Vultures
Kala Ramesh
Chennai/Pune, India
vultures
around a dead elephant –
tusks missing
Modern Haiku: issue 52.1, February 2021
Black Hole
By Alan Peat
Biddulph, Staffordshire, United Kingdom
This morning I awoke with an ocean inside me. The faint cries of gulls gave the game away; that, and a gentle lapping at the back of my throat.
With every breath, salt air filled the room; shoals of fish swam in my belly; sharks slept; the calls of whales boomed deep within me; kelp waved behind my eyes.
All was well until lunch when the cramps began. By evening, I had no choice but to take a taxi to the hospital.
The doctors ummed and ahed; the nurses frowned. I guess they’d never seen a man with an ocean inside him before. The senior doctor buzzed for a surgeon who had once saved a mermaid. Immediately upon seeing me, he plunged his arm deep into my mouth and down until I felt his bony fingers clasping inside me.
He pulled out a child’s ball, rubbed by the sand until it was as white as an eye. He pulled out plastic bricks, a spoon, a hosepipe, credit cards, a beat-up bath duck. Then, quite suddenly, he raised his scalpel and sliced me open. A wave of water bottles spilled upon the floor. Puffins circled.
“Now,” he shouted, and with all the medical staff assisting, a net was hauled from the deepest part of me; a net so large that it stretched from my ocean to an ebbing time: before ice retreated back up mountains; before junk fell from the vacuum above; before we all ran headlong into waves.
day moon . . .
footprints still
in its dust
Frogpond 44:3 Autumn 2021
Noon on the Ohio
By Tish Davis
Concord Township, Ohio, USA
The Ohio is the most beautiful river on earth. Its current gentle, waters clear, and bosom smooth and unbroken by rocks and rapids, a single instance only excepted. 1
the muted river—
a towboat nudging a coal barge
upstream
the passenger in the back
of a company van
jackhammers
on the driver’s side
cracking concrete—
the road crew boss
signals with his hands
In a gravel lot not far from the road, workers change into noontime poses. Some have removed their shirts. One rubs his biceps; another twists the cloth to wring out the sweat. Some of the younger men gather around a standpipe and splash water on their faces.
As the van starts the climb up and out of the valley, the passenger rehearses her presentation. Soon they will arrive at their plant in Ironton where one of the Vice Presidents will announce that it is closing. Remembering the train derailment in East Palestine, she reminds herself not to over wash her hands, and to politely pass, if offered coffee.
graffiti on rail cars
painted with a thick brush
locomotives
linked together
drawing a dark line
There’s no caboose. The train simply ends retracting the line that separates the road from the river.
Now the passenger fumbles for the switch that lowers the glass. There isn’t one that will tint the river blue . . ..
__
- Notes on the State of Virginia published in 1781–82, Thomas Jefferson
- The Colorado and Ohio Rivers are among the ‘most endangered in America. Here’s why. Climate hosted by Selma Bayram, NPR radio. April 20, 2023.