Community Voices – Page 7 – The Abstractaphy Initiative

Manifesto

By Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA

jack
in his woodland pulpit
preaches . . .
the right of the rain
to nourish the oak

the right of the leaf
to capture the light,
to grow
a forest hostelry
for a myriad of lives

the right
of the tree frog
to cling to the tree,
singing harmonies
of moon and shadow

the right of the owl
to hunt the mouse,
the right
of the mouse to hide . . .
the rhythm of their hearts

the right
of a woman to kneel
by the creek
on its way to the sea,
grieving this bloodroot world

~Drifting Sands Haibun 17, September 2022

Gaia

by Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA

a boulder lies
where the glacier left it—
clear as crystal
the old crone’s memory
of fire and of ice

granite
under a thin pelt
of grass . . .
climbing the hill
her bones grow weary

paper birches
bending to sweep
the earth
she brushes a leaf
from her hem

a cedar
at the top of the knoll
riven long ago
by lightning . . .
the rain in her hair

empathy
carved deep in the bark
of a sapling . . .
gnarled fingers trace
the lines of her scars

~red lights 18:2, June 2022

Tsunami

By Padma Rajeswari
Mumbai, India

hearing the roar
in dreams
Tsunami survivor

Memoji

By Padma Rajeswari
Mumbai, India

a memoji call with dad hiding the bruises

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, the inaugural issue of the challenge, Anju Kishore supplied the poem and selected two of the images she felt best captured the essence of her poem. She also invited the editor to pick one poem as an editor’s choice. You can see all the selected poems and commentary here: Haiga Challenge 1 Results

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.

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.

Butterfly Effect

By Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta
Hyderabad, India

How big does humanity
need the inciting incident to be
to act
like we are all in this
together no matter
how many times
we redraw the world map?

Finding Good Soil

By Tish Davis
Concord Township, Ohio, USA

A 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.

At the beginning of autumn, she’d return each tool to its proper hook in the potting shed then relax on the porch swing with her husband. By now she is unable to stay awake. The light changes. As she naps, I notice that the roses donated by our church have dried perfectly.

bells
beyond the garden
the garden beyond

first published in Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose 2 (December 2009)

Blue Butterfly

By Kelly Sargent
Williston, Vermont, USA

my granddaughter learns
the 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 Davis
Concord Township, Ohio, USA

Lake Erie—blue water and sky become one. I sit in the sand not far
from 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 and
plastic bottles.

The gulls return again and again to the edge of the pier as they did
when we cast our lines. My father would tell the same story every time
I was bored. The Iroquois, a confederation of five nations — Seneca,
Cayuga, Onodaga, Oneida, Mohawk—defeat the Eries . . .

I remember our bobbers rocking back and forth in these waters—

the only legacy that bears their name.

receding tide
another feather
stranded

first published in Ink, Sweat, & Tears, May 14, 2008

Black Gold

Stephanie Zepherelli
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

black gold
pelicans fight
a slow death

Beached Turtle

Stephanie Zepherelli
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

beached turtle
its plastic necklace
too tight

Pulp Nonfiction

By Janis Butler Holm
Los 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 throat exploded red and harsh and howling.

This story, like the others, is ugly and raw. It speaks a kind of wisdom. If I ask why we have such stories, such wisdoms, will I breach some artful code? Will I violate some expectation?

First published: Tessera, 2006

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

By Janis Butler Holm
Los Angeles, California, USA

He sees how the lettuce
slides around the plate,
yellow and cunning,
mysterious in its ways.

He notes that the fries
are pointing southeast,
that they are sharp and oiled
and spattered with red.

The tomato slices whisper
soft pink obscenities,
their harlot song calling
to his lips, his tongue.

He smells in his burger
the black, smokey flesh
of 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 stumbling
and heaving and moaning.
He’s running, and he’s thinking
that he wants to go home.

First published: Red River Review, 2002

Health Crisis

By David Josephsohn
Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

health crisis
her long journey
to another state

Cold Moon Journal
January 6, 2024

Monarchs spiraling

up the sky

maybe they’ll see

tomorrow

War News