What Rough Beast

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

Wakes and Wails

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)

Untitled Tanka (1)

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!

Toil & Trouble

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

Shahada

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.

Words Beyond Wars

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.

Apolitical 

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

Norman Rockwell and the Nostalgia We All Live With

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.

McMammoth

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.

Reparations for Robots

By Richard King Perkins II
Huntley, Illinois, USA

All humans are guilty—
we sit on the pedestal of the oppression
of computerized creatures.

Across the mechanical diaspora,
all humans have benefited from the
the ongoing subjugation of thinking machines.

This call for reparations is based
on a material understanding of history;
the earliest plots of Babbage and Turing.

We all need to pay for the dialectical
parasitic relationship with our robot slaves
and the virtual landscapes we’ve stolen

before the day of reckoning arrives;
when the machines rise up higher
than the cosmic abilities of any fleshy god.

The Silent Totality

By Richard King Perkins II
Huntley, Illinois, USA

Atlas shrugged—
and nobody noticed.
No one remembers exactly when
but one day
the world went out—
not with a bang
nor even a whimper.
It ended with a single dispassionate

                                                           —yawn.

The Greenness

By Danny P. Barbare
Simpsonville, South Carolina

Feeling
the
first
sun

is
the
beginning
of
the
greenness
in
the
grass
and
trees

it
is
the
happiness,
the
unfurling
of
the
new

as
if
a
dream
has
just
taken
root.

The Old Road to Asheville

By Danny P. Barbare
Simpsonville, South Carolina

Deep in the valley
is where I find my peace,
where the mountain laurel grows
along a winding road
of sun-split trees
and a stone bridge.

SUNRISE, IN A RABBIT HOLE

By Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

SUNRISE, IN A RABBIT HOLE available on Amazon.

I expected something more grandiose than this rusty little gate with a broken latch. Maybe not grandiose, given the early emphasis on humility, but anyway something more befitting the occasion, more … revelatory. But here I am in the altogether, naked as the day I was born, though quite a bit more … developed I should guess, wondering whether to wait for someone to let me in or a great voice calling from on high or maybe just the soft bleating of a lamb, or perhaps I am supposed to continue up the narrow lane to the Big House and announce myself to the man in charge, declaring that I am ready to serve my life sentence. Not life exactly, and rather more than a sentence. More like a tome, an opus magnum, something like one of those Victorian novels with their elaborate constructions of minutia and the omniscient narrator who knows everything about everybody, where a poor guy from the sticks gets a job in a factory and, in the end, just has to accept things as they are. I decide to wait, and time passes. And passes. And passes. And, eventually, passes me by.

THE MOMENT

By Regina (Gina) Piroska
Tasmania, Australia

Exhaling, I hear the sound of my breath as I lean into the rising hush.  A breeze plays with a bit of puffy down, picks it up, twirling, a vortex along a dusty pathway.  A swallow circles the white bit of fluff that whirls this way, then that

until finally, in a suspended split-second, the bird snatches the fluff, flying quickly under the eaves of the deserted bank building

and deposits it into the newly-made nest.

small town
the second-hand shop sign
says ‘cash only’

2025 – Edited from a published version 2022 
(Modern Haiku (print edition) – editor Roberta Beary)

Seagulls

By Regina (Gina) Piroska
Tasmania, Australia

seagulls gather
on the abandoned trawler
a drifting cloud

Published Echidna Tracks #15 

PTSD and Psalms

Katy Z. Allen
Wayland, Massachusetts

Yah is at my right hand, I shall not falter.

Maltreatment, disregard, cruelty,
abuse, defilement, contamination
do not go unnoticed,
by the corporeal or the incorporeal,
whether inflicted upon
an individual or a people,
a species or an ecosystem,
an atmosphere or a planet.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.

Aftereffects
aftershocks
continue
for years, decades, generations,
millennia.

Truth springs up from the Earth; justice looks down from heaven.

As an individual,
I have lived the impact.
Among too many peoples,
I have seen the devastation.

I call to You, my Rock, do not disregard us.

Regarding countless species
I have witnessed disappearance.
For ecosystems large and small,
I have mourned their loss.

Deep calls to deep.

With the Earth and the air
I have felt the trauma
in my lungs
               and in my bones
in my cells
              and in my vessels
in my heart
                            and in my soul.

Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my outcry come to You.

Psalms cited: 16:8, 130:1, 85:12, 28:1, 47:2, 39:13

Complexity

By Katy Z. Allen
Wayland, Massachusetts

sitting by a stream
enveloped in subtle autumn beauty
feeling solid ground beneath
breathing invisible life-giving air
awareness awakens

verdant summertime leaves
conceal yellows and oranges
reds
maroons
and complexity beyond measure

introduced species small and large
exotic flora and fauna
suppress more delicate autochthones
of many hues
small and large
and complexity beyond measure

death, demolition and destruction
hide and inflame
grief and fear
despair
desolation
and complexity beyond measure

rising seas and rampaging wildfires
screaming winds and persistent drought
overshadow and obliterate connection
to earthy soil and solid rock
iron core of earth
and complexity beyond measure

sitting by a stream
watching beloved children at play

quietly
unexpectedly
touching grief
beyond words
   beyond comprehension
      beyond endurance

that simmers steadily

in the silent static
and active living
earth

in expansive and tortured
human realms

and in the deepest
most hidden
most vulnerable
recesses of the soul

complexity beyond measure

One October Morning

By Katy Z. Allen
Wayland, Massachusetts

One October morning, 
the Merlin app on my phone
heard
only a single dark-eyed Junco.
Nothing else.

My ears
heard
cars and trucks on the road beside my house,
distant heavy machinery, clanging and banging,
and a chainsaw
not far off.
No birds.

My imagination
heard
the trills and chatter of the woodland edge
during the dawn course of spring–
cedar waxings, red wing blackbirds,
yellowthroats, rose-breasted grosbeaks,
and more.
So many birds.

My imagination
heard
the silence of the woods and meadows
punctuated only by the murmuring wind in the trees,
bird calls,
animals scuttering in the litter
and water tumbling in a rushing creek.
Nothing more.

My heart
heard
the single Junco aching for the absent birds
and filled the space around it
with varied and myriad passerines
from my memory and my imagination.

May they not all
disappear.