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

Beached Turtle

Stephanie Zepherelli Honolulu, Hawaii, USA beached turtle its plastic necklace too tight

Pulp Nonfiction

By Janis Butler HolmLos Angeles, California, USA He has stepped from a dark waiting place. He has moved toward her body with the crude insistence of a bad plot. Her mind is stopped. She is fixed in the wisdom of stories learned too well: Be calm. It is inevitable. Do not struggle. He will only hurt you more. For one long moment she stands mute, without motion. She could die of suspense. Then (here's the reversal) her pen is in her hand and stabbing through his flesh. Unhappy ever after, she will live to confess how the fury in her…

Why He Won’t Eat the Hot Meal So Charitably Provided

By Janis Butler HolmLos Angeles, California, USA He sees how the lettuceslides around the plate,yellow and cunning,mysterious in its ways. He notes that the friesare pointing southeast,that they are sharp and oiledand spattered with red. The tomato slices whispersoft pink obscenities,their harlot song callingto his lips, his tongue. He smells in his burgerthe black, smokey fleshof things small and tender.And he's back at My Lai. And he's up and running,he's running, and around him,the jungle, the colors,the chaos, the horror. He's running and stumblingand heaving and moaning.He's running, and he's thinkingthat he wants to go home. First published: Red River…

Health Crisis

By David JosephsohnGreensboro, North Carolina, USA health crisisher long journeyto another state Cold Moon JournalJanuary 6, 2024

Barbed Wire

By David JosephsohnGreensboro, North Carolina, USA an unplannedbody piercing—barbed wire

Border Crossing

By David JosephsohnGreensboro, North Carolina, USA border crossingyesterday’s strugglesreplaced by today’s 

Tomorrow

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA only two Monarchs spiraling up the sky maybe they'll see         tomorrow

War News

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA war news . . .a road-killed Sparrowcradled in my palm

One Clover and a Bee

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA Dark-eyed and playful, childlike but childless, Elizabeth Ann needs an emergency hysterectomy or she will die. Her lithe young body recovers quickly from the surgery.  It’s hard to know if she grieves—but her caregivers do.  Elizabeth Ann is a Black-footed Ferret, cloned from the frozen tissues of a Ferret named Willa, who died more than 30 years ago.  The few hundred Ferrets living wild today are all descendants of just seven taken from a Wyoming ranch in a desperate attempt to save them from extinction.  They’re inbred and threatened by disease. Ferrets eat…

Dead End

by Sangita KalarickalEden Prairie, Minnesota, USA My Monstera Deliciosa looks sad. The leaves are starting to yellow. I glance at it, note the stressed, drooping foliage. I have  to deal with it, I know, but there are so many things to tackle first. My dinner is on the stove and I have reports to finish. I can get to it later.Some days in, the plant almost screams at me. The leaves have started to curl. I have a look. Again. Thrips. Darn these stubborn bugs. I need to deal with them soon. But first, the sink is full of dishes…

Spring Breeze

By Theresa CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA spring breeze . . .the beggar and Ishare smiles

Battlefield

By Theresa CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA battlefield...all the facesof sunflowers