Incantations

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, NC, USA forestsburning far awayI bowto the wood thrushsinging orisons unseen I follow a path along the brook, through mountain laurel and rhododendron. The stone hut stands half-hidden among the trees, its roof green with moss. Thick, curved walls enclose an oval of coolness in the summer heat. Elliptical windows admit a little light.  As my eyes adjust, I notice a message chalked on the sloping ceiling: maybe the world isn’t dying . . . maybe she’s heavy with child *Note: The second tanka is a ‘found poem.’~From my book Earthbound: Tanka-Prose & Haibun, 2022

Just This

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, NC, USA I used to thinkit would last forever—the swallowscoming home each year,the green hills blossoming on my pathone pure white featherI carry with menews of a dying planet,a widening war the bridgeacross the creek—I cannot seethe barred owl calling from the other side a water striderdimples the surface,an otter rises and vanishes . . .the stream flows on spring beauties bloomamong tiny handprintsin the mudI kneel on the bankof the passing moment ~First published as the Afterword to A Worn Chest by Joy McCall & Tom Clausen, 2022   Reprinted in my book The Wind Harp: Tanka Pentads, 2023

The Least of These

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, NC, USA Hokusai painted them, Issa wrote about them, and Mao did his best to exterminate them.  It’s true that Eurasian tree sparrows gorge themselves on spilled grain.  So, during the Great Leap Forward, the Four Pests Campaign encouraged schoolchildren to kill as many sparrows as they could, tearing up nests and smashing eggs. People beat pots and gongs to drive them from their roosts until the birds dropped from exhaustion.  A billion sparrows died. With few birds left to eat them, hungry locusts swarmed through grain fields and rice paddies. Upwards of forty million people…

Back to School

By Carissa CoaneCalifornia, United States of America back-to-school shopping — does this backpack come in bulletproof?

Murky Lake

By Theresa CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA murky lake . . .long tears cloudthe buffalo's eye

Pachamama

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA Long ago, in a sacred valley where Inca kings and mountain glaciers reigned, there was a garden made of gold. A golden tree with silver leaves that danced and glittered in the breeze. Golden beasts and birds and flowers from across the empire. Stalks of maize with golden kernels. A jaguar from the Amazon, golden eyes gazing at the llamas and alpacas with their fine golden fleece. And all around, the walls of the Coricancha covered in sheets of gold, glowing in the sun.  Spanish conquistadors blundered into the garden, eyes alight with…

The Intruder

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USAA glimpse of white wing bars, half hidden among juniper and honeysuckle. Uncertain, I find a picture on my phone and the app plays several notes of a song. At once a tiny being—no more than a quarter of an ounce—confronts me, scolding loudly, warning me away from a world that belongs to him.  sunlit hedgerow—the kinglet revealshis ruby crown

All of Us

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA all of usfrom blowfly to blue whalebirthright citizensof a dying planet . . .who will have the last word?

Gas lit

By Melissa DennisonBradford, Yorkshire, England From boreal forests in the Arctic Circle to Hawaii and Malibu, every year more and more of our planet is burning. fanning the flames deniers of climate change

Fewer Butterflies

By Florence HeyhoeCounty Down, Northern Ireland fewer butterflies—places at the tableemptied by war 

Lipstick

By Florence HeyhoeCounty Down, Northern Ireland lipstick —the cosmetic trade flaying donkeys Further reading: End the Donkey Skin Trade

The Urge

By Rebecca DrouilhetPicayune, Mississippi, USA the urgeto flow beyond my banks . . .a drop of waterlonging to gowhere oceans rise and fall

Hemorrhage

By Carissa CoaneCalifornia, United States of America Daughter, is it fair to keep you,knowing what you will inherit?Will you understand the stories I read to you,skin as white as snow, lips as pink as roses?Will there be roses at all, petals for you to pluck,grass to stain your knees, trees to climb?I used to think Mother Nature was a real person, like Santa,that she breathed life into every seed.And even with shriveled hands, lines cut into her face,she was radiant, peaceful, eternal.(Santa, what will I tell you about him?The North Pole gone liquid, But what about the reindeer? You’ll ask.Will you…

Treaty 1

By Debbie StrangeCanada Shortlisted Vispo, 2023 Sonic Boom Annual Vispo Contest Artist’s Statement:A word-weaving of culled Wikipedia details regarding Treaty 1 (in my home province of Manitoba) affixed to stained watercolour paper, referencing the boil-water advisories on many First Nations in Canada.

Vrindāvan

By Monica KakkarIndia and United States of America wind without colorhues widows of Vrindāvan—forsaken in droves Further reading: https://www.policycircle.org/ground-report/widows-in-india-unseen-problems/ Prompt: Stone of the Month - January 2024 "Intersection"|Gallery of Poems, Prose and Paintings, at the Viewing Stone Association of North America (VSANA), February 01, 2024. https://www.vsana.org/ppp-17-feb-1--24

Formal Declaration of 9

By: Ken ScottLos Angeles, California, USA It is time for us to end this.It is time for us to end the confusion,the congestion, the hustle culture,the vicious competition for survival,and the monetizationof human life itself.It is time for us to end this.It is time for us to end the original greed,the self-entitled avarice,the violent conquests,the hate, the wars,the tortures, the rapes,and the senseless slaughter,time for us to end the shootings,the hangings, the lynchings,the burnings, the bombings,the colonizations, the thefts,the genocides, the ethnic cleansings,and every last formof for-profit dehumanization.It is time for us to end the superstitions,the religious excuses, the pious…

Early Dusk

By John PappasBoston, Massachusetts, USA early dusk reaching into the warren winter’s chill