Issue 1: Starting Small

“Starting Small” (Nov-Dec 2014) is the inaugural issue of Gnarled Oak featuring micropoetry, microprose, short videos, and micropoetry-related artwork.

Issue 1: Starting Small—Summary, Contents & Editor’s Note

by on Dec 9, 2014

gnarled_oak_coverSummary

“Starting Small” (Nov-Dec 2014) is the inaugural issue of Gnarled Oak featuring micropoetry, microprose, short videos, and micropoetry-related artwork.

Read online | Read the PDF (click to read online, right-click & save-as to download)

Contents

fleeing sparrows — Angie Werren

gnarled oak — Patricia Geyer

The Names Change Every Time I Tell the Story — Aubrie Cox

crows perched on wire — Erica Goss

Belief in Unicorns — Marie Craven

Perfume — Mark Windham

ventilator machine — Archana Kapoor Nagpal

faultless hand sewn quilts — Vivienne Blake

luscious peach — Julie Bloss Kelsey

Six (Twenty Seconds of Haiku) — Angie Werren

Newton’s First Law of Motion — Aubrey Cox

eventide…  — Shloka Shankar

on the belly — Marianne Paul

a wild sky — Debbie Strange

paddling sea kayaks — Robyn Cairns

morning fog — Angie Werren

Four Haiku — Kris Lindbeck

The Moving Walkway — Carolyn Guinzio

Editor’s Note

There is very little to say here at the end of this inaugural issue of Gnarled Oak other than “thank you.”

Thank you to everyone who submitted work and took a chance on this fledgling publication.

Thank you to everyone who read this issue, who shared it, liked it, commented, retweeted, favorited, pinned, reposted, and all those other ways of sharing the things we discover in the digital world.

It has been my honor and privilege to publish the pieces contained in this issue, from work by writers and artists I already knew and admired to others whose work was new to me.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, all. I hope you’re looking forward to Issue Two as much as I am.

–James Brush, Editor

The Moving Walkway

by on Dec 5, 2014

(Watch “The Moving Walkway” on Youtube)

 

—
Carolyn Guinzio is a poet, photographer and occasional filmmaker. Her books include Spoke & Dark (Red Hen, 2012), Quarry (Parlor, 2008), West Pullman (Bordighera, 2005) and the forthcoming Spine (Parlor, 2015). Find her online at http://carolynguinzio.tumblr.com/

Four Haiku

by on Dec 4, 2014

 

Threesome …
they lie in bed together
petting the cat

 

quarreling sparrows
the old woman says a gray dove
is their mother

 

Bright wind
a white cloud of ibis
touch the earth

 

Green trees
and silver clouds
no poems but this

 

—
Kris Lindbeck writes haiku etc on Twitter @krislindbeck & recently published in M.Kei’s Bright Stars, Skylark Tanka, & an essay on senryu in Simply Haiku.

paddling sea kayaks

by on Dec 2, 2014

 

paddling sea kayaks
into black ink
and prehistoric forests
we realised
how young we were

 

—
Robyn Cairns is a Melbourne based poet who shares her poetry and photography on twitter. Robyn enjoys writing about nature and her local industrial landscape. She has a passion for photography and being outdoors. Robyn is continuously inspired by other poets on platforms such as twitter – she can be found @robbiepoet. She is also a proud member of an online Haiku group called The Banyan Tree. She has recently had the honour of being published in Bright Stars tanka journal volumes 2, 3, 5 and 6 and has also been recently published in Cattails and The Bamboo Hut.

eventide…

by on Nov 25, 2014

 

eventide a gull’s cry so familiar

 

—
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India. Her work appears in two dozen anthologies including Chronicles of Urban Nomads, The Dance of the Peacock, Emanations IV, The Living Haiku Anthology, Family Matters, The Traversal of Lines, and Eastern Voices among others. Her poems, erasures, haiku, tanka, and haibun, have appeared in numerous print and online journals.

Newton’s First Law of Motion

by on Nov 24, 2014

Forty degrees and foggy. Barefoot in the parking lot. His kisses keep you warm enough long enough to see him off.

floodplains
where her family history
ends

 

—
Aubrie Cox went to university to write a novel and came out writing haiku. It’s worked pretty well so far. Now, she teaches at Millikin University and is an editor for the online journal A Hundred Gourds. Her poetry and prose can be found in publications such as Modern Haiku, Frogpond, NANO Fiction, and forthcoming in WhiskeyPaper. She regularly blogs at Yay Words! and sometimes tweets @aubriecox.