Contributions by
Valentine’s Day Reminder
We’ve had a lot of years. Still, I do not want
some forlorn, sarcastic, let’s ignore Valentine’s Day
day. Nor do I want the fat ballooning greeting card hearts on
every surface kind of love.
Give me this hula-hooping love that rises and falls,
spins its tediously…
Swedish Microverse
sneeze
from the tree
a cloud of jackdaws
Night Rain
Rain and thunder in January
the dark patio a wet blur rain
cats and dogs memory weeping down
our long blue confessions overrunning
gutters maybe we do the best we
can maybe we gather remorse in
cupped hands
hands like…
Rachel Chambers
Heather Minette
Crystal Simone Smith
Nicola Belte
Virginie Colline
Lara S. Williams
Daniel Gallik
Camouflage
Our hiking boots have red laces.
Mine, because I want to look young.
Yours, because you are an artist
making a statement against the
browns the greens the grays.
We crunch large leaves together,
leave jagged mosaics behind
to be blown…
Gerald Solomon
Message
Sometimes hawks come overhead.
You see them appear,
two, three, five at a time,
looking down for mice to eat.
Near the hayfield, where the garden ends,
my wife, tying up the bean-sticks.
Working steadily there,
too far to hear me…
Everything is Perfectly Wonderful, Thank You
On weekday mornings, Saskia pushed her sister to school in a wheelbarrow. It was a rusty contraption with a squeaking front wheel, and when Saskia hefted it over the paving stones, it went clank-creak-clunk, and bounced her little sister up and down. The child, however, rarely complained, clamping her teeth…
Issue 8
Issue 7
Issue 6
Swedish Microverse
postponed . . .
the executioner
killing time
disturbingly quiet
the loud
neighbour
From JJ’s chapbook wishbone
Ebony Marie Coward
Alicja Kwiatkowska
Paul Dance
Sierra Petty
Swedish Microverse
The cabin is bolted shut
On our lake the loon’s cry
goes unheard
Stugan tillbommad
Utifrån sjön ropar lommen
ohörd
From Fri haiku Autumn Issue, 2011
Florence Sun
Water rushes from the pail, splashes from the flowerpot, and chills her bare feet. She thinks of the Florence sun, beating hot against her neck. It’s November now. Three months since she left Italy. Three months still living there in her mind. Whispering memories and small stories to herself on…
Purple Smoke Tree
Idle morning
in the community garden,
one’s surrounded by the efforts
of the city’s at-risk boys⎯
their caution⎯yellow picnic table,
rusted over insect sculptures,
the oak stump’s painted words:
A Tree Once Thrived Here.
And poised in the midst
beside…
Mine
“Jacques Froste, artiste consacre, excentrique extraordinaire,” he says as he leads me in.
“Whatever,” I reply.
I just want this over with.
I can’t speak French. He doesn’t speak English. It doesn’t matter. I already know that he’s the man for the job.
I take off…
Three Haiku
laundry day
raindrops drying
along the spider’s line
the cat under the bush
spying on a sparrow
a none-of-your-business glance
at a loss for words
a distant honk
ends my sentence
I Remember
I remember the first time I watched my dad kill a lamb. He was in the tractor shed, behind the moulding log pile. There were sheets and paper on the ground and the lamb brayed from a tether in the corner. He took it behind the ear and dragged it…
Katy Whittingham
Steve Komarnyckyj
Swedish Microverse
in separate windows
old people
watching the sunset
i var sitt fönster
gamla människor
tittar på skymningen
From Fri haiku Winter Issue, 2010
Sean Quinn
Sage
Of the things I wanted most for my child I neglected to place Acceptance as high on the list as a fully developed brain. He was born seven weeks early and when I saw that he was in fact the healthiest preemie in the neo-natal ICU, I sighed relief, as…
Paul Beckman
Arun Sagar
Katharine Sargent
Dan Hanna
Amanda Hempel
Robert McDonald
Vanessa Blakeslee
Carand Burnet
Noah Berestizhevsky
Five Poems
Talk to Me, Man
Only this atheist
throws her head back
and prays to no one.
The Sun Rains Too
I held the sun
while it rained
And there came
the second sweetest thing
that ever did…
HEALING TIME
The news wasn’t good my father told me over the phone and then he hung up.
