This morning I farted in Sensōji. I turned and pointed to an old woman fumbling with prayer beads next to me and saw throughout the temple men and women pointing at a person near to them.

temple bell rumbling in my gut

Bob Lucky

Judges and Evangelists ponder, then make new lists for their next take away. Apples fall from the trees. Ignoring them, Eve runs before Paradise completely crumbles and Adam finishes implanting his rib.

the things we carry —
laws add to stashes
of guns and babies

Pris Campbell

When he fulfilled his first contract, a crow landed in the branches outside our gray brick home.  After the second, another.  He collected crows like a headhunter skulls.  The dark specters speckled his conscience like drops of blood, drips of corrosive acid, eating everything:  bodies, fingerprints, metal, guns.  As he once told, this future tumbled out of tarot cards when he was but a teen.

As a child he dreamed of beauty, meadows and rainbows, a girl next door.  Yet life hardens you.  As silver streaked his temples, and the knife wound brought on his limp, his mind grew too crowded with crows, his worship too splattered with bird droppings for any light to break through, leaving only shadows, demons, the acid, the crows.

Mars—
the glory of our lives
and the stain

Anna Cates

Down in the valley, valley so low,
You plant the garden; I’ll bring the hoe.
I’ll bring the hoe, dear; you plant the beans.
We will have cornbread, and turnip greens.
You make the cornbread.  I’ll fix the greens.
We’ll live it up, dear, like kings and queens!

Ham in the morning, chicken at noon,
Biscuits for supper; twin silver spoons.
Ladles of gravy; platters of meat—
Down in the valley, life will be sweet!

Cows for the cream, dear, apples for pie,
No sad goodbying; no time to cry.
Down in the valley the sun always shines,
And we will be happy, all of the time!

You tend the chickens.  I’ll fish the stream.
And we will be well, dear, like a good dream.
No sad goodbying; no time to cry.
Down in the valley the sun always shines,
And we will be happy, all of the time!

sky-high climb
hobo bag heavy
with golden eggs

Saundra Cates (1944-2021) and Anna Cates

The click of Lego syncopates with a motet of choral scholars all the way up and down the scale contralto to treble to bass, a sorceress shifting. Look out. He who lurks in a shadow could just be a minifigure of Reverend Green disguised as a mechanic waiting to do mischief in the ballroom with a spanner. Could it be that he is turning all the nuts and bolts to release his inner self in a scythe-like manner around a fleckle…

crescent moon
in a shroud of mist
one single breath

Diana Webb

Notched and ridged and splintered, clad in the herringbone weave of time to a fingertip. It was whittled away to the arc from the ark that floats her over the rise and fall of the waves of the path ahead.

horizon
the print of wings
on her palm

Diana Webb

During most of his dreams Pisanello is wide awake, painting his Madonna of the Quail. His concentration is broken only by the arguments of the Child and the quail.
Because of your earth-born body roses scatter – the quail begins.
Zero divided by zero is zero – the Child ripostes.
No gold leaf will erase your pain – the quail insists.
Yet, angels pay homage to my earthly mother – the Child retorts.
When the Child and quail argue the Madonna is never present. Most often she has stepped from the painting for a rest. I often wonder what she dreams of when she sleeps.

a boy
his mother’s face
retouched

Ekphrastic haibun based on ‘The Madonna of the Quail’, Pisanello. (c.1420)

Réka Nyitrai & Alan Peat