stag prints
an elder branch
spotted in the snow
~
Joanna Ashwell is a poet and spiritual healer. Her recent collections of poetry published include Love's Scriptures and Moonset Song. She loves crystals, angels and dragons. She searches for the joy in life and loves to empower others to do the same with healing and Akashic Records clearing.
retracing the steps
of the shadow self . . .
calculating the distance
she will go
to escape this darkness
~
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 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.
Where the Drum Lingers
Boom-boom. Pause. Boom-boom. Pause. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Hey-ya hey-ya hey-yo hey-ya. The sound unfurled into the air like a living thing, a heartbeat loosening itself from the earth. Dum-dum-dum . . . The soft beat of the drum drifted off and hung in the air, half breath, half prayer. By the second beat, my tears betrayed me. I had thought I'd tamed them, trained them into submission, but I was wrong. The face mask helped hide the evidence, hot rivers of salt that spilled over and traced the outline of my cheeks, like they had been waiting for permission to return. Dum-dum-dum . . . cry, cry, cry.
#
"Momma! I can hear the drum!" I shrieked once with six-year-old joy. My mother, distracted by her running list of errands and obligations, barely looked up. "We don't have time to stop. We're in a hurry," she said, her voice clipped, practical. "Pleeeeease, Momma? They're calling me!" I begged, tugging her hand toward the circle of people I did not yet understand. Finally, she let me go, and I ran forward, the sound vibrating through my ribs like recognition. I stood in fascination, my feet planted securely on the ground. Finally my mother indicated my time with the drums was up. "Why are you crying?" she asked, her face pinched in confusion. "I don't know, Momma," I whispered. "The drums made me."
#
"The drum represents some of the first sounds. It is the sounds of our mothers from the womb, the heartbeat of our mothers. The drum is the heartbeat of the nation. Heartbeat of the people. Wherever the drum is, the people will gather. Listen to the beat of the drum. As it picks up it represents the sound of the Buffalo Nation."
The words of the elder settled into me like a second heartbeat, reminding me that the drum is not just an instrument, but a living echo of our mothers, our people, and the pulse that keeps spirit and memory alive.
Years later, Google would tell me what my body already knew, that the drumbeat awakens a deep, ancient memory hidden in the marrow, a pulse older than language. It connects the listener to something buried: lineage, grief, joy, and home. The sound of the drum can open a passage between the living and the dead, between the body and the unseen world. The drum, it said, has a spirit of its own, and when it calls, something in us answers.
#
In the 1990s, while working a temporary position at the Minnesota Department of Health, I met with a woman named Rose at the Minneapolis Indian Women's Resource Center. When our meeting ended, I stood to shake her hand. Her eyes softened, her fingers clasping mine tightly as she said, without hesitation, "You have an ancient soul." Had it been the first time I'd heard this, I might have been alarmed, but it wasn't. The first had been in Fargo, after a training session, when the host, a kind woman who had gifted me a small birch canoe and a pouch of wild rice, asked what Tribe I was from. When I told her I wasn't Native, she only nodded and smiled. The third time came from a stranger at a Pow Wow, who approached without preamble and said something like, "Not in this life." Rose went on to tell me about the sweat lodge, the Madoodiswan, how it could help me meet all the ancestors I carried inside me. I wanted to ask which ones, but she already seemed to know. And wait, there are more than three? "You should go," she said. "The drum will open the door." It would take me twenty-five years to find the courage to step through.
Even as a child, I sought rhythm like water seeks a hollow. Steel drums, bongos, taiko, snare, it didn't matter. I even watched Drumline, just for the drumming, certainly not for the plot. But none of them reached inside me the way the Native drum did. Growing up in Winnipeg, a city layered with cultures and strong Indigenous roots, I had plenty of chances to hear them. And every time I did, I cried. My mother assured me I'd grow out of it, but the older I became, the worse it got. I cried sooner, deeper, before the first few beats had even faded. Eventually, I learned to avoid them altogether. Until I couldn't.
