Short-Form Poetry by Patrick Sweeney

His left eye is lower than his right; yet he knows where to find famine roots
and how to avoid the suntraps of sainthood

"Nyxis" by O.P. Jha

Nyxis

neither rain
nor storms
but the nest fell

the broken nest is missing
the throbs of love

the Earth swallowed
the seeds of yearning
and it's moving around
the great burning ball.

~

O.P. Jha's works appeared in 150 plus literary journals including Rigorous, Mantis, Punt Volat, Discretionary Love, In Parentheses, Shot Glass, Lothlorien Poetry, Odessa Collective, Backchannels, Poetry Pacific, Five Fleas, miniMag, Iceblink, Infinite Scroll, The Rome Review, Valiant Scribe, Kelp, pulplit, etc. His poems appeared in 8 anthologies including We Were Seeds and We Are Resilient. He holds a Ph.D. in "Translation Studies." X: @OPJha17

A Cherita by Shloka Shankar

ritardando

anywhere
you can reset

your pulse
with a metronome
is home

~

Shloka Shankar is a disabled poet, editor, and visual artist from Bangalore, India. A Best of the Net nominee and widely published haiku poet, Shloka is the Founding Editor of Sonic Boom and its imprint, Yavanika Press. She is the author of the haiku collections The Field of Why and within our somehows, and co-author of the haiga anthology, living in the pause. Website: www.shlokashankar.com | Instagram: @shloks23

A Tanka by Reid Hepworth

what karmic
aftermath is in store
for me
empty on the floor
a bottle of insecticide

~

Reid Hepworth shares her secrets with the trees, plots her storylines with the birds and is known to covet pebbles and sea glass. She finds magic in the smallest, most ordinary things. Her poetry, influenced by her interaction with the natural world and the human condition, has been published internationally. Reid has released two books of poetry.

An Esoteriku by Joanna Ashwell

doomsayer the moon in a darkened well

~

Joanna Ashwell is a poet and spiritual healer. Her recent collections of poetry published include Love's Scriptures, Moonset Song and Book Patronus. She loves crystals, angels and dragons. She searches for the joy in life and loves to empower others to do the same.

"Sukkot Begins Tonight" by Gerard Sarnat

Sukkot* Begins Tonight

—thanks to Rabbi Zac
for forwarding wisdom
R'  Meshulam Feivush
Rebbe of Zbarazh in
Yosher Divrey Emet

Embrace is hinted
at in the sukkah:
Just as a parent
embraces child
in love
        encircling
& sheltering, so
does our sukkah
for Gerardo's fam
+ friends're invited
regardless
                of religion.

*Sukkot is an annual Jewish festival, also called the Feast of Tabernacles, that commemorates two main events:  the 40 years of wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt and the fall harvest. Celebrated for seven days in the autumn, it involves building and dwelling in a temporary hut called a sukkah.

~

Eighty-year-old late-phase often graphic chronicler arrived in seventh decade, aphorist, humorist or sometimes meanderist, Gerard Sarnat (he/they) is a multiple Pushcart/Best of the Net Award nominee who also has been invited to serve as judge for competitions. Activism Through Poetry: How Gerard Sarnat Uses Verse as a Form of Protest is a 2025 retrospective: https://culterateblog.wordpress.com/2025/02/20/activism-through-poetry-how-gerard-sarnat-uses-verse-as-a-form-of-protest/. His words have been widely published in four collections by Rattle, Songs of Eretz, London Arts-Based Research Centre, Israel Association of Writers in English, The Nature of Our Times/Poets for Science, Gravity of the Thing, Third Wednesday, Poetry Center of San Jose, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, Deronda Review, New Delta Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times, Mount Saint Mary's LA/Saint Benedict/Saint John's Universities, Oberlin, Slippery Rock, St. John's University, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Missouri Baptist, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, CUNY, McMaster, Maine, Oklahoma/British Columbia/Toronto/Chicago/Virginia/Alabama university presses—and more. He's a Harvard College and Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently, he's devoting energy and resources to dealing with climate justice, serving on Climate Action Now's board. Sarnat's belonged to the longest-running U.S. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group. Gerry's been married since 1969 and has three kids, seven grandsons—and looks forward to future granddaughters. gerardsarnat.com

An Esoteriku by Ravi Kiran

DEMONstrating his possessiveness

~

Ravi is a late-blooming haiku poet with a penchant for minimalism. His haiku have won awards and have been featured in leading journals. He is the editor of Leaf haiku journal.

