1.
Rain carves the air, slicks down the tiled roof and then my cheeks. I taste moss without seeing any. The temple is cool and wet at my back. I strain to hear the fortune teller over the staccato eating away at stone. He studies my long face, proclaims:

beware water
consumes stilled stones
the rising tide drowns.

2.
Water splits under my twin, ripples in the wake of his dive. Chlorine sags the air. Patient applause; he remains a dark smug beneath the surface. My mother’s grip stains my arm red. Water sloshes over the rim into drainage grates—a tidal pool recycling.

water stills
becomes mirror-smooth,
an azure eye.

3.
Water splits the horizon, a great blue iris. I walk with my twin to where the water licks away the sand. Our brother’s ashes stain our hands grey. We learned what to do watching our parents. We kneel, offer what we hold. The tide is always approaching.

water houses
quicksilver fish,
captured by the wave.

4.
The quarry splits down into layers of earth. Exposed granite hollowed and housing a large reservoir. My older brother fishes from the tongue of land that curls into the pond. The tide builds, licks apart the arc of his feet, pulls him beneath the mud.

water erodes,
ferries scales of light
to a distant shores.

DC Restaino

I get in line with the seabirds. They seem to be looking at their reflections in the thin film of water behind the retreating wave. So I look down. There I am. In a baggy bathing suit with a snorkel in my left hand. It’s hot, and the water smells like gasoline. A kid runs by and the birds scatter. There I am. In a baggy bathing suit – all alone.

a bald tire
on a patch of ice
the world turns

Robert Witmer

Dead people are like approaching trains— At
the most you can step aside. On another pair
of tracks. Where you were the one waited for,
and the train is always arriving. Or is there.
Already. And you are running into it.

hard left—
the slow whirls
of acceptance

Vishal Prabhu

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OF LIGHTNING

Jerome Berglund

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

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