#
At a flag exchange ceremony at work, the drums began again. I sat between a mayor and a county commissioner, pretending composure as the rhythm pounded through me. The tears came, hot, unrelenting. There was no stopping them. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Cry. Cry. Cry.
It was time.
#
It was a cool Friday when I finally approached the sweat lodge at the American Indian Family Center in Afton. The night before, I had agonized over what to wear. The photos online showed young women in sports bras and short shorts, bodies smooth and unburdened by time. I, meanwhile, bore four children's worth of evidence and a constellation of no-see-um bites from a recent camping trip. The timing felt wrong, the body imperfect, but still, it was time. I whispered a prayer that the lodge would be dark enough to hide my self-consciousness, and I began my long-time-coming pilgrimage toward the drum that had been calling me since I was six years old. The one that had waited through my detours and distractions. The one that had always known I would return. A sound older than memory. Older even than tears.
The lodge sat low to the ground, a humble dome of bent willow covered in blankets and hides. Smoke whispered from a small fire nearby, where stones glowed red as open wounds. The air smelled of cedar and something older, something I couldn't name. I stood there for a long time, feeling the rhythm of my pulse trying to sync with the unseen beat in the earth. Someone called out softly in Anishinaabemowin, and I didn't understand the words, but I understood the intention: come closer, come clean.
We removed our shoes, our watches, our illusions of control. One by one, we crawled through the narrow opening: birth canal, grave mouth, both. Inside, it was already dark, the kind of dark that hums. I knelt on the packed earth, my knees pressing into its coolness. The women around me murmured prayers, words rising and falling like the tide. The leader sprinkled water onto the stones, and steam filled the space, thick and alive. The heat pressed against my skin, against my lungs, until breath became a choice.
Outside, the drum began again. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Each beat landed like a hand on the back, like a reminder. You are here. You are not the first. The sound carried through the ground and into my spine, until I couldn't tell where my heartbeat ended and the drum began.
The heat climbed higher, and the air thickened with song. Women began to weep softly around me, some rocking, some whispering names. I pressed my palms into the dirt. It was cool, grounding, alive. The earth did not flinch beneath the weight of our grief. It took it all in.
When the last prayer faded, the flap opened and light flooded in, sharp, merciful, blinding. We crawled out one by one, slick with sweat, eyes raw, bodies trembling. The air outside was cool and sweet, the kind that feels like a second chance. Someone handed me a cup of water, and I drank it like communion.
In the distance, the drum still beat. Softer now, but steady. A pulse that belonged to no one and to everyone. I felt something unclench inside me, something that had been holding its breath for generations.
#
It wasn't lost on me that the sweat lodge fell near Sukkot, the Jewish season of temporary shelters. I hadn't planned it that way, hadn't checked the Hebrew calendar or traced any cosmic logic, but when I realized the overlap, it felt deliberate, as though something older had arranged the timing. Sukkot is the week when Jews leave their solid walls and step into the fragile dwelling of faith. We build the sukkah from what the earth gives us, branches, leaves, reeds, and eat our meals under its roof of stars and wind. It is a home that breathes, a shelter that remembers wandering. Each palm frond or cornstalk roof is a porous veil through which the heavens peer back. The stars that glimmer through its weave are the same ones our ancestors named and trusted to guide them.
The sukkah is more than a temporary shelter, it is a vessel for memory, a trembling reminder of how fragile the walls between the living and the departed truly are. To sit within it is to dwell in the in-between: beneath branches that breathe with wind and sky, beside the ghosts of our ancestors who once sought shelter in their own seasons of uncertainty. The stars that glimmer through its roof are the same ones our forebears trusted to guide them. The sukkah teaches that protection has never meant permanence; it has always meant presence.
Each meal taken within its soft walls becomes an invocation. The air feels thinner, more intimate, alive with the breath of those who came before us. Tradition teaches that the ushpizin, the ancestral guests, visit each night, but perhaps they never truly leave. They linger in the wood, in the scent of cedar and citrus, in the stories retold to keep the chill of forgetting away. The sukkah is not merely built; it is remembered into being, a fragile, holy dwelling that reminds us we, too, are shelters for memory, and that within our brief walls, their light still flickers.
