“Starting Small” (Nov-Dec 2014) is the inaugural issue of Gnarled Oak featuring micropoetry, microprose, short videos, and micropoetry-related artwork.
luscious peach
in a bowl of blue —
one perfectly ripe
sunset
—
Julie Bloss Kelsey writes microfiction and short-form poetry. Her poems have appeared in tinywords, The Heron’s Nest, Eye to the Telescope, and A Hundred Gourds, among others. Find her on Twitter @MamaJoules.
faultless hand sewn quilts
are impossible to find –
an uneven stitch
identifies the maker
as a fallible human
—
Vivienne Blake is an elderly Englishwoman living in rural Normandy, where she spends her time writing and quilting.
ventilator machine
a sound louder
than my heartbeat
—
Archana Kapoor Nagpal is an internationally published author of four books – 14 Pearls of Inspiration, The Road to a Positive Life, A Haiku Per Day and The Fragrance of a Beautiful Life. She often participates in short story competitions, and her winning stories are now part of international anthologies – New Love: Anthology of Short Stories and 12 Facets of a Crystal. She has seen her short stories, poems and haiku published in other anthologies as well – A Pinch of Love, Peace and Humanity and Ripples of Love. She has also been actively involved in the editing and book designing of these two anthologies.
A stranger eases past
in a crowd,
her scent
every memory
of you.
—
Mark Windham lives in the suburbs of Atlanta with his wife, children and dogs. He is self-employed in a much too logical and structured profession. First drafts of his mental wanderings can be found at Awakened Words.
(Watch “Belief in Unicorns” on Vimeo or check out more by Marie Craven)
Editor’s note: The text of the Neil Flatman poem “Belief in Unicorns” and his bio can be read at The Poetry Storehouse.
—
Marie Craven: ‘I am a media maker and vocalist from the Gold Coast, Australia with a long artistic background including drama, experimental cinema and music. I’ve been engaged in online collaboration since 2007 and have been a contributor to works with artists in many different parts of the world. Generally speaking, I am drawn to dreams, fragmentation, rhythms, narrative. I work intuitively leaving space for synchronicity.’ (from The Poetry Storehouse)
crows perched on wire
the sky divides into halves
the line between us
—
Erica Goss is the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA, and the host of Word to Word, a show about poetry. She is the author of Wild Place (Finishing Line Press 2012) and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets (PushPen Press 2014). Her poems, reviews and articles appear widely, both on-line and in print. She won the 2011 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Contest and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2010 and 2013. She writes The Third Form, a column about video poetry, for Connotation Press. Please visit her at: www.ericagoss.com; she blogs at ericagosspoet.wordpress.com.
I barely see the children swimming behind the boats. Twilight ripples from their faint outlines.
Drowning doesn’t look anything like I thought it would.
cottonwood flurries
the field left to return
to prairie
—
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.
gnarled oak
planted long ago…
many battles
—
Patricia Geyer, an amateur photographer and poet, lives in East Brunswick, NJ, USA. Her home is surrounded by many parks and lakes, and she walks every day to find her inspiration in Nature. She has been published in Bright Stars, Moonbathing, Kokako, The Bamboo Hut, Undertow Tanka Review and Akitsu Quarterly.
fleeing sparrows –
perhaps all soft words
fade
—
Angie Werren lives (and writes) in a tiny house in Ohio. Sometimes she takes pictures of things in the yard.