I called my sister in Cleveland and told her that the news wasn’t good and when she began to ask specific questions I said to her, I’m sorry, I don’t know and hung up.
…The Maze Within a Rapture
Ginny made one confession. She lived over in the plains. That’s what northwest Ohio had been called in those days. After the interstate west to Detroit, the land leveled and became ruled by farms.
Ginny was married to Earl. One kid and a…
Do as You Would Be Done To
It isn’t cold today although it’s the middle of winter but Catherine – with a C please – is dressed in thick windcheater and blue scarf tucked under her red woollen hat. There is a tension in her walk as she enters the bar, carrying her candy-striped shopping bag and…
Weaving Stories of Return
Her sole reason for reading Hrabal was that the man of her life did. She did not consider herself mature enough to enjoy high literature, which usually tired and bored her to death; however, she had to say that there was something immensely charming in the very fact of engrossing…
Law (Geography Returns)
The afternoon sun exhausts the leftover water
sits in unmoving puddles, putting off itself
Down streets nurses cling to their thin white shawls
Overhead wrens shift and flick their shapes
nicking distances
Now the wind is fervent perturbed by the many
Quite…
Linda Marten
Linda Marten
I wasn’t always her. I used to be me, and I had a cat named Bobby Mac and a job working for the post office, but I wasn’t a carrier because of my bad knees.
…
Dry
Porcelain inkwell, given to me
the writer, for my birthday.
Aunt Annie, divorced, fearful,
shedding all she could not carry.
She said, “for inspiration.”
A china bulb set upon a flowered dish,
according to the precise year pressed
upon the bottom, like my father’s
Two Poems
Aubade in Iron January
In the shining silence of the morning of the night
a deer was spooked just at the foot of the wall, and leapt
silent as the moon but for the sharpness of its hooves.
It hung like breath in the…
Things You’ll Miss
These are the things you’ll miss: bus rides back from the town of Florida into the capital at 7am, setting your alarm not to sleep through your stop. Her singing Carlos Gardel tango in bed. Her voice in English. Her voice in Spanish. The smell of a coconut and dulce…
Peter Taylor
Jessica Dur
Michel Gauthier
Vasya’s Surprise
Vasya’s Surprise
I
I followed you stumbling over the tussocks with my five year old’s feet while you swished at dandelion clocks in the fallow pasture with the ebony walking stick - considered by some a dandyish affectation. The water spattering into the…
Absences
The world is filled
with Mondays
and mint
and wild grasses
at the edges of the fields.
People are waiting
in the city, in large
waiting rooms,
reading newspapers.
You are not here, but
I am everywhere,
The Wars Against Florida
I wish the train were here; Father’s riding it.
We’re going to Disneyland.
The station has brown boards that we walk on, and they
are wet from the rain from this morning.
I heard an old man say to the man selling the tickets
that the…
Three Poems
Dear November,
A spider’s made of fingers and a fanged
dose of sleep, architect and contractor
of her home,
(it is also her net,
her stage,
her friendly neighborhood noose)
all material spun
from the stuff
of herself, the spider…
Farthings
If you ask why we have so little value,
it is because we are so easily lost.
We are coins cut from other coins,
a cross on one side, a mad king on the other.
First we were silver, then copper,
then nothing.
We are no…
Liftoff
The boom of the space shuttle rattles at first light.
The astronauts stagger and squint in the sunlight.
A boy scores goals in a grassy, burnt field, returns
hours later, points his telescope in the moonlight.
A couple twirls and dips to a big band classic,
…
Swedish Microverse
September sun
on the doorstep
my runaway cat
Septembersol
i dörröppningen
min bortsprungna katt
Candlelight —
the room shrinks and grows
with every breath
lågan av ett ljus
rummet krymper och växer
…
Helga Härle
For a Walk
for Nicol Allan
We reveal ourselves
underneath thin birch leaves
that toss like flattened sparrows
So many indecencies- it is fall
and the children core then
swallow the sun
Though other things begin:
drafts, plans, purposes,
no more history miscounted,
…
The miraculous dumpster
I have finished. He wasn’t much but I still feel bad. He really shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have taken her. He knew she was all mine. She had the nicest legs anyone had ever seen, strutting out from beneath her majestic hips. We always went to the movies…
The Girls
When I met him, Dennis was laughing.
