looking for you
in every masked face
Halloween night
~
Jackie Chou is a writer from Southern California who has two collections of poetry, The Sorceress and Finding My Heart in Love and Loss, published by cyberwit. Her poem "Formosa" was a finalist in the Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Prize. She has recent work in The Ekphrastic Review and Synchronized Chaos.
~
John Hawkhead has been writing short-form poetry for over 30 years, publishing three books of haiku & senryu in that time. He lives in the South West of England.
samhain—
a thin veil draped
over the waxing moon
~
Isabella Mori writes pretty much everything that's not nailed down: Fiction (a 15th century monk whose best friend is a comfrey plant), nonfiction ("All the way from the eocene on Highway 400"), and poetry (lots of haiku!). Their great love is hybrid work, like in their latest book, Believe Me, which combines poetry, stories, interviews and research. They run Canada's most unusual poetry prize, Muriel's Journey, which has as an "entry fee" that poets document their volunteer work. Isabella calls themselves a Christian-Buddhist Pagan and has a special relationship with Hekate.
between life and death
the last leaves
on the maple tree
~
Isabella Mori writes pretty much everything that's not nailed down: Fiction (a 15th century monk whose best friend is a comfrey plant), nonfiction ("All the way from the eocene on Highway 400"), and poetry (lots of haiku!). Their great love is hybrid work, like in their latest book Believe Me, which combines poetry, stories, interviews and research. They run Canada's most unusual poetry prize, Muriel's Journey, which has as an "entry fee" that poets document their volunteer work. Isabella calls themselves a Christian-Buddhist Pagan and has a special relationship with Hekate.
bound in the form
of a black cat
autumn loneliness
~
Chad Lee Robinson has been writing haiku and related poetry for more than twenty years. He is the author of four haiku collections, most recently The White Buffalo (Backbone Press, 2023). Much of his haiku is about the prairie, but he also enjoys writing horrorku and Halloween-related haiku and senryu, which have appeared in a wide variety of haiku journals, including horror senryu journal, Haikuniverse and Otoroshi Journal. He lives in Pierre, South Dakota.
called out
by today's tarot spread
the wind settles
~
Rowan Beckett Minor (they/them) is a disabled Melungeon poet and hoodoo practitioner from Prince, WV, who currently resides in Cleveland, OH. They have been featured in: Mayfly, A New Resonance 12, as a confluence journal Fellow (2024-2025), as a presenter for Haiku North America (2019, 2021), and co-judge for the HSA Brady Senryu Contest (2022). Rowan is honored to have served as HSA Midwest Regional Coordinator in 2024.
The Graeae, in Dust and Teeth
Three shadows lean into the mirror—One eye rolling, wet, dropped, caught, dropped again, pressed into sockets raw, pressed into bone that will not see. One tooth passed hand to hand, mouth to mouth, cracked, splintered, lodged, spat, swallowed. They gnaw at skin and then at air, gnaw until hunger eats the tongue itself. Left behind with blood still warm and breath still rattling. Abandoned in bone, abandoned in dust, abandoned in the teeth of the labyrinth. They tear the skin from themselves, tear the silence, tear the thread burning red into the wrists. Enough, not enough, never enough—three mouths speaking, three mouths choking, three mouths spilling dust into oblivion. They smile with torn lips, smile with broken sockets, smile with nothing left inside.
Blood will not forget salt-scabbed mouths gaping hollow with blood, threads cut like veins.
~
Betty Stanton (she/her) is a Pushcart nominated writer who lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals and collections and has been included in various anthologies. She received her MFA from The University of Texas - El Paso and holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership. She is currently on the editorial board of Ivo Review. @fadingbetty.bsky.social
diary pages
the phases of the moon
all marked out
~
Educated as a chemical engineer, partly at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, Vishal Prabhu has since tried to escape writing a bio. The former was not his fault.
a sinter of words before the word
~
Shloka Shankar is a disabled poet, editor, and visual artist from Bangalore, India. She is the Founding Editor of Sonic Boom and its imprint Yavanika Press, and the author of the recent haiku collection within our somehows. Each day reminds her to let go of control and embrace the wilderness that is her body.
