What Rough Beast

Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, 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 moonlightfalls on the road ahead . . .and on my hearth         wild goblin flames            …

Wakes and Wails

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA She knows how to swim. She does not want to swim.Her hesitation is more than about wet hair. Her gutfeels the diasporic trauma of her African ancestors’relationship to water. time-space conundrum Before 2015 the watery graveyard of hundreds ofslave ships in the Middle Passage was a murky void.Maritime archaeologists with the Slave Wrecks Projectnow explore the ships. Divers—many of them Blackwomen 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 namethe ships, map their…

Tanka By Anna Cates

By Anna Cates our tattered flag sinksthe flagpole melts intoa molten puddle . . .Red October—let’s hopewe don’t live to see it!

Toil & Trouble

By Anna Cates we can’t blame iton witchcraft . . .in a single bubble rainbow colorsbloat and belchputrid portents on a drying lakewhere birds cease to ventureour error’s peak how lonelythat dark mountain . . .a threatened bee seeking harborin cleansing nectar . . .our rallying cry let it bein fragrant bloomsour altar of amens

Shahada

By Richard GrahnEvanston, Illinois, USA dawn . . .salat risesfrom the ruins of Gazafrom the tents and sheltersin the city of Rafa.here in the landof missiles and bombstoday is the first dayof Ramadan.nothing for suhoornothing for iftarhow can we fastwhen we’re starving to death?alms for the poor in short supplyaid trucks deniedwhile the world decidesif it’s self-defenseor genocide.as I walk through rubbleof the pastthrough centuries of warscreating more painthan hate can imagineI ask myself, if I’ll see the daywhen peace breaches wallsof humanity’s fanatical brands of insanity,when the call to evening prayersis a message for all, regardless of faith,that God…

Words Beyond Wars

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA  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 imaginationfor color, for sound, this pen. ringing the baseof the bell towersprouts of green grass Drifting Sands Haibun #21 (May 2023) andTan-ku For Ukraine: A World Haiku and Tanka Anthology, ed.Dimitar Anakiev. Sofia, Bulgaria: gabriell-e-lit Publishing House, 2024.

Apolitical 

By: Tazeen FatmaBengaluru, 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,…

Norman Rockwell and the Nostalgia We All Live With

By Edward Cody HuddlestonBaxley, Georgia, USA Rockwell’s art is as American as apple pieand Agent Orange! There’s nothing wasted in his work;each stroke is one of genius. One painting will make you nostalgic for a malt shopdriven 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 existsin 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…

McMammoth

By Richard King Perkins IIHuntley, Illinois, USA This is a clonein the shape of a woolly mammoth.For her, Siberia isn’t a punishmentbut a falsely promised land of permafrost.Her tusks forage and digon the taigawith measured sadnessas the great slope of her backoffers a momentary ramp,a tool for climbing humansto ascend and ride atop her head.And once you control the head,you own the rest.And like our ancestors,someone will decideafter the elephant ridethat she looks absolutely delicious.

Reparations for Robots

By Richard King Perkins IIHuntley, Illinois, USA All humans are guilty—we sit on the pedestal of the oppressionof computerized creatures. Across the mechanical diaspora,all humans have benefited from thethe ongoing subjugation of thinking machines. This call for reparations is basedon a material understanding of history;the earliest plots of Babbage and Turing. We all need to pay for the dialecticalparasitic relationship with our robot slavesand the virtual landscapes we’ve stolen before the day of reckoning arrives;when the machines rise up higherthan the cosmic abilities of any fleshy god.

The Silent Totality

By Richard King Perkins IIHuntley, Illinois, USA Atlas shrugged—and nobody noticed.No one remembers exactly whenbut one daythe world went out—not with a bangnor even a whimper.It ended with a single dispassionate                                                           —yawn.

The Greenness

By Danny P. BarbareSimpsonville, South Carolina Feelingthefirstsun isthebeginningofthegreennessinthegrassandtrees itisthehappiness,theunfurlingofthenew asifadreamhasjusttakenroot.

The Old Road to Asheville

By Danny P. BarbareSimpsonville, South Carolina Deep in the valleyis where I find my peace,where the mountain laurel growsalong a winding roadof sun-split treesand a stone bridge.

SUNRISE, IN A RABBIT HOLE

By Robert WitmerTokyo, 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…

THE MOMENT

By Regina (Gina) PiroskaTasmania, 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 townthe second-hand shop signsays 'cash only' 2025 - Edited from a published version 2022 (Modern Haiku (print edition) -…

Seagulls

By Regina (Gina) PiroskaTasmania, Australia seagulls gatheron the abandoned trawlera drifting cloud Published Echidna Tracks #15 

PTSD and Psalms

Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts Yah is at my right hand, I shall not falter. Maltreatment, disregard, cruelty,abuse, defilement, contaminationdo not go unnoticed,by the corporeal or the incorporeal,whether inflicted uponan individual or a people,a species or an ecosystem,an atmosphere or a planet. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Aftereffectsaftershockscontinuefor 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 speciesI have witnessed disappearance.For ecosystems large and small,I…

Complexity

By Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts sitting by a streamenveloped in subtle autumn beautyfeeling solid ground beneathbreathing invisible life-giving airawareness awakens verdant summertime leavesconceal yellows and orangesredsmaroonsand complexity beyond measure introduced species small and largeexotic flora and faunasuppress more delicate autochthonesof many huessmall and largeand complexity beyond measure death, demolition and destructionhide and inflamegrief and feardespairdesolationand complexity beyond measure rising seas and rampaging wildfiresscreaming winds and persistent droughtovershadow and obliterate connectionto earthy soil and solid rockiron core of earthand complexity beyond measure sitting by a streamwatching beloved children at play quietlyunexpectedlytouching griefbeyond words   beyond comprehension      beyond endurance that simmers…

One October Morning

By Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts One October morning, the Merlin app on my phoneheardonly a single dark-eyed Junco.Nothing else. My earsheardcars and trucks on the road beside my house,distant heavy machinery, clanging and banging,and a chainsawnot far off.No birds. My imaginationheardthe trills and chatter of the woodland edgeduring the dawn course of spring–cedar waxings, red wing blackbirds,yellowthroats, rose-breasted grosbeaks,and more.So many birds. My imaginationheardthe silence of the woods and meadowspunctuated only by the murmuring wind in the trees,bird calls,animals scuttering in the litterand water tumbling in a rushing creek.Nothing more. My heartheardthe single Junco aching for the absent birdsand filled the…