An Esoteriku by Alan Summers

a hand's breadth
from the humpback whale . . .
batteries not included

~

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.

An Esoteriku by Adrian Bouter

space autumn
the hexagon on Saturn
from blue to brown

~

Adrian Bouter is a poet. For more details see HAIKUPEDIA. His first collection of ku in English, DEW OF LIGHT, was released in autumn 2024 (Red Moon Press). He wishes everyone the best—😊

An Esoteriku by Vishal Prabhu

sand mandala
gathering back the
world

~

A lover of all things deep and dark, Vishal Prabhu is forever walking over the edge of a forest.

An Esoteriku by Jerome Berglund

for that hoodoo
you do so well
frizzled chicken

~

Jerome Berglund has had a lifelong interest in angels, demons, hoodoo, voodoo, saints, sinners, spiritual ritual, occult practices, and supernatural phenomena. His lineage includes victims of the Salem witch hunts. Many haiku, haiga and haibun he's written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, and Presence. His first full-length collections of poetry were released by Setu, Meat for Tea, Mōtus Audāx Press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Fevers of the Mind.

Short-Form Poetry by Travis Park

I mistook the omen for weather

~

Travis Park is an Indiana poet and photographer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Modern Haiku, Presence, Ribbons, McNeese Review, and other journals.

An Esoteriku by Kirsten Cliff Elliot

with finger pricks
we become blood sisters
red sky at night

~

Born on Lammas and married on Samhain, Kirsten Cliff Elliot is interested in Jungian dream interpretation and the collective unconscious. She has been writing and publishing short-form poetry for almost two decades. Her latest haikai collection, A Body of Work: Poems on Aging and Chronic Illness, is out soon from Cuttlefish Books.

An Esoteriku by Vandana Parashar

under my wings the wind before it is

~

Vandana Parashar is an associate editor of haikuKATHA and one of the editors of Poetry Pea and #FemkuMag. Her debut e-chapbook, I Am, was published by Title IX Press (now Moth Orchid Press) in 2019 and her second chapbook, Alone, I Am Not, was published by Velvet Dusk Publishing in April 2022. She won the 2025 HIGH/COO Chapbook Award, and her third chapbook was published by Brooks Books. She is a Lord Shiva devotee but believes in goodness of thoughts, words and deeds rather than following elaborate rituals to appease God. She likes to spend time with nature and herself.

An Esoteriku by M. R. Pelletier

morning sit
putting the monkey
to sleep

~

M. R. Pelletier lives in Kansas, but his haiku poetry travels the world. He has published in multiple journals, including Bamboo Hut, Five Fleas, Wales Haiku Journal, MadSwirl and Failed Haiku among others.

An Esoteriku by Patrick Sweeney

el trains of moonlight in the dilated eyes of the jumper

An Esoteriku by Arvinder Kaur

just one tab left open dolce far niente

~

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.

A Tritina-Haibun by Colleen M. Farrelly

Intergenerational Meditations

I think of my grandma,
growing up poor—mother-
less—raising her daughter.

I think of my daughter—
adopted—and her grandma
doting like a mother.

I think of my mother,
caring for my grandma
and her daughter's daughter.

swaddling babe grandma's mother also a daughter (once)

~

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.

An Esoteriku by Randy Brooks

so many unborn
milkweed silks alight
upon the lake

~

Randy Brooks is Professor of English Emeritus at Millikin University, where he teaches a haiku course. Randy and Shirley Brooks are publishers of Brooks Books and co-editors of Mayfly haiku magazine. His most recent publication is HAIKU DECK which features 52 haiku, one each for card.

A 9/11 Remembrance by Bruce H. Feingold

bronze plaque
for its lost 9/11 patrons
blood-stained bar

~

Bruce H. Feingold lives in the San Francisco Bay area and is a retired psychologist. His haiku have been published world-wide and have won numerous awards. Author of six collections, including everything with an asterisk (Red Moon Press, 2022), and a HSA Merit Book Award recipient, Bruce recently released a boy who lived one day. In the author's note he wrote, "I am more aware than ever of the fundamental value of one's unique haiku voice and authenticity and becoming who you are as a poet and human being . . . the practice of composing has become a truly amazing, mysterious, grounding, and joyful way of being." Bruce is on the Board of Directors of The Haiku Foundation, chairs The Touchstone Awards and is the Vice-President of the Haiku Poets of Northern California. Bruce's haiku may be found on Instagram (haikubruce) and at haikubruce.com.

