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)

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 school teacher who beat and threatened the children, 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. 

So many nightmares…trying to escape.

vacant eyes —
celandine spreading
after winter

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

Closet to Landfill

By Monica Kakkar (she/her/hers)
India and United States of America

closet to landfill . . .
as far as the eye can see
end of summer sales

First Published: Asahi Shimbun’s Asahi Haikuist Network, September 01, 2023
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14993322

Reference:

NBC Chicago – Your donated clothes probably end up abroad in landfills.
Green America – Unraveling fashion industry – what really happens to unwanted clothes.
EPA.GOV – Facts and figures about materials waste and recycling/textiles material specific data.
The Atlantic – where does discarded clothing go?

Crude

Theresa A. Cancro
Wilmington, Delaware, USA

unmixed oil slicks press against dolphin skin

fall leaves…
a plastic bag gapes
wide as Texas


First published in The Other Bunny, June 11, 2018

Broken Bottle

By Theresa A. Cancro
Wilmington, Delaware, USA

broken bottle
at the end of the path
blue-eyed grass

First published in Plum Tree Tavern, 2015

Crack of Dawn

By Theresa A. Cancro
Wilmington, Delaware, USA

crack of dawn —
fireflies escape
the jar

First published in Chrysanthemum #18, 2015

Woke

By Matthew Caretti
Pago Pago, American Samoa

The N-word never tasted good in my mouth. Something far too bitter in it. Indigestible. Yet growing up among 1970s white rurals, it wasn’t uncommon to hear the epithet. It was never a word at home, but one cutting along the precise lines of a barber shop razor, caught on the fly out on a sports field, wrapped within damp towels at the summer swimming pool and in sync with slamming lockers along school hallways. A sound just perceptible enough.

        sunburn skies a cant of pigmentation

These days I wonder about all the rhetoric. The school board brawls and book bans. The curtailing of curricula. I wake again feeling most unsettled about the coming storm and the words we use. About how to talk to my students about how they talk to each other. I scroll through my own feeds looking for a way to connect with theirs. I want them to know unrest. To know how to get into good trouble.

        lightning strike eye silhouettes after

Critical Mass Shooting Stars Again

By Matthew Caretti
Pago Pago, American Samoa

Here the future kraken in an ancient mariner’s tale wags us again. Always some bugaboo stacking spreadsheet zeroes. Each counter-space filled with a pristine ruin.

        times new roman scrawl on Pompeii walls

Realpolitik tumbles toward Earth. Cracks a construction hardhat. In mirrored windows a bulbul studies similitudes. Some continental drift wherein a mountain wanders into itself.

        smoke forest water bombers smear it red

Slow TMZ stream into this DMZ between East and West. Dr. West reminds us in real time of the pastness in the present of it all. Perhaps this flower moon a replacement.

        each burning cross aliens alight on prayer flags

We sit alone together in this time machine, waiting. The end times or time to end the show. The letters on the marquee tumbling down. The hours long gone.

        first fireflies the rocket explodes on landing

Anthropocene

By Steve Van Allen
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, Earth

hawaiian honeycreeper
guam flying fox
bachman’s warbler
yellow blossom pearlymussel
scioto mad tom
mariana fruit bat

          Gone forever

plastic
pollution
logging
drilling
hate
asphalt
microplastics
cancer 

          Cannot leave soon enough

butterfly 
the only thing moving
this hot afternoon 

A Disease Called Power

Opinion:

By Noris Roberts
Lecheria Municipio Urbaneja, Venezuela

I will begin by pointing out that this is not intended as a partisan political statement, to attack anyone in particular or to offend. I write and declare my pain and astonishment seeing that my country is being systematically destroyed and its population humiliated and decimated. In the last years nearly 5 million people have emigrated, not because of a war, they’ve emigrated because they foresaw no future, because of hunger and lack of medicine, for not having personal or legal security and basically because they were psychologically affected for living in a permanent state of uncertainty.

Continue reading . . .

This article contains views and opinions which are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other author, agency, organization, employer or company, including the Company.

The Nature of Falling

By Rebecca Drouilhet
Picayune, MS, USA

Sometimes I still dream of those two old oaks on my grandparent’s old farm. Lightning hit one of them first and then years later, the other. They seemed to be potent symbols of my grandparents, who, ending their last days, were also ending the era of noble peasants tending rural farms. In this era of asphalt and progress, multi-lane highways dominate the landscape. Who remembers a barn full of half-wild kittens or bottle-feeding an orphan calf?

new subdivision…
a bulldozer buries
the last of the violets

vanishing wilderness…
beneath the pale moon
a snowy owl takes wing

forgetting who we are…
the cry of wild things
fading into silence

The Last Fable

By Rebecca Drouilhet
Picayune, MS, USA

At midnight the little mouse lights a flickering candle and dips her heavy quill in ink. Outside her small hovel beneath a pallid moon the ocean is slowly dying. Even here, across a chasm too wide to cross, she can faintly hear the din of eight billion people roaring down ten-lane highways. But no one hears the mouse or heeds her warning. Words appear one by one, stark and black on the ivory parchment, only to fall like tears into an infinity where the ghosts of dead forests and dying shore birds flutter briefly and then plummet into the black hole of silence. The little mouse struggles on, writing against the tide, writing of glaciers and of melting ice, of dying animals, of droughts and heat and coming storms, until at last the candle sputters out.

a new dawn
and the earth goes on
without us…
snagged on a dead branch
a plastic bag snapping

Ceasefire

By Tuyet Van Do
Victoria, Australia

ceasefire . . .
a man in the rubble
collecting body parts

First published in Synchronized Chaos, 1st May 2024