#
The Madoodiswan is also a dwelling of impermanence, a dome of bent willow, covered in hides and blankets, rising from the ground like a heartbeat. Inside, darkness and heat collapse the distance between breath and prayer. In the Anishinaabe tradition, the Madoodiswan is a sacred purification lodge used for ceremony, prayer, and healing. It's a place to cleanse the body, mind, and spirit through heat and steam created by pouring water over heated stones. The ceremony connects participants to the spirits and ancestors. It is said to be the womb of Mother Earth, a place of purification and return to balance and humility before creation. The steam is the conductor of transformation; it pulls out the trapped issues or problems that the person is hanging onto and releases them so healing can happen. Like the sukkah, the sweat lodge is not meant to last. Its holiness lies in the temporary. Both dwellings call us back to what's elemental: to community, to humility, to the fragile beauty of being alive within something that will one day fall away. In the sukkah, families gather, sharing food and blessing, feeling the brush of branches above their heads. In the lodge, strangers become kin in the dark, their voices rising in prayer, their tears indistinguishable from sweat. Both traditions teach that to be purified is to be made vulnerable, to sit unshielded between the heavens and the earth and still trust the structure to hold.
As the drumbeat pulsed under the autumn sky and the air smelled of cedar and smoke, I felt the two rituals overlap like transparent layers. The sukkah and the sweat lodge spoke the same quiet language of impermanence and return. One remembered a desert, the other a forest, but both carried the same truth: that holiness is found not in the walls that endure, but in the ones that let the light through.
As I stepped out of the lodge, steam rising from my skin into the cool October air, I thought of the sukkah at the Rabbi's house in Winnipeg, a crooked little booth stitched together from scavenged wood and willow. I remembered sitting beneath its patchwork roof, watching the shadows move like ghosts across the linen walls. Maybe that was the first lodge I ever entered, the first time I learned that holiness could live in what is temporary. The wind that moved through the sukkah walls was the same breath that moved through the lodge, the same spirit that hums through the spaces our ancestors left behind.
The drum still echoes faintly in my chest, steady as a heartbeat, ancient as a prayer. It reminded me that the boundary between traditions, like the one between worlds, is thinner than we think. My Jewish ancestors wandered the desert in search of home; my spirit, it seemed, was still wandering, still circling the fire, still listening for the sound that calls the living and the dead to sit together. Maybe the sukkah and the sweat lodge were never about shelter at all, but about remembering that we are, each of us, both house and ghost, both flesh and echo.
#
That night, as I lay in bed, my hair still smelling faintly of cedar and smoke, I dreamt of both dwellings, the sukkah swaying under a canopy of stars, the lodge glowing like a heartbeat in the dark. And between them, a thin, trembling thread of light—the kind that lingers when the body remembers what the soul has always known.
#
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. You are here. You are not the first.
~
Lisa Brodsky is a writer and public health professional whose work bridges personal narrative, cultural memory, and social justice. She is currently working on a memoir, Linger: A Convergence of Family, Memory, and Superstition, that explores folk ritual, intergenerational memory, magical realism, and inherited superstition. Her writing is also shaped by her ongoing spiritual practice, which blends ancestral curiosity, contemplative ritual, and an exploration of the unseen. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Otherwise Engaged, Pictura Journal, Memoirist, and other journals. She lives in Minnesota, where she balances creative work with community health initiatives, and serves as a reader for Trio House Press.
phantom angst
i'm basking in a pool of light a torrid
self exposure immolation of
the spirit fire to wipe the planet clean
of blighted artifacts of greed oh please
sterility of armageddon smoke
to choke the huffing gods quintessence nonsense
// cardinal in the evergreen out back
a living ember pretty sure it's Dad
but I won't spook him with a cellphone snap
// this phantom angst you conjure warps your thought
oh angel i would die to hold your hand
here in this faded earthly palace bashful
fingers interlaced two pale fat spiders
making love connected & content
~
Thomas Zimmerman (he/him/his) teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His poems have appeared recently in Cold Signal, TrashLight Press, and Trouvaille Review. His latest poetry book is My Night to Cook (Cyberwit, 2024).