An Esoteriku by Chad Lee Robinson

shadow moon—
my name keyed into the paint
upside down

~

Chad Lee Robinson has been writing haiku and related poetry for more than twenty years. He is the author of five award-winning haiku collections, including Pop Bottles (True Vine Press, 2009), Rope Marks (Snapshot Press, 2012), The Deep End of the Sky (Turtle Light Press, 2015), The White Buffalo (Backbone Press, 2023), and Dust of Horses (Brooks Books, 2026). Much of his haiku is about the prairie, but he also enjoys writing horrorku, which have appeared in a wide variety of journals, such as horror senryu journal, Otoroshi Journal, Circle of Salt, Haikuniverse, and Scifaikuest. He lives in Pierre, South Dakota.

A Cherita by Peter Jastermsky

when
wrapping
a blue whisper

in wizard skin

the pendulum says
better pass

~

A New England native, Peter Jastermsky lives among the Joshua trees in the high desert of Southern California. He is the author of twelve books of haiku-based work. Peter is a word alchemist. He resides in that magical space between reader and poem. To learn more, please go to peterjastermsky.com.

An Esoteriku by Daya Bhat

yatagarasu
mother turns into a song
on my window sill

~

Daya Bhat lives in Bangalore, India. To her, writing poetry is a never-ending quest to find the person she is at the core. She has contributed free verse and short form poetry to journals and publications in addition to publishing two books. Painting and digital art are other ways her thoughts find expression.

An Esoteriku by Adrian Bouter

mossy boulder   time has a soft spot

~

Adrian Bouter is a poet. For more details see HAIKUPEDIA.

His first collection of ku in English, DEW OF LIGHT, was released in autumn 2024 (Red Moon Press).

He wishes everyone the very best—😊

A One-Sentence Poem by Mark Valentine

The spilled beads from
Zarathustra's rosary
are found on any beach.

~

Mark Valentine is interested in bungalow visionaries, bedsit occultists, back-street brooders, bus station café poets, top floor troubadours, chip shop radicals, quayside soothsayers, semi-detached flying-saucerists, reading-room ruminators, rucksack ley-hunters, apocalypticks in creepered villas, terraced house neo-kabbalists, tower block zaum-niks, seekers of zodiacs, cliff-edge samphire-gatherers, and allied trades.

An Esoteriku by Shloka Shankar

the descent into oblivion player piano

                                               after Kurt Vonnegut

~

Shloka Shankar is a disabled poet, editor, and visual artist from Bangalore, India. A Best of the Net nominee and widely published haiku poet, Shloka is the Founding Editor of Sonic Boom and its imprint Yavanika Press. She is the author of the haiku collections The Field of Why and within our somehows, and co-author of the haiga anthology, living in the pause. Website: www.shlokashankar.com | Instagram: @shloks23

An Esoteriku by Anne Fox

a cock's crow
in the black of night
Abraxas

~

Anne Fox, considered a witch-child from birth, is an off-planet soul doing psychopomp work behind the scenes for our dying civilization.

An Esoteriku by Vidya Premkumar

carrying what will be the malabar grey hornbill

~

Vidya Premkumar from India is an educator, poet, writer, digital librarian, graphic designer and visual artist. Her works reflect her multidisciplinary interests in life, society and nature.

An Esoteriku by Ravi Kiran

no man's land between friendship and love

~

Ravi is a late-blooming haiku poet with a penchant for minimalism. His haiku have won awards and have been featured in leading journals. He is the editor of Leaf haiku journal.

A Tanka by Joy Hallinan

underwater
the undine lies
waiting
not waiting for a man
to grant a soul

~

Born in the 60's flower child era, Joy spent many happy unsupervised hours roaming the woods. Her haiku, tanka, haibun, and tanka prose can be found in journals internationally. Sometimes her haiku may also surprise you on a street corner sign or in a botanical garden. Winner of the 2026 Ecopoetry Award, Fiiloli Gardens and Finalist Washington, D.C. Golden Haiku Competition.