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The Stars Are All Dead and Have Fallen

by on May 18, 2017

And with help we loaded the pickup
with all the other things that no longer functioned.

Washing machine that shook itself to death.
Ancient computer, dirty face like city ice.
One stained mattress, upon which no children
were conceived. And so forth. Drove

somewhere. Nothing grew there but hills
someone had burned with cigarettes.

Thorns survived. And kudzu. There was a ditch
where an old Chevrolet dammed the runoff
and buried itself in red mud. There we did
our unloading. Appliances rolled downhill

like snake eyes. Newspaper bundles and slick
magazines fell like bad cards. Sliding down,
the mattress ripped some kudzu cover away,
exposed layers of garbage. Households like ours.

A daughter’s bicycle with glossy mylar streamers
looked to have been almost new, but vines
threaded its spokes and frame,
stitched it to the earth like Frida Kahlo.

We have returned our portion.

 

—
Barbara Young hasn’t been writing much this year. East Nashville got too popular, so she and Jim packed up the cats and moved out to White Bluff. A grocery, two hardware stores, and a bakery that only makes doughnuts. Change is interesting. Because writing prompts can be easier than poems, Barbara sometimes becomes “Miz Quickly.”

Ode to the Corner of the Drug House Down the Gravel Road Off the Two Lane Highway #51

by on May 17, 2017

While everyone slept
I set up all of the mirrors
to face against the walls

& I couldn’t be sadder
that nobody realized
& nobody thought

that this was strange.
Come to think of it,
when was the last time

I saw what I look like?
I have pictures of myself.
I was a pretty man.

 

—
Darren C. Demaree’s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including the South Dakota Review, Meridian, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. He is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Many Full Hands Applauding Inelegantly (2016, 8th House Publishing) and is the managing editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He currently lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The Spoilt Season

by on May 16, 2017

This is the spoilt season, the dying land.
Here are weeds and crows and graves.

Trucks growl up our street all night
and in the morning we pull our shades

against another day of rain and tears.
Here are angry men wading icy streams.

Here is their music of broken drums.
Here are drugs and beds with their sheets

torn up, and dust on the nightstand, dust
on the walls and floor. Someone lived

here once, in wind and fading light,
when the kitchen hummed, and the scent

of soup went everywhere. She lived
in a body, painted her image on glass

where it shone in the dark, another star
made of desire, kissing the brow of sky.

 

—
Steve Klepetar has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including four in 2016. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems (both from Flutter Press). Family Reunion (Big Table) and A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press) were released in January, 2017.

Practice Makes Perfect

by on May 9, 2017

mother intoned,
thumping time on the side of the piano
with her ruler
while I struggled at the keys.
So I practiced the art of magic
(deception, we shall call it)
like  turning water to ice under a silk scarf,
and coaxing my mad dogs under the table
to silence their whimper.
They, accustomed to spaces
dark and deep, began to sleep.

Once in a dream
I carried a dead child on my shoulders
as I crept down the night hall
to the stygian mirror,  expecting to see
a snarling beast with plundered eyes.
But there was no image
in the silvered shadows.
The hair on the backs of the dogs
began to rise.

But practice makes
permanent,
While I practiced the art of the silk scarf,
and perfected the image of coolness,
the mad dogs rose, growled
and shook their chains.

 

—
Elizabeth Vrenios has had poetry featured in such online poetry columns as: Clementine, Kentucky Review, Form Quarterly, Scissors and Spackle and in issues of The Binnacle, Poeming Pidgeon Unsplendid and The Edison Review. Her prize-winning chapbook, Special Delivery was published by Yellow Chair Press in the spring of 2016.  She is a Professor Emerita from American University, and has spent most of her life performing as a singing artist across Europe and the United States.

whiteout

by on May 8, 2017

 

—
Marianne Paul is a Canadian novelist and poet who recently transitioned to short-form poetry, primarily haiku, senryu, haiga and haibun. She was the winner of the 2016 Jane Reichhold Memorial Haiga Competition, multi-media category. Read more of her writing on twitter @mariannpaul, and on her website literarykayak.com.

long night moon

by on May 5, 2017

 

long night moon
the old clock
ticks louder

 

—
Deborah P Kolodji is the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society of America, the moderator of the Southern California Haiku Study Group, and a member of the Board of Directors for Haiku North America.  Having published over 900 haiku over the last 15 years, her first full-length collection, highway of sleeping towns, was recently published by Shabda Press.

The Two Ends

by on May 3, 2017

I kept losing my pencils at school. At first, dad would cut each pencil in half. Then mom threatened to tie the half-pencil to my button.

autumn pile
every leaf
finds its place

 

—
Shrikaanth Krishnamurthy is a psychiatrist from Bengaluru India,  living in England. A trained vocalist and a composer in Indian Classical Music, he writes in Kannada, Sankethi, Tamil and English languages. His haikai writings have been published in reputed journals and anthologies and won prizes, worldwide. He is currently the Editor of the Blithe Spirit, journal of The British Haiku Society.

The Island

by on May 1, 2017

Kristin-who-cuts-my-hair describes her sweet
honeymoon in the Bahamas. She *Snip*

says it was a telephone offer. Who
in their right mind would? But they did.

In the mirror, behind blue Barbicide,
she shapes thin sheets of hair as she talks.

But she’s only a blur—her island grows,
luxurious, through my reflection. Later, home,

and the Weather shows a swirling egg yolk,
red as a dragon’s eye, aimed at the Bahamas.

Someone told me once: Don’t go to Paris,
it’s not there. And if you loved the book,

don’t see the movie, ever. Untroubled by storms,
Kristin’s green lizards smile on from pink walls.

 

—
Barbara Young hasn’t been writing much this year. East Nashville got too popular, so she and Jim packed up the cats and moved out to White Bluff. A grocery, two hardware stores, and a bakery that only makes doughnuts. Change is interesting. Because writing prompts can be easier than poems, Barbara sometimes becomes “Miz Quickly.”

snow angel

by on Apr 28, 2017

 

snow angel
two sticks from the woodpile
and a butterfly

 

—
Tom Sacramona is a poet living in Plainville, Massachusetts. He is grateful to have haiku published in journals, such as bottle rockets, Mayfly and Modern Haiku. Sacramona is a member of the Boston Haiku Society and the Haiku Society of America.  Learn more about haiku: Visit his blog at tomsacramona.wordpress.com