Community Voices – Page 2 – The Abstractaphy Initiative

Aquarium Show

by R. Suresh babu
Chikmagalur, Karnataka, India

aquarium show
guppies for sale
in polythene bags

Sooty Smokestacks

By Theresa A. Cancro
Wilmington, Delaware, USA

sooty smokestacks
where dinosaurs
once grazed

Faint Aurora

By Theresa A. Cancro
Wilmington, Delaware, USA

faint aurora . . .
a polar bear clambers
onto the shrinking floe

MAID*

By Anna Cates
Wilmington, Ohio, USA

. . . and she wilts like wet paper,

her watercolor life bleeding pink

across unfinished pages,

the faintest pink, like the weakest sunset,

where purple fails and pales, thinning,

her voice, their voices, mortal voices,

angel voices, demon voices, choices,

choices, such agonizing choices . . .

        fragrant
        chrysanthemums . . .
        prayer threads

*Medical Assistance in Dying, Canada’s euthanasia program, legal since 2016 and expanded in 2021 to include those suffering without foreseeable death.

Aspects of remembrance

By Florence Heyhoe
County Down, Northern Ireland

“Your father was a great man,” said Theadora, “He used to stay at our house, he fished up Gortin way with my husband, they would talk for hours; they were good friends.”

slippery eels
sizzling in the pan
caught netted

I know better. I have seen him cross the line at times teasing cats: tumbling into cruelty. He told me a story once of a Siamese that sprung at him from the top of a door, sinking in teeth and claws on landing. Serves him right. He beat the living daylights out of my brother, locked him in with the hens, used his fists and the strap to beat the good name into him.

cows in line
mooing a sad song
leather and meat

Folk spoke well of him, he was a pillar of respectability and helpfulness and an elder in the church. A diabetic, he kept his bible in the car amongst the sweetie papers and dispensed pills day and night. He put bad into me, secret sin in secret places, thrusting me to smithereens He photographed the children’s smiles in chapel and church.

peas in purple pods
round and green and sweet
hungry worms

First Published: Her other language 2020

Omnipotent?

By Florence Heyhoe
County Down, Northern Ireland

He took the children in his arms . . . and blessed them

I watch her marching into the middle of the road, wearing a white coat carrying her lollipop. The traffic parts like the Red Sea and the children cross over safely. Some walk hand in hand others skip. Most smile but a few are scowling on their way to school.

There are other places where they take children, herded like cattle, delivered. Crossed over to sordid places, devoid of smiles. Here, there, everywhere, congregations of lecherous deviants drool and throw silver coins.

clenched fists

raised in prayer

heaven’s silence

First Published: Drifting Sands Haibun, Issue 20

Yulara – the town square

By Marilyn Humbert
Syndey, NSW, Australia

where the ghost gums gather
on-country women spread canvas squares
crushed ochre in small precise piles
red yellow orange
water to mix
a white clay paste.
all day, shade lessens
and lengthens
their brushes stroke and daub
ancient lore in dots and symbols
their life, their dreamtime stories
when bark canoes found this shore
when feet wandered songline trails
beside rivers, beneath stars.
today bitumen and gravel divides
wire and pickets corral
the ghosts of memory forests.

Yulara is the village about 25kms from Uluru NT Australia, the place to stay when visiting Uluru.

Insurance?

By Steve Van Allen – Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, Earth
Anna Cates – Wilmington, Ohio, USA

Sugar-Pie is third in line at the pharmacy, six feet behind number two. As she walks down the allergy aisle, she often wonders if her mother cursed her into diabetes.

The pharmacy is busy; it always is. Finally, “Can I help you?”

“My name is Sugar-Pie. I have one prescription to pick up. My birthday is August 14.”

“Here it is. That will be $280.”

She feels faint and holds onto the counter. “It was $40 last month!”

“You are into your donut hole. Spend another $8,000 and you will be back to $40.”

Sugar-pie stares at the pharmacist, turns around, and spends her $40 on candy.

autumn moon
warm aromas
of home

*According to the Congressional Budget Office, 92% of Americans are insured. That leaves 26 million with no health insurance, and often insured have a donut hole.

Health Insurance Coverage Projections For The US Population And Sources Of Coverage, By Age, 2024–34 (healthaffairs.org)

Understanding the Medicare Part D Donut Hole (verywellhealth.com)

A Refuge’s Life

By Judit Hollos
Budapest, Hungary

a refuge’s life

claimed by the sea

her boat

sinks beneath shards of starlight

painted on the ocean waves

Further Reading:
Boat carrying 45 migrants and refugees capsizes off Yemen – BBC
2023 Messenia migrant boat disaster – Wikipedia
Cuban boat people – Wikipedia

Flag of the Weeds

By Margi Abraham
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Who will fly the flag?
The flag of no homeland
but this Earth, this sphere
circling a life-giving star.

The unsymbolic, forgotten flag
with no country, no team
no cheering, no burning
with partisan meaning.

The flag of the waves
crashing hope on every shore.
The flag of sun-flecked mountains
reflecting beauty to the dawn.

