Haibun #32 (June 2025)

By Anna Cates

our tattered flag sinks
the flagpole melts into
a molten puddle . . .
Red October—let’s hope
we don’t live to see it!

By Anna Cates

we can’t blame it
on witchcraft . . .
in a single bubble

rainbow colors
bloat and belch
putrid portents

on a drying lake
where birds cease to venture
our error’s peak

how lonely
that dark mountain . . .
a threatened bee

seeking harbor
in cleansing nectar . . .
our rallying cry

let it be
in fragrant blooms
our altar of amens

By Richard Grahn
Evanston, Illinois, USA

dawn . . .
salat rises
from the ruins of Gaza
from the tents and shelters
in the city of Rafa.
here in the land
of missiles and bombs
today is the first day
of Ramadan.
nothing for suhoor
nothing for iftar
how can we fast
when we’re starving to death?
alms for the poor in short supply
aid trucks denied
while the world decides
if it’s self-defense
or genocide.
as I walk through rubble
of the past
through centuries of wars
creating more pain
than hate can imagine
I ask myself, if I’ll see the day
when peace breaches walls
of humanity’s fanatical brands of insanity,
when the call to evening prayers
is a message for all, regardless of faith,
that God cares for all
equally.

War tramples Kyiv culture.
The art museum’s windows are blown out.
The concert hall is shrouded in dust.
The statue of Taras Shevchenko, lauded poet,
is pitted and pocked by bullets. Dead silence.
These images beg my imagination
for color, for sound, this pen.

ringing the base
of the bell tower
sprouts of green grass

Drifting Sands Haibun #21 (May 2023) and
Tan-ku For Ukraine: A World Haiku and Tanka Anthology, ed.
Dimitar Anakiev. Sofia, Bulgaria: gabriell-e-lit Publishing House, 2024.

By: Tazeen Fatma
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

I remember my brother playing hitman when I was younger. He would spend hours on the computer aiming targeted attacks at the enemies. He was pretty good at it. I, on the other hand, usually lost since I killed a lot of innocents in the process. It annoyed me. I mean, wasn’t it okay if a few civilians got hit? I did eliminate the targets as well. What, really, is the value of one life in a game? 

But when bridges collapsed, mass shootings occurred, and the army took over, I resorted to reading jurisdictions, history, philosophy, and religion. I also watched Star Wars. The metamorphosis of the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker into the Sith Lord Darth Vader when he forwent morality in his quest for revenge was, I think, the last straw. Idealism had lost its path.

biological warfare I scrub off dead skin

By Edward Cody Huddleston
Baxley, Georgia, USA

Rockwell’s art is as American as apple pie
and Agent Orange!

There’s nothing wasted in his work;
each stroke is one of genius.

One painting will make you nostalgic for a malt shop
driven out of business by McDonald’s before you were born.
And the next? Well, the next reminds you that Ruby Bridges exists.
And whoever wrote that on the wall behind her existed.
And what made them what they were still exists
in the laws of our nation, the fabric of our culture,
and in our cities, wearing combat boots and balaclavas,
as they drag children from their homes and throw them into vans.

So when people say that Norm reminds them of the good old days,
always remind them that he eventually realized they weren’t the good old days.

By Richard King Perkins II
Huntley, Illinois, USA

This is a clone
in the shape of a woolly mammoth.
For her, Siberia isn’t a punishment
but a falsely promised land of permafrost.
Her tusks forage and dig
on the taiga
with measured sadness
as the great slope of her back
offers a momentary ramp,
a tool for climbing humans
to ascend and ride atop her head.
And once you control the head,
you own the rest.
And like our ancestors,
someone will decide
after the elephant ride
that she looks absolutely delicious.