Haibun

Next Services 100 Miles

From nowhere to nowhere:
a straight ribbon of road, aimed
east and west through geologic
time. Rocks once under water.
Sand once solid rock. The rise
and fall of dust devils.

beigeness
blasting jazz funk
to stay awake

Distant horizons, unforgiving
and unforgiven. On a tall pole,
hand-lettered signs tell how far
to Gallup, Anza, Kalamazoo.
Parallel to asphalt, long lines
of abandoned boxcars.

rite of passage
names spelled in stones
by the tracks

Come afternoon, a flood
of petrichor over creosote flats.
Clouds pile up, then let go,
clumps of graphite rain
streaking down, the runoff
dousing roadside datura.

black and white
the turkey vultures
circling

Cynthia Anderson, USA



silent protest

nice to see these finding their way into bourgeois sectors more upscale neighborhoods all the college kids sitting quietly cross-legged on the campus president’s lawn mean well for certain playing ‘changes’ politely on their boom box at a reasonable volume… they’d achieve better results if they broke one of those many windows over yonder i reckon but will keep my opinions to myself and observe respectfully

writing
a good poem
in bad light

Jerome Berglund, USA



Scarabian Nights

So my friend sent me a meme about how 1 in 3 people is a beetle, so I MUST be one. And instead of refuting them, I started thinking about what kind of beetle I might be. A June bug? A tansy? Something iridescent?

opal moon
the veins in my leg
shimmering

Susan Burch, USA



Neonatal Care Unit 

Suck my finger. Atta boy—your veins are thin. One day, you will grow like the giant jackfruit tree in our backyard, beside where barrel cactus seeds were sown.

ambu bag—
white balloon outside
in sudden wind 

Ashesh Das, India



Merger

Across this ocean of a coffee table, I ask if he would have ever thought of marrying me if I hadn’t asked him.

       pitching boat
                                  the crash 
of a breaching whale

Eavonka Ettinger, USA



Holy City

As I walk down Star Street towards Manger Square, I spot the stainless steel rotisserie oven across the cobble stones. An older gentleman in a white short-sleeve shirt and gray slacks looks up at me.

“Hello, I’ll take a chicken. How many shekels?”

“Thirty-eight,” he replies.

I smile, “Okay.”

“You want it cut?”

“No, Whole is good.” I laugh.

He slides a browned baked bird off the skewer, sprinkles it with sumac, wraps it up in aluminum foil, and plops it in a plastic bag. I hand him a fifty.

He drops 14 shekels into my hand saying, “36 for you.”

I’m surprised. “Thirty-six? Why? Because I didn’t have it cut?”

“No, because you laughed. Most people are…” He makes a
grumpy face . . . “You smile.”

prayers echo
through the streets of Bethlehem
desert breeze

John S Green, Jordan



Paradise Lost

In the cramped bomb shelter, the eight-year-old dozing in the crook of her mother’s arm awakens with a start, as she always does these days.

She looks at the faces of the women around her. They seem cast out of the same mould—furrowed forehead, empty eyes, sagging shoulders . . .

Bored, the little girl wriggles free and ferrets out a notebook from her bag, along with a few stubs of crayons they had saved. She scribbles intently.

The open notebook with the girl’s sketch passes from hand to hand.

dream home
a circle of smiles
at the dinner table

Anju Kishore, India



Confession

Even when I know what I should do—for my own good, for the good of others, for the good of the world—I’ll hop in a car and drive 25 miles to scarf what may be the best burger in the world, accompanied by craft beer, and top it all with a dessert worth more than a week’s worth of recommended sugar, assuming any health authorities commend sugar. Back home, I feed a can of chicken-of-the-lab to my sorry excuse for a wolf before I turn on my devices, tune in to the drivel, and drop off to sleep. 

guilt dump
laying plastic flowers
at the recycle bin

Bob Lucky, Portugal



Waiting for Great Granny to Say Something

Nothing is what we say it is, but we have to call it something. There is no stone in the stone, no fire in the flame, no Chinese food in China. We name things to possess them.

family reunion
the adopted baby
not yet sweetie pie

Bob Lucky, Portugal



Up the Creek

The red-eared slider sits atop a rock misted by waterfall. 
The turtle’s at the end of a long formation shaped like 
a mermaid, the slider at the tip of the tail, the mermaid’s 
torso and head part of the waterfall’s face. I wonder about
the hydraulics moving his turtle head up and down, side-
to-side. The motor, gears, springs, the oil in the thing. 
Are there noises he hears inside that shell, does his neck 
stiffen if he doesn’t move it, do the limbs go numb?

end of summer . . .
the surgical spine center’s
reminder text

Richard L. Matta, USA



Her first fishing camp

herring fry 
along a beach gutter
the isosceles of a fin

Scarlet lichen finger-painting black granite outcrops 
bone-white sand necklaced burnt-umber by bull kelp
Abalone jemmied off rocks in knee-deep surf breaks
black-frilled and rubbery muscle fed into hand grinder
Oozy pearls of chopped flesh stirred with flour and salt
pan-fried crisp-golden in embers blue mussels 
Frizzle-bearded yawn wide to orange-pink folds mud oysters
big as open hands spilling milky seajuice, swallowed raw.

live bait
what comes here is
already spoken for

Steady blows from off the strait roaring forties
driving swell after swell hard into musselroe bay
Hunting for crayfish, claws snag-wedged in sublittoral cracks
tossing back females, egg-heavy for another year
Soot-encrusted cast-iron pots boiling water over coals and
spiny carapaces in erubescent agonies, fast-chilled on ice
Tail after tail snapped off—more more, still more rich sweet flesh
until every bite becomes part pleasure, part disgust.

coming of age
a discarded diary
salt-flowered

Marietta McGregor, Australia



Procedure   

Afterward, my sister said she would do it again if someone paid her ten dollars.

