night pond
the koi feeding
on stars
—
Enrique Garrovillo is from Cebu City, Philippines. He currently resides in Dipolog City.
Halfway to What’s Next
—
W. Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and educator. He is the author of seven books including Imagination: The Art of W. Jack Savage (wjacksavage.com). To date, more than fifty of Jack’s short stories and over nine-hundred of his paintings and drawings have been published worldwide. Jack and his wife Kathy live in Monrovia, California.
street in a downpour
street in a downpour —
through a window
the television flashes
—
Diarmuid Fitzgerald was born in 1977. In 2015 his first collection of haiku and tanka poems, Thames Way, was published by Alba Publishing. He is currently working on his second collection A Thousand Sparks.
hand-flapping
—
Marianne Paul is a Canadian poet and novelist. She won the 2016 Jane Reichhold Memorial Haiga Competition multi-media category, and the 2016 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku International, Canadian division. To learn more of her work, visit mariannepaul.com and literarykayak.com.
In Twos
Her glasses are on the night table. Propped up on two cushions, she is asleep, her mouth half-open, a bubble of saliva shifting on her lip with every breath. The ceiling fan purrs. A quiet room, otherwise. Tiptoeing near her bed I see a tiny fly approach her face. As if sensing it, she raises her arm, brushing against her forehead. I stop breathing. But she continues in her sleep, as if she is on a journey and this moment that just passed was but a momentary stop, a blip, a slight distraction.
no one
in the mirror
night of ghosts
—
Stella Pierides is a poet and writer. Her books include: Of This World: 48 Haibun (Red Moon Press, 2017) and Feeding the Doves: 31 Short and Very Short Stories (Fruit Dove Press, 2013). Her haiku and micropoetry collection In the Garden of Absence (Fruit Dove Press, 2012) received a Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award. Currently she manages the Per Diem: Daily Haiku feature for The Haiku Foundation. Find her online at stellapierides.com.
2017 Pushcart Nominations
Here are Gnarled Oak’s six Pushcart nominees for 2017 in order of appearance. I hope you’ll go back and reread them:
Natural Outlaws by Melissa Fu (from Issue 11)
The Past Is Not Where I Left It by Stephanie Hutton (from Issue 11)
In the Feet of a Refugee by Frank Eze (from Issue 11)
The Stars Are All Dead and Have Fallen by Barbara Young (from Issue 12)
Refuge by Steve Klepetar (from Issue 12)
sky poem by Tara Roeder (from Issue 13)
Congratulations to these authors and my sincerest thanks to them and everyone who allows me the honor of publishing their work at Gnarled Oak.
the animal inside it
the animal inside it boiled away
perfect
seashell
—
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California’s Central Valley and co-edits One Sentence Poems. Her chapbook, Various Lies, is available from Finishing Line Press.
How the Grateful Dead Got Their Name
Don’t believe this story. It is fake news.
Jerry Garcia did not return from the land of the dead
with three pennies in his hand,
touched by those subtle fingers, rubbed smooth.
I didn’t free him from his coffin on the sea.
When he came to me, dressed in white,
paler than before, we didn’t walk along
the high road, we didn’t stop and go inside a church.
No princess, no dragon, no heads on spikes.
None of that happened. We sat down to drink coffee
in a Starbuck’s near my house,
though I would have preferred the Local Blend.
“The wi-fi’s better here,” he said, and anyway, he was buying.
He told me that it sucked being dead – the food is dry
and there’s no drugs – but at least he didn’t have to live
in America under Trump. Remember, this is fake news
made up by that failing poet, Steve Klepetar. Sick guy. Sad.
—
Steve Klepetar lives in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including four in 2016. Recent collections include Family Reunion (Big Table), A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press), and How Fascism Comes to America (Locofo Chaps).
First Grade Activist
(Watch Marie Craven’s video & view full credits for “First Grade Activist” on Vimeo)
—
Marie Craven (Queensland, Australia) assembles short videos from poetry, music, voice, stills and moving images by various artists around the world. Created via the internet, the pieces are collaborative in a way that belongs to the 21st century, with open licensing and social networking key to the process. In 2016 her video “Dictionary Illustrations” was awarded best film at the Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition in Ireland. To see more: vimeo.com/mariecraven
Breaking Through
—
Olivier Schopfer lives in Geneva, Switzerland. He likes to capture the moment in haiku and photography. His work has appeared in The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2014 & 2016, as well as in numerous online and print journals. He also writes articles in French about etymology and everyday expressions at Olivier Schopfer raconte les mots.