wiping the steam
from the mirror—
this longing to be enough
~
Kelly Sargent is a poet, editor, and devoted tea drinker residing in Vermont. Though she writes about autumn foliage and fallen acorns, she most enjoys penning poems that reflect the multiple facets of being human. She is an assistant editor for #FemkuMag and served this year as a co-judge for the HSA Harold G. Henderson Haiku Contest. The author of a haiku/senryu collection entitled Bookmarks (Red Moon Press, 2023), she writes because when a reader gives a little nod or slight smile, she no longer bears the weight of living, alone.
the statuesqueness of an evening star amavasya
-
your initials
in marigold petals
rangoli diyas
-
it is complicated
trying to untangle
the fairy lights
~
Arvinder Kaur believes in a superpower that lives within each one of us, whose presence she feels in all forms of creation. She has released four collections of haiku and is working on her fifth one. Totally in love with her mother tongue, she also has three translated works to her credit. Her haiku/senryu often appear in major international journals. A retired educationist, she lives in Chandigarh, India with her family.
earthen lamps . . .
the afterglow
of motichoor laddoos
~
Shloka Shankar is a disabled poet, editor, and visual artist from Bangalore, India. She is the Founding Editor of Sonic Boom and its imprint Yavanika Press, and the author of the recent haiku collection within our somehows. Each day reminds her to let go of control and embrace the wilderness that is her body.
timing the shadows
we sidestep into the forest
to mingle with gods
~
Alan Summers is related to the first ever American best-selling/block-buster author! Plus he lurks within the shadows of the local Best Western hotel coffee lounge, tapping imaginary keyboards that send messages back home.
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crisp oak leaves
in the old mason jar
a collection of teeth
~
Rowan Beckett Minor (they/them) is a disabled Melungeon poet and hoodoo practitioner from Prince, WV, who currently resides in Cleveland, OH. They have been featured in: Mayfly, A New Resonance 12, as a confluence journal Fellow (2024-2025), as a presenter for Haiku North America (2019, 2021), and co-judge for the HSA Brady Senryu Contest (2022). Rowan is honored to have served as HSA Midwest Regional Coordinator in 2024.
The Memory of Wholeness
A soul is a singing bowl. No one alive can tell you that. Just a touch from your lifelong partner rounds it with sound, vibration, echo. But oh, my self, my soul, ethereal O floating in the air of someone's home at night, where to go when your body goes?
~
Michael Nickels-Wisdom has written haiku since 1990 and speculative poetry since 2008. His speculative work has appeared in horror senryu journal, Scifaikuest, Cold Moon Journal, and Tales from the Moonlit Path. In 2023 he won an annual Science Fiction Poetry Association Contest Dwarf Form Third Place award. In 2011 he began to study people's lived anomalous experiences as a serious nonfiction subject. Many of his poems have come out of that study.
~
Anne Fox, considered a witch-child from birth, is an off-planet soul doing psychopomp work behind the scenes for our dying civilization.
purple lilies
in a stone white circle
new morning
~
Sarah Mahina Calvello lives in San Francisco. She writes haiku, enjoys nature and is addicted to coffee.
East 12th & Rockwell
It was a thousand black holes coursing through my veins. A bullfrog trying to hypnotize me with its stare. All the birds from an entire neighborhood screeching from the covered branches of a single tree. That's what it was. That is all it needed to be and it was mine. And for those asking what does it mean, it's not your question to ask. It is simply my life to live.
~
Never until recently did he consider writing poetry. Not when he slid from the womb or felt the first tingle of teen hormones. Not after he got married, divorced, moved to another city, lost a couple of jobs, and moved back. It just sort of happened. Ken Tomaro, bestselling author and self-proclaimed poet laureate of the Cleveland sewer system, has been writing poetry for a few short years. He's not famous, recognized, or read in schools across America. He has been published in several literary journals, done a couple podcasts, started the YouTube channel, Screaming Down the Poetic Highway, and that's pretty damn impressive.
hymn of seven crows my soul to take
~
Chad Lee Robinson has been writing haiku and related poetry for more than twenty years. He is the author of four haiku collections, most recently The White Buffalo (Backbone Press, 2023). Much of his haiku is about the prairie, but he also enjoys writing horrorku and Halloween-related haiku and senryu, which have appeared in a wide variety of haiku journals, including horror senryu journal, Haikuniverse and Otoroshi Journal. He lives in Pierre, South Dakota.
undercompensated the blind oracle on the curb
~
Robert Moyer, known by those close to him as Curly, lives in Winston Salem, where he dotes on his beautiful, talented wife and spends time wondering about the pattern of French fries he observed on the Venice Beach pier in 1995.