The best thing I could say about it was that most of it was not offensive.

eating our feelings

at the hospital café

0-calorie parfait

Sarah E. Metzler, USA



Dolorosa Street* again

Another sudden death in the family and day after day of dutiful obligations. Sweat and teardrops evaporate under a magnesium white-hot summer sun. Distant thunder, but the rain never comes. So, just a brief note: yes, I’m still down here working within this infernal Texas horno—exhausted, bleached to the bone, desiccating, call it what you will. Each day I roam his many rooms, sort his possessions one-by-one.  For amusement I watch the silent mockingbirds drop from the dead live oaks, a scorpion scuttle under the shadow of a mesquite in the molten asphalt parking lot. We know there’s more death in the air—everyone here can smell it, this malarial anti-petrichor. I gotta vamonos— ¡Buenos noches, mi corazon!

thermodynamics
skeletons dance the jig
to the mission bells

Mark Meyer, USA                          
_{*a street in San Antonio}



Bird Brain 

I don’t remember if my real father ever actually referred to me using those specific words. In any case, I wasn’t very bright, and he seemed to like to remind me often. But none of that matters this morning. I’ve put even my most important prayers on slight hold so I can walk over to the robin’s nest (new tender eggs) that’s on the back end of the house. A womb unto itself. A miniature mother earth bursting with stories. Deep knowledge about all the things a bird needs to know to survive. Or a person, for that matter. How to turn dirt and wood—if even just for a short while—into a warm home. Into beautiful family and its precise songs.

That sure don’t seem dumb to me.

spring chores—   
the whole world dust
and dandelion fluff

Andrew Riutta, USA



Timeline of Tattoos I Didn’t Get

1984: Great-grandpa St. Claire’s fading green heart

1991: My friend’s Anton LaVey-lookalike uncle’s inscrutable “got ’em in lockup” squiggles

1996: The American flag of the odious, mouth-breathing bully who was always trying to goad me, unsuccessfully, into fisticuffs

1997: The Tasmanian devil stretching to infinity of the roided-up jock in my gym class who bleached his hair to copy me when I bleached mine first (and who ultimately got the credit for starting the fad)

1998: The tiger face inscribed in a swallowtail’s wings of the blonde girl who sat at my lunch table and was always offering me acid and hash

1999: The inscrutable swishes of the “it’s Chinese for energy” on the neck of that aloof girl who flipped burgers with me and only acknowledged I existed when she wanted to talk about her tattoo 

2000: “Heather” (her name) in gigantic, grand calligraphy, inscribed over a magnificent, pink pansy, on her lower stomach, right before she got pregnant after a one night stand with “American flag” (see: 1996)

2001: The praying hands on my stoner boss’s shoulder who I worked with for four years and only saw sober twice

2002: The horimono (and pierced nipples) of the chaw-chomping ex-marine I never liked but who always seemed to think we were friends

2004: The bouquet of daisies on my boss’s calf that she was fond of showing customers

2005: The temp’s not-a-tramp-stamp tramp stamp

2007: The black polygons of the tribal tattoos that my gym rat coworker got done in suburban Baltimore

2009: The permanent eyeliner that my friend’s girlfriend got from her mom

2010: The Rilke quote that the girl from customer service got on her forearm

2011: My peer’s wedding ring

2012: The unfriendly barista’s murmuration of starlings that turned into dandelion seeds that turned into clouds that turned into falling maple leaves that turned into starfish

2013: The other manager on my team’s baby sonogram heartbeat

2014: My VP’s Confederate flag

2015: The CFO’s wife’s “isn’t it tasteful?” just-another-night-out-with-the-girls bracelet of roses

2016: The monochrome sleeve of the waiter at the country club, about whom the CEO says, “I guess they’ll hire anyone now”

2017: The cross on the wrist of the girl in the WIC office

2019: “I’m my own worst enemy” on the calf of the young man waiting for a table at Olive Garden

2020: The “mistake” on my direct report’s backside, which finally got removed after 12 laser sessions with the dermatologist

2021: The skull and crossbones on the face of the kid behind me in line on Black Friday who was complaining about being unemployed

2023: “Guy’s Weekend 2023” surrounded by a few loops of chain link that the guy friends I don’t have didn’t get

different
just like everyone else
mockingbird

Joshua St. Claire, USA



Safe?

As humans continue interspecies warfare, we only have 35% more non-human animals to go. 

Are you in?

spent cartridge of a fox 
wagner’s ring cycle plays
through the night

Alan Summers, UK
_{Poet’s note: “spent cartridge” alludes to the astringent smell of ejected excrement by foxes, plus simultaneous smells emitted via glands placed all over their bodies. It’s also a metaphorical image of spent cartridges (ammunition) lying around.}

Gembun

all I did was watch a pelican dive for food nearly 100 times

island paradise 
even here
writer’s block

Bryan Rickert, USA

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