I cracked a joke about older men hitting on younger women and he chuckled as though his own hair weren’t turning stringy and sparse. Like he wasn’t knocking on the door of forty, back pockets stuffed with regret. Then he offered to fix…
The Cemetery of the Elephants
As soon as he started the uphill walk he realized he was too fast again, a habit he had not been able to control despite years on the slopes. There was no hurry though. There never was, and definitely not this time. He slowed down and forced himself into a…
Sidney Bending
Gabrielle Soria
Microverse
fence leans
towards the neighbours
who never wave
Swedish Microverse
The fog horn sounds
On the misty moor
a lantern dies
Mistluren tjuter
I dimman borta på heden
slocknar en lykta
thaw
in the rain gutter
a chickadee bathing
snösmältning
i takrännan
badar en talgoxe
…
Conversation with the Sun in February
Sitting in a chair facing winter sun,
I will not ask Why or How long
will it take to heal? I will only say,
Joy. Small sounds like Ahhhh and Ohhhh
escape without thought. My eyes
are slits. After winter’s gray and black,
…
Swedish Microverse
My punctured finger
leaking blood –
will spring be late this year?
Mitt stuckna finger
blodet sipprar -
blir våren sen i år?
Linoleum floor
I finger my queue number, high
Every door closed
Linoleumgolv
Tummar…
Jan Dunhall
Swedish Microverse
drifting far into the woods
the lilting anthem
of the ice cream truck
långt in i skogen
tar sig melodislingan
från glassbilen
Swedish Microverse
foggy bridge
a tram
floats
spårvagnen svävar
bron
i dimma
the cat rushes
after a toy mouse
I pretend to throw
katten rusar
efter leksaksmusen
jag låtsas kasta
Al Ortolani
Microverse
three a.m.—
coal train hauling
night from my sleep
early spring morning:
sparrows peck sunlight between
patches of snow
little moon—your light
in the graveyard
on the…
Swedish Microverse
Buzz of the fly
drowning
in Vivaldi’s “Autumn”
Flugans surr
drunknar
i Vivaldis Höst
Mira Desai
Mestiza
My Lola says two cups water for every one and a half cup rice and I measure. I measure carefully—I tap the plastic black measuring cup hard against the Formica and watch the rice seize and settle, seize and settle, until it lies flat, beaten. Then I dump it. I…
Dan Davis
Molly McGravey
Ashley Varela
Carlie Daley
Here on Business
Another Vespa needles my nerves.
This whole street, this district
stinks of luxury –
and even the rain
is sick of Italy.
Christa Pagliei
Scott Duke Kominers
Heather Minette
Her Heart Is Going Home
She’s smiling so hard her eyes are squinting.Because she’s going, because she’s going, because she’s going! She’s on her tippy toes now.
Where is she going? She’s going where the sky is a blue that can only be described as Barcelona blue. She will drink coffee in plazas at wobbly…
Sarah J. Sloat
Janice’s Sister
In the room is a woman. She isn’t Janice, but Janice’s sister, Jill. Right now, Jill is thinking about Janice’s boyfriend, David, whom she has loved only thirty minutes less than Janice. Janice met David at a party, and introduced him to Jill, and Jill fell in love. It happens. …
Driftwood
In summer the heat between my thighs would not be quenched. In Autumn I looked up through a latticework of fiery leaves hungry for new skies. In winter I felt the icy touch of my lover’s hands, hoping you were close. By late spring all hope had curdled on the…
Barbara Biles
The Interview
And what about the women Johnny?
“Ah. First there was Elizabeth.
Well I loved her, but she was a genius
unfortunately so she had to go off to college
got herself an MRS degree. Lives in Wichita
with a rich proctologist. Got a letter from her…
The Last Time I Saw My Father
Through a dirty window down by the docks I thought I saw my father seated at the bar. I hadn’t seen him in a while. His countenance had changed. The skin below his eyes now formed two swollen half moons. His nose had grown bulbous, his skin the texture of…
Microverse
edges of daylight
a bed large enough for one
and her shadow
Mike Sauve
M. A. Schaffner
No Regrets
Calvin always asked, “No regrets?” Now I use it as my mantra. No regrets, no regrets, no regrets. Like that, over and over and over.
I met him over the radio. By day he was a psychologist. Had the mustache and beard but looked more like Lenin…