Night Heron
By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA small silence –a night heron ensnaredin fishing wire First published in Plum Tree Tavern, 2015
Landfill Overflow
By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA landfill overflow . . .a praying mantisbows its head A version of this haiku was originally published in The Weekly Avocet, #508, August 28, 2022
Manatee
By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA crescent moon –a scarred manatee nurses her calf First published in Every Chicken, Cow, Fish and Frog: Animal Rights Haiku, Robert Epstein and Miriam Wald, editors (Kindle edition), 2017
Hunter Moon
By R. Suresh babuChikmagalur, Karnataka, India hunter moona rhinowithout his horn
From a Sphere
By Diana WebbLeatherhead, Surrey, UK Sylvie is doing her English homework. She skims through 'Ode to a Nightingale' by the poet John Keats and reads the final line aloud, " ' Fled is that music - Do I wake or sleep?' " She reads it again and again. She loves the poet's voice and writes a haiku: echoes just echoes notes from a dream Her mother tells her the writer from the Romantic movement stayed for a few days near their home, just over a hundred years ago. While there, he wrote in a letter that he could take part in the…
T Minus 10
By Richard Grahn Evanston, Illinois, USA Spaceman, always looking up, a compass with no needle, lost it shooting up. Always shy a half-a-moon, he’s off to Heaven to file a complaint— too many burned-out stars, more every day; got to get to Heaven . . . make a few changes. soup kitchen steps for a pillow his last night on Earth ~ Failed Haiku Issue 86
When you take sides
By Tazeen FatmaKarnataka, India A woman sits on rubble, her crimson eyes staring into yours. No one is left to grieve in another neighborhood. You have unknowingly cracked a few knuckles, picked up a dagger, and destroyed lives counting tens, hundreds, and thousands... In trying to teach them a lesson, you’ve instilled fear and thereby infused terror in someone, somewhere. Politically, you struggle to define it in a way such that your bloodied hands are stain-free. The sun sets yet again but the night sky lights up every now and then. Many have lost their tomorrow, others wake up to a bleak one.…
Tipping Point
By Jenny Ward Angyal Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA diving into the cold depths of fear . . . until I remember each wave is made of water Gaia burning— and yet one dewdrop magnifies the glory of a beetle’s burnished wing my bequest to the seventh generation— memories of the deep green eden your ancestors once knew one by one I drop these words into a well— bottomless, brimming with stars ~Ribbons 17:3, Fall 2021
Manifesto
By Jenny Ward Angyal Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA jack in his woodland pulpit preaches . . . the right of the rain to nourish the oak the right of the leaf to capture the light, to grow a forest hostelry for a myriad of lives the right of the tree frog to cling to the tree, singing harmonies of moon and shadow the right of the owl to hunt the mouse, the right of the mouse to hide . . . the rhythm of their hearts the right of a woman to kneel by the creek on its way to…
Gaia
by Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA a boulder lieswhere the glacier left it—clear as crystalthe old crone’s memoryof fire and of ice graniteunder a thin peltof grass . . .climbing the hillher bones grow weary paper birchesbending to sweepthe earthshe brushes a leaffrom her hem a cedarat the top of the knollriven long agoby lightning . . .the rain in her hair empathycarved deep in the barkof a sapling . . .gnarled fingers tracethe lines of her scars ~red lights 18:2, June 2022
Tsunami
By Padma RajeswariMumbai, India hearing the roarin dreamsTsunami survivor
Memoji
By Padma RajeswariMumbai, India a memoji call with dad hiding the bruises
Haiga Challenge 1 – Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta
Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta (Artwork)Anju Kishore (Poem) Anju’s Comments: To me, Sankara’s haiga feels like a song, perfectly balancing light and dark, object, text, and space. The moon is not there, but is there in the bowl. The beggar is not there, but is there in the stick. Want is in the darkness, and hope is in the light. There is a dream softly taking wing. And we see the mother and the child. The Haiga Challenge is just that. It challenges artists to create imagery relevant to a haikai poem supplied by one of The Abstractaphy Initiative's contributing poets. In this,…
Haiga Challenge 1 – Marilyn Ashbaugh
Marilyn Ashbaugh (Artwork)Anju Kishore (poem) Editor’s Comments: This haiga spoke to me in that the discarded eggshell not only conjures the image of a half-moon but it also speaks to the uncertainty of day-to-day existence for those living in poverty. Eggs go good with pancakes but like the story of the beggar, this one is hollow and lacking in sustenance. The lines between the real and the unreal are blurred by the story. The child goes hungry, but Mother feeds its imagination. The Haiga Challenge is just that. It challenges artists to create imagery relevant to a haikai poem supplied by…
Haiga Challenge 1 – Reid Hepworth
Reid Hepworth (Artwork)Anju Kishore (Poem) Anju’s Comments: Reid’s haiga makes me think of drooping eyelids, heavy with sleep. Or hunger. Or fatigue. Or all of the above. Whose eyes are they? The mother’s, the child’s or both? Or is this a view of the moon from those eyelids, with the mother’s voice blurring the line between reality and imagination? This minimalist abstract effortlessly sets the wheels in my head turning. The Haiga Challenge is just that. It challenges artists to create imagery relevant to a haikai poem supplied by one of The Abstractaphy Initiative's contributing poets. In this, the inaugural issue…
Butterfly Effect
By Sankara Jayanth SudanaguntaHyderabad, India How big does humanityneed the inciting incident to beto actlike we are all in thistogether no matterhow many timeswe redraw the world map?
Finding Good Soil
By Tish DavisConcord Township, Ohio, USAA few rose petals have fallen away from the vase that rests on the patient’s night table. I add water to rejuvenate the stems, but it’s hopeless. The flowers are dead. The elderly woman tells me that she enjoyed watching the flowers change. She always grew roses in her garden. She drifts into detail—of pouring boiling water over the soil to sterilize it, of covering flats with a screen to protect the grains from mice and ants. Sometimes, the containers would spend a second winter outside to give the slower seeds another chance to germinate.…
Blue Butterfly
By Kelly SargentWilliston, Vermont, USA my granddaughter learnsthe word extinct —blue butterfly Learn about the Xerces blue butterfly on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerces_blue
Brother of the Sea
By Tish DavisConcord Township, Ohio, USA Lake Erie—blue water and sky become one. I sit in the sand not farfrom the place along the channel where my father and I used to fish.The beach is smaller now, cluttered with garbage cans and signs.The driftwood too, scattered along the edge, entangled with leaves andplastic bottles. The gulls return again and again to the edge of the pier as they didwhen we cast our lines. My father would tell the same story every timeI was bored. The Iroquois, a confederation of five nations -- Seneca,Cayuga, Onodaga, Oneida, Mohawk—defeat the Eries . .…
Black Gold
Stephanie Zepherelli Honolulu, Hawaii, USA black gold pelicans fighta slow death