enriching
the crone's herbal garden
transformation
~
Roberta Beach Jacobson is an American author/editor/poet who is in love with words—flash fiction, poetry, song lyrics, puzzles, and stand-up comedy. She is the fleakeeper of Five Fleas Itchy Poetry. Her latest book is Demitasse Fiction: One-Minute Reads for Busy People (Alien Buddha Press, 2023).
exorcism
their walls weep red
and whisper words broken
by walkie-talkie static and
wailing doors
Rorschach
the forensics
of bullet holes
~
Colleen M. Farrelly is a mathematician and haibun poet who's been exploring the universe through mathematics and physics since childhood. She's an amalgam of mystic Jewish/Catholic traditions and mathematician-philosophers like Blaise Pascal, with a deep appreciation for meditation and what she learned about public health and spiritual health from South African village shamans in the mid-2000s.
moon illusion
we weren't really
that close
~
Terri L. French lives on a little mountain in Huntsville, Alabama with her husband, Ray, her dog, Chaka, and cat, Salem. It's the perfect spot for writing, hiking, yoga, tai chi and whispering to critters and trees. https://terrilfrenchhaiku.com/
fading light
porcupine quills
pushed in the dirt
~
Rowan Beckett Minor (they/them) is a disabled Melungeon poet and hoodoo practitioner from Prince, WV, who currently resides in Cleveland, OH. They have been featured in: Mayfly, A New Resonance 12, as a confluence journal Fellow (2024-2025), as a presenter for Haiku North America (2019, 2021), and co-judge for the HSA Brady Senryu Contest (2022). Rowan is honored to have served as HSA Midwest Regional Coordinator in 2024.
Terri L. French lives on a little mountain in Huntsville, Alabama with her husband, Ray, her dog, Chaka, and cat, Salem. It's the perfect spot for writing, hiking, yoga, tai chi and whispering to critters and trees. https://terrilfrenchhaiku.com/
the music in my loneliness cicadas
~
Arvinder Kaur believes in a superpower that lives within each one of us, whose presence she feels in all forms of creation. She has released four collections of haiku and is working on her fifth one. Totally in love with her mother tongue, she also has three translated works to her credit. Her haiku/senryu often appear in major international journals. A retired educationist, she lives in Chandigarh, India with her family.
ragged moth wings . . .
a stranger
on the threshold
~
Chad Lee Robinson has been writing haiku and related poetry for more than twenty years. He is the author of four haiku collections, most recently The White Buffalo (Backbone Press, 2023). Much of his haiku is about the prairie, but he also enjoys writing horrorku and Halloween-related haiku and senryu which have appeared in a wide variety of haiku journals, including horror senryu journal, Haikuniverse and Otoroshi Journal. He lives in Pierre, South Dakota.
Kitchen Rhythm
We tap feet to the coffee pot
that drips and burbles heaven.
We tip on toes through broken glass.
We'll need to buy more goblets.
The dogs whirl round on two hind feet
when treats are offered to them.
This kitchen is for dancing, Lord,
you know it's not for cooking.
~
Nolcha Fox's poems have been curated in print and online journals. A best-selling author, her poetry books are available on Amazon and Dancing Girl Press. Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize multiple times. Editor of Chewers and Masticadores and LatinosUSA.
Website: https://writingaddiction2.wordpress.com/ and https://nolchafox2.wixsite.com/nolcha-s-written-wor/blog
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nolchafox
Born for the Job
for all the harpies
Pensive, that look she had,
part introspective, part tending
feelings both black and red
about the chores she must do.
Out in what no man will—
the lightning and thunder.
Bodies tossed at random.
Her wings on a mission
through the contused clouds.
I knew she had never wanted
any of it. Counting the dead,
regurgitating curses at councilors,
unleashing her rugged hair
from its net and combing
it with her long talons, snatching
her wily prey in their hooks.
I imagined her drinking tea
and reading Wollstonecraft.
~
Luanne Castle's poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, River Teeth, JMWW, Grist, Fourteen Hills, Verse Daily, and many more. She has published four award-winning poetry collections. She is resolute in her search for the hidden mysteries and magic of existence.
a diorama of light mountain ash
~
Shloka Shankar is a disabled poet, editor, and visual artist from Bangalore, India. She is the Founding Editor of Sonic Boom and its imprint Yavanika Press, and the author of the recent haiku collection within our somehows. Each day reminds her to let go of control and embrace the wilderness that is her body.
