A dog barks scaring the finch away from the feeder just as I let the smallest hurdle keep me from seizing what I really want and limping away in another direction looking for something big and safe instead of tiny and precious but each time I go for safe my heart is chipped away just a little bit more becoming an empty space for dogs to bark or birds to feed with a lock on the gate to keep out everything else.
mulberry tree…
swimming in a pool
of dead leaves.
Lafcadio
It just keeps getting hotter. “Out of the frying pan, eh,” I say to her. “Into the fire,” she hisses. “The devil made me do it,” say I. “Snake eyes,” she replies. And so we keep rolling the dice, as we pass the fan magazine back and forth, and dream of celebrity.
moonlight
on marble nipples
the watchman fast asleep
Robert Witmer
I regret never being in love. I regret not having a monkey or a black cat. I regret not being a vampire. I regret that I have not bitten any of my girlfriends on the neck. I regret that I am not the lifeless black bird that hangs from the thorn that knots Frida’s neck. But I am satisfied that every morning god allows me to read a poem.
the things i’ve done —
handing snowflakes
back to the sky
(Ekphrastic haibun based on ‘Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’, Frida Kahlo (1940)
Réka Nyitrai & Alan Peat
Monday is the deal day and
a family trip to the alley
works out best for everyone and
everything that comes out of pocket
and we keep rolling the slotted balls
toward the ten pins trying to beat
each other along with the pins
after we have worked out
what sizes and what weights
work best for each but I keep
shuffling the sizes till the end.
quick picks
who knows what
dices will roll out
Biswajit Mishra
haphazardly
gluing the cut closed
bird’s nest
Takes a lot of faith to let yourself go knowing god of choice may as likely catch you as allow to drop helps being a little inebriated when you’re tipsy fall better bounce right off intact spring readily up again also having infantile resilience the plump invulnerability allows rapid recovery from most grievous wounds spit out loaner teeth nonchalantly knowing definitive pair safely wait in storage training wheels temporary shuffled off without great concern any harm arising from renouncement.
deserted sky
a solitary cloud
comes unspun
Jerome Berglund
My arms wrap around my bent knees as your snake — contortionist, trickster — coils
my parietal lobe. You would never see me ride a flying horse for what could glide out of its mouth. I avoid pet stores, zoos, & natural history museums.
A hiss in a movie & those are my screams you hear bounce off the surround-sound.
On the street see me freeze as men, boa-draped, brush past. Vipers will curtain my casket.
I read milky-eyed
rubbing against constriction
I worship your words
Cynthia Bargar
Certain topics I try to approach
with caution in the writing of haiku:
crow, dragonfly, firefly, for example,
falling leaves, skipping stones and, and,
and babbling brooks. There’s the moon
of course, the moon the moon the moon,
and scarecrow, spring breeze, new coolness,
blossom, birdsong, the way or the how of things.
Shadows go without saying. They’re everywhere.
And, being guilty of humanness, I too am prone
to the interrogation of owls, the hush of pines,
the stubble of starfish, all manner of raindrops
suspended from god knows what and for how long
exactly the reason to catch one, freeze-frame it
for over the mantle. A fate that has befallen me.
dryer on the fritz
the spring breeze
my mother raved about
Peter Newton
Deosil widdershins deosil widdershins the bird-feeder cages revolve at the stroke of a wing which leaves them empty of probing -beak to beak with a fledging a lesser spotted woodpecker flickers in black and scarlet while in the background the last giant poppy shudders a seedhead, one single petal hanging on in the shrivelling loss of its sheen…
river bridge streetlamp
halfway across the tip
in solstice light
Diana Webb
She’s looking back at key points in her career. One stands out. She recalls it stage by stage. Jots it down in the third person present.
“Puts her head round the door. Gives them the thumbs up. It’s there in their eyes. Relief and excitement. Soon they will get their very first glimpse. There’s a sense of tension .”
new grandchild
hurdles towards the horizon
each Hokusai wave
“Good to observe them coming and going especially the older ones, some of them nervous.”
wrinkled smile
a dream of Einstein’s theory
coming back
“It’s been three months now. Must have seemed years. How lovely to see the matriarch back for that final appointment, proud and of use. Can almost hear her hum ‘twinkle twinkle’ “
holding the baby
in jars of frozen white liquid
the milky way glints
Diana Webb
All morning she sits there, eyes intent upon a leaf. The creature is perched there short of the bridge and the dark of its cavernous arch. It was perched there yesterday until it vanished. It’s perched there today, insistent on patience as only a kingfisher poised for a catch can be. The leaf pointing downwards catches both light and a sliver of shadow. The bird’s breast glows orange, wings unseen as a blue planet’s essence of aquamarine. She can make this object of contemplation whatever she wants. Jewel of the river, the crystalline tie pin that flew in a dart of piercing flight, skimming the waters of vision beyond all worth, lost from the trove, dimmed to no trace. She is the poet who deems it is here in the sway of a leaf, as the light increases decreases increases…
bank to bank
in parallel ripples
a trail
Diana Webb
the other bunny 