Community Voices – The Abstractaphy Initiative

haiku – car trip

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA car triptank filled on creditfossil remains First published: contemporary haibun online 17.3 (Dec 2021)

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA flight cancellations overheated birds fall from the sky Pressing Matters: Haiku, Senryu and Haibun Poems, Caroline Giles Banks. Minneapolis, MN: Wellington- Giles Press, 2023.

Haiku – late fall

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA call it what you willlate fallroses still in bloom bottle rockets #38 (2016)

ceasefire—

By Theresa A. Cancro - Wilmington, Delaware, USA ceasefire—under the weeping figa blind doll

Arborcide

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 primersDEI<—->GODS The Last Oak Leaf: Haiku, Senryu and Haibun Poems, Caroline Giles Banks. Minneapolis,…

Three Haiku by Caroline Giles Banks

Caroline Giles Banks - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA sun and windunfundedwhat on earth? tsuri-doro #27 (May/June 2025) lilacs re-bloomspringdiscombobulates bottle rockets #52 (February 2025) the Rio Grandetrickles downto a misnomer tsuri-doro #13 (Jan/Feb 2023)

The Eye of the Beholder

Caroline Giles Banks - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA The Eye of the BeholderIn 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 thinklife is fleeting Translation…

revolution square—

By Subhash Roy Choudhury - Cuttack, Odisha, India revolution square—a beggar steps asidefor the parade

milk moon . . .

By Theresa A. Cancro - Wilmington, Delaware, USA milk moon . . .in the migrant campa child's swollen belly

Agents of Apocalypse

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 positionprestigious,but no.They rank as amateurs. Might reptiles qualify?Crocodiles and caimanswith ivory teeth and jawslike snap trapsor rattlers, mambas,cobras, copperheads, cottonmouthsoozing 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-bornebut caused by protozoans.Millions of microbes,malevolence in mind,preserve the prizeas…

Silent Waters

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…

police siren . . .

Theresa A. Cancro - Wilmington, Delaware, USA police siren . . .the hard stareof an inner-city kid First published in #FemkuMag, May 2019, Issue 12

Tick-Tock

By Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, 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,…

Sticks and Stones

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA In its March 2025 quarterly update theOxford English Dictionary added 42 new words from other languages. The words do not have direct English equivalents. The list includes gigil, from the Philippines, an intense feeling when seeing someone or something cute; blaa, from Irish English, a soft white-floured bread associated with Waterford, Ireland; and alamak, a Malaysian word expressing shock or outrage. Simultaneously, hundreds of English words and phrases disappeared from U.S. Government documents. Many words erased from these documents relate to D.E.I. and transgender issues and initiatives. Forbidden words include: race, trans, intersectionality, Indigenous, tribal, ethnicity, activism, gender, pronoun, sociocultural, Black, female, disabled,…

The Man of the Hole

By Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA His hut hidden in the rainforest from outsiders, the last known member of an Amazonian tribe is found lying in his hammock covered in feathers. Decades earlier those greedy for the tribe’s land and resources murdered almost all his kin with poisoned sugar. Like a keepsake wedding suit, the funereal garb of brilliant bird feathers reflects planning and preparation, readiness and ritual. His death is a harbinger of the accelerating annihilation and disappearance of untold numbers of cultures and peoples—not unlike the mass extinction of other species—due to the cumulative effects of deliberative and…

Clarion Call

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA Hagia Sophia, the magnificent complex in Istanbul, was built in the 6th century as a Christian church, then repurposed as a mosque in the 15th century during the Ottoman Empire. Under Ataturk, founder of the secular Republic of Turkey, it opened in 1935 as a museum, before becoming a mosque again in 2020. prayer rugsbeside Doric columnsbending the same knee Ever reminding us of Christianity’s and Islam’s shared historical origins, the syncretic amalgamation of mosaics depicting Christianity with soaring minarets is an enduring testament to the power of art and architecture to reflect our common…

d’Esperanto

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA August 2024. Afghan women must veil their bodies completely in public—faces included. The Taliban muzzles women, forces them to devolve into cells of silence. No speaking in public. No singing and reading aloud from inside their houses. ‘Na Fatima Ahmadi. Na Ghezaal Enayat. Na nas.’ Imagine Afghan women creating a dialect of defiance and resistance. Linguists among them help to make up a ‘she’ code, a fundamental grammar of clicks and whistles, squeaks and squawks, taps and slaps—covers from other inmates, other species. Over bread ovens, wash tubs, and clotheslines mothers and daughters, sisters and…