Dreadful Speech

By Robert WitmerTokyo, Japan Herdsman: I am on the brink of dreadful speech.Oedipus: And I of dreadful hearing. Yet I must hear. wise menthe star that guideson the blink the labyrinthbehind her eyesa broken thread a brilliant ideaout of the blueIcarus twitterthe beadin his whistle sunlighton icethe banker’s smile somewherein the dark rooma clock ticks wild canariessinging on the wingfrom the coal mine climate changewe turn to facea firing squad wara fistful of ashesin a game of dice twisting shadowsbeneath falling leaveswar’s children little red roosterthe hen’s dreamsizzles in the skillet First Published: Lothlorien Poetry Journal, September 2023

Disabled Society

By Steve Van AllenCincinnati, 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…

Has-Beens

By Florence HeyhoeWarrenpint, 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…

Render Unto Caesar

By Matthew CarettiPago 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…

Closet to Landfill

By Monica Kakkar (she/her/hers)India and United States of America closet to landfill . . .as far as the eye can seeend 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. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA unmixed oil slicks press against dolphin skin fall leaves…a plastic bag gapeswide as Texas First published in The Other Bunny, June 11, 2018

Broken Bottle

By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA broken bottleat the end of the pathblue-eyed grass First published in Plum Tree Tavern, 2015

Crack of Dawn

By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA crack of dawn —fireflies escapethe jar First published in Chrysanthemum #18, 2015

Woke

By Matthew CarettiPago 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…

Critical Mass Shooting Stars Again

By Matthew CarettiPago 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…

Anthropocene

By Steve Van AllenCincinnati, Ohio, USA, Earth hawaiian honeycreeper guam flying fox bachman's warbler yellow blossom pearlymussel scioto mad tom mariana fruit bat           Gone forever plasticpollutionlogging drilling hate asphalt microplastics cancer            Cannot leave soon enough butterfly the only thing movingthis hot afternoon 

A Disease Called Power

Opinion: By Noris RobertsLecheria 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…

The Nature of Falling

By Rebecca DrouilhetPicayune, 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 buriesthe last of the violets vanishing wilderness…beneath the pale moona snowy owl takes wing forgetting who…

The Last Fable

By Rebecca DrouilhetPicayune, 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…

Ceasefire

By Tuyet Van DoVictoria, Australia ceasefire . . .a man in the rubblecollecting body parts First published in Synchronized Chaos, 1st May 2024

Renascence

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA No cougars are supposed to roam the Appalachian mountains.  They’re supposed to be extinct here, killed off or driven out by logging half a century ago.  And yet . . . here and there a single footprint lingers in damp earth, a wisp of hair clings to rusted wire, a blurred snapshot betrays the image of a ghost-cat slipping through shadows. And once, echoing down the mountainside where I stumbled mile after mile over rain-slicked rocks in gathering dusk—once, a long, unearthly scream to pierce the heart.  I utter a prayer into the darknessthat enfolds me—may…

The Spinning Wheel

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA milkweed bloomsat the meadow’s edgeshe waitsfor the monarch’s blessingunder a shattered sky one strand snapsand the tapestry ravels—at duska mockingbird singsthe old crone’s song soft rain fallingthrough a starless nightshe weavesits many-colored threadsinto a shroud for the earth ~Stacking Stones Anthology, summer 2018

Evensong

By Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA butterflies flutterfrom the artist’s brushin memoriam—a river of monarchsonce flowed across the sky slow spiralsup the summer sky—scavengerscleansing my mindof its dark residue I follow a pathof spindrift oak leavesto a clearingwhere no cabin ever stood—its hidden hearth my home the daycloses its circlearound mesilver voicesre-enchant the dusk to keep at baythe wolfish dreams,I sleepwith gentle sorrowcradled in my arms ~red lights 15:2, June, 2019

Out of Season

By Doug SylverSeattle, Washington, USA Not that it wasn’t appreciated however unexpected Not that it wasn’t beautiful however out of place Not that it wasn’t surprising however disturbing A cherry tree blossoming full pink fireworks but in December not even winter yet let alone springanother palindromic day 12/11/21   Haiku-worthy cliché as it is but Basho is walking uphill  while me down and he’s taking notes  on his cell phone noticing the colors nodding to them in their sparseness noticing my noticing nodding to me in my sparseness and this far north next door to Canada a stone’s throw from…