The quiet, sacred flag
of peace and love enduring;
breaking walls and shackles,
unlocking doors with mercy.

The flag of weary hearts
that search for signs already told
by weeds persisting through the cracks ─
their breeze-tattered flowers.

A Toy Gun, with Real Bullets

By Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

new music
a catatonic scale
for the poet’s requiem

we are but clouds
of cosmic dust
collapsing in a dream

apples sweeten
in the shadows
hungry birds

dark secrets
from a broken heart
arctic waters warm

water
into wine
resource wars

the courthouse
in the pawnshop window
antique scales

haves
and halve nots
taking the last peace

vacuum sealed
the totalitarian minds
of mixed nuts

fanning himself
with a meat cleaver
the butcher sighs

a thin rat
over broken glass
moonlight in a slum

rain
a gravedigger’s fingers
flipping a coin

gravestones
huddle in spring grass
a church bell
without a tongue

waves leapfrog
the ripping tide
empty pews

dream songs
in night’s chamber
pot

our eyes
glazed donuts
sweetening the whole

each pledge
a bullet whistling
hand over heart
to stop the blood

polished buttons reflect
a make believe sun
ashes remembering books

worn hands
scouring pots
the cold pipes cough

wind-up toy
the high-pitched whine
in war’s broken hands

First Published: Lothlorien Poetry Journal, December 2023

Dreadful Speech

By Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

Herdsman: I am on the brink of dreadful speech.
Oedipus: And I of dreadful hearing. Yet I must hear.

wise men
the star that guides
on the blink

the labyrinth
behind her eyes
a broken thread

a brilliant idea
out of the blue
Icarus

twitter
the bead
in his whistle

sunlight
on ice
the banker’s smile

somewhere
in the dark room
a clock ticks

wild canaries
singing on the wing
from the coal mine

climate change
we turn to face
a firing squad

war
a fistful of ashes
in a game of dice

twisting shadows
beneath falling leaves
war’s children

little red rooster
the hen’s dream
sizzles in the skillet

First Published: Lothlorien Poetry Journal, September 2023

Disabled Society

By Steve Van Allen
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, Earth

Judy cashiers 2 days a week at a Dollar Store, loves the job, the people and it works well with her wheelchair. At the end of a day, she is tired, and so happy the two blocks home are mostly downhill.

She unlocks her door and rolls into her tiny apartment, turns on the one overhead light and says hello to her green budgie.

Judy grabs her one bowl and fills it with off-brand cheerios and the end her milk.

Six months ago it was a no-tell motel, pay by the hour.

She reads her cozy mystery, then goes to bed. She dreams of a time when she could sit outside on cool evenings. A drug deal goes down outside her one window. She sleeps with her Louisville Slugger.

The poor will always be with us…
God, are we stuck with poverty
or is this a challenge?

Resources:

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed in 1990 estimates 42.5 million Americans are disabled.
The US Census Bureau Current Population Survey (CPS), 2024 shows the poverty rate is 11.5%, 37.9 million Americans.

Has-Beens

By Florence Heyhoe
Warrenpint, County Down, Northern Ireland

If this town were a set of teeth, I would recommend a visit to the dentist for it is full of gaps. However, the hotel on the main street sparkles like a polished molar, after a recent renovation. It seems out of place amidst this yawning emptiness.

The people I knew as a child long dead: the schoolteacher who beat and threatened the children (including my brother), the grocer brothers in their brown coats … who were fond of young boys, the man, from the tick tock shop where the musty smell lingered.

Many buildings that were once businesses have been demolished. There is a library where the church used to be, and the mission hall has been converted to housing. The pharmacy where my father worked now dispenses fish and chips. I remember all the outhouses out the back and a maze of rooms upstairs where he photographed children.

So many nightmares…trying to escape.

the colours
of spring now
vacant eyes

First Published: cattails April 2024

Resources

Northern Ireland Domestic/Sexual Abuse Resources
Hotline for men who have suffered sexual abuse https://www.survivorsuk.org/
Also see, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, available on Amazon

Parched Fields

By Goran Gatalica
Zagreb, Croatia

global warming—
the widowed farmer’s
parched fields

Render Unto Caesar

By Matthew Caretti
Pago Pago, American Samoa

what mud daubers do organ prelude

We’ve been around a long time. A mother’s day ever since Australopithecus Africanus. Things haven’t gone all that smoothly, though. These days we spend our time critical race theorizing empathy. Realize it’s more than a single letter from refuge to refugee.

morning prayer a lone canary out of the mine

Wildfire embers rise with Mars. Too much pleasure urges more pain. Our brains built for it. Type 3 fun house mirrors bend bones and time. Some circadian rhythm of our sleepless poems. Mental health creeps out of the rainforest. A plot of cannabis a panacea.

a slow drag in this line butterfly effect

With aching backs we wonder where to put it down. Not there by the murder hornet’s nest, soon to be a threnody of torch and fire. We look farther. Just passing through the looking glass. Does it have to be so literal? Then digitally remastered. Is that a hi-fi sigh in the cellist’s final note?

wireless fidelity sound of a muted room