My Experience with Mental Illness

By Jackie ChouPico Rivera,  California, USA Having a mental illness you’re no fresh-facedone-time jaileeready to be releasedback to society Nor are you a teen girlleaving the mountains where you were raisedto go to collegeget two master’s degreesand write a book Having a mental illness you carry its invisible bars on your backfor your entire life With proper treatment the gnawing symptoms are kept at bayso are the locked wardsand prison doors

Learning

By Sigrid SaradunnBar Harbor, Maine, USA  learningto choose peace  at leadership campIrish teens room withIsraelis and Palestinians

A New Bird feeder

By Kathabela WilsonPasadena, California, USA a new bird feederto inspire usbluebirdscardinals, mourning dovesbreaking bread together

Sometimes

By Kathabela WilsonPasadena, California, USA sometimessometimeswe don’t knowwhat we’ve sownin the minds of infantsthe turmoil we can’t control

Planting Seeds

Kathabela Wilson - Pasadena, California, USA  (kw)Jackie Chou - Pico Rivera,  California, USA   (jc)Sigrid Saradunn - Bar Harbor, Maine, USA   (ss) a dark sideand a sunlit spacein the mindsof our new generation howto nourish their best inclinations   (kw) edible seedsadd texture to the fleshof the dragon fruitif only he could seepast my spiky exterior   (jc) learningto choose peace  at leadership campIrish teens room withIsraelis and Palestinians    (ss) sometimeswe don’t knowwhat we’ve sownin the minds of infantsthe turmoil we can’t control    (kw) on the borderI drop seedsto both sidessunflowers and poppieswatering them with tears    (kw) leaving the shellsof her sunflower seedsover the tablewhat example was momplanting in me   (jc)      Thanksgiving in Junecelebrating Seeds of Peacesharing a common mealstrangers now friends with similar feelings   (ss) a new…

The Green

By Kathabela WilsonPasadena, California, USA It was a tree, becomes a song, a table, leaf after leaf, opening. We sit around its absence as it floats on memory. Shapeshifter becomes dreamcatcher, an escape hatch, small carved windmills turning very fast. We pull up small stumps polished clean. congress of earthlingsconsidering the revivalof greenwe fall asleepin different languages First Place - Science Fiction Poetry Association's Dwarf Stars Award, 2018. First published in the Glass Lyre Press anthology, Carrying the Branch - Poets in Search of Peace.

Feather Dusting

By Tish DavisConcord Township, Ohio, USA FirefliesLight beamersNever tellStory-keepers Youthful frolicMoon minorsMemory flickersOld-timers Keepsake lanternsSummer starsAlways releasedFrom these glass jars

Night Paddling

By Tish DavisConcord Township, Ohio, USA I show my son how to tie up the food pack. “It keeps the bears away.” He carries me through the darkness to the lake’s edge where my husband is waiting with the canoe. The last time I was in the Boundary Waters I was the teenager. Now I must ride in the center of the boat. My doctor advised against this trip and told me not to expect remission from the disease that is consuming my body. Paddles pull us forward away from the pines and into starlight.  Here the moon dissolves into…

Night Heron

By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA small silence –a night heron ensnaredin fishing wire First published in Plum Tree Tavern, 2015

Landfill Overflow

By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA landfill overflow . . .a praying mantisbows its head A version of this haiku was originally published in The Weekly Avocet, #508, August 28, 2022

Manatee 

By Theresa A. CancroWilmington, Delaware, USA crescent moon –a scarred manatee nurses her calf First published in Every Chicken, Cow, Fish and Frog: Animal Rights Haiku, Robert Epstein and Miriam Wald, editors (Kindle edition), 2017

Hunter Moon

By R. Suresh babuChikmagalur, Karnataka, India hunter moona rhinowithout his horn

From a Sphere

By Diana WebbLeatherhead, Surrey, UK Sylvie is doing her English homework.  She skims through 'Ode to a Nightingale' by the poet John Keats and reads the final line aloud, " ' Fled is that music - Do I wake or sleep?' " She reads it again and again. She loves the poet's voice and writes a haiku: echoes just echoes notes from a dream  Her mother tells her the writer from the Romantic movement stayed for a few days near their home, just over a hundred years ago.  While there, he wrote in a letter that he could take part in the…

T Minus 10

By Richard Grahn Evanston, Illinois, USA Spaceman, always looking up, a compass with no needle, lost it shooting up. Always shy a half-a-moon, he’s off to Heaven to file a complaint— too many burned-out stars, more every day;  got to get to Heaven . . . make a few changes.  soup kitchen steps for a pillow his last night on Earth ~ Failed Haiku Issue 86

When you take sides

By Tazeen FatmaKarnataka, India A woman sits on rubble, her crimson eyes staring into yours. No one is left to grieve in another neighborhood. You have unknowingly cracked a few knuckles, picked up a dagger, and destroyed lives counting tens, hundreds, and thousands...  In trying to teach them a lesson, you’ve instilled fear and thereby infused terror in someone, somewhere. Politically, you struggle to define it in a way such that your bloodied hands are stain-free. The sun sets yet again but the night sky lights up every now and then. Many have lost their tomorrow, others wake up to a bleak one.…

Tipping Point

By Jenny Ward Angyal Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA diving into the cold depths of fear . . . until I remember each wave is made of water Gaia burning— and yet one dewdrop magnifies the glory of a beetle’s burnished wing my bequest to the seventh generation— memories of the deep green eden your ancestors once knew one by one I drop these words into a well— bottomless, brimming with stars ~Ribbons 17:3, Fall 2021

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…

Gaia

by Jenny Ward AngyalGibsonville, North Carolina, USA a boulder lieswhere the glacier left it—clear as crystalthe old crone’s memoryof fire and of ice graniteunder a thin peltof grass . . .climbing the hillher bones grow weary paper birchesbending to sweepthe earthshe brushes a leaffrom her hem a cedarat the top of the knollriven long agoby lightning . . .the rain in her hair empathycarved deep in the barkof a sapling . . .gnarled fingers tracethe lines of her scars ~red lights 18:2, June 2022

Tsunami

By Padma RajeswariMumbai, India hearing the roarin dreamsTsunami survivor

Memoji

By Padma RajeswariMumbai, India a memoji call with dad hiding the bruises