~
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.
Dasein chews on the word until it dissolves
~
Vijay Prasad is a poet from Patna, India. By profession, he is an MCA. J. Krishnamurti is his spiritual strength. His haiku move through philosophy, linguistics, psychology, etc. He draws from the Japanese haiku masters to modern haiku writers and also thinkers such as Sartre, Beckett, Deleuze, Chomsky, Rilke, Jung, Turgenev, Bohm, Heisenberg and many others. His haiku explore the porous borders of language, perception and being.
so hard these days
to avoid immanentizing
the eschaton
~
Dr. Charles Trumbull is retired from research, writing, editorial, and publishing positions at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Encyclopedia Britannica. He is past president of the Haiku Society of America and retired editor of Modern Haiku. His chapbook Between the Chimes was published in 2011, and A Five-Balloon Morning, a book of New Mexico haiku, appeared in June 2013, and A History of Modern Haiku came out in 2019. These days he divides his time between his Haiku Database and Haikupedia, the online encyclopedia of haiku.
Monocarpic
He shares little in group but talks a bit over burnt eggs and strong coffee. Mirages are real. Metal burns in the desert sun. Sometimes, the wind is a ghost haunting you.
He calls me by his dead buddy's name and leaves on a Tuesday while the wind swirls around our narthex. I don't find an obituary and wonder if my mind conjured him like a child's imaginary friend.
corpse flower I mark an unmarked grave
~
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.
vinyl albums sprawling ivy rotate to deeper pasts
~
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.
the smidgens' pointy shoes scuffling the ceiling and floor of the Planck length
~
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.
magpie tidings
seven for a secret
never told
~
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 books include Walking the Fence: Selected Tanka and The Art of Reading and Writing Haiku.
The Party
Sometimes
I smell brimstone
Great grandmother's violets
Lilies over rotting flesh
They come for me
All the mothers and fathers
Embrace me in a golden light
Grandmother's song
Rose-soap-scented surrounds me
I see them
In dreams
Behind the helms of starships
Heading for the unknown
I glimpse them
Wandering in crowds
Lost without eyes
Laughing
They beckon me to the party
I feel found
Seen clearly again
By this mist
~
Anne Fox, considered a witch-child from birth, is an off-planet soul doing psychopomp work behind the scenes for our dying civilization.
lifting the curse ~
the soft rustle
of angelica leaves
~
Sarah Mahina Calvello lives in San Francisco and writes mostly haiku. She loves nature and is addicted to coffee. https://heyyouhaiku.blogspot.com/?m=1
My Names
My secret names are known
by those who love me.
My secret names are darkness, giver, envy,
happiness, laughter, pain, goodness,
malevolence, and many more.
My secret names live in the mycelia,
the blabbermouths who tell my story
from root to root, strong trunk
to weakest twig.
My secret names live in the sources
of the rivers that carry them through
rich green, concrete, grey dryness,
to become one with the oceans.
My secret names echo from peak to peak
from the Alps to the Karakorum
to the Himalayas, almost die of thirst
in the Gobi or the Sahara,
carried on the thought winds.
My Names have been engraved
in the blood of my children,
in all their beauty, all their ugliness.
Some of my lovers guessed
my names, and, like Rumpelstiltskin,
I disintegrated from the rage,
the shame, and the nakedness
of being known.
One day, when I must
ask for admittance, I shall call them out
with pride and the knowledge
that they will be accepted
as my true names.
~
Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and the author of two novels, short stories, as well as eight poetry collections and one chapbook. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She is a 'Pushcart' and 'Best of the Net' nominee. All her recent books are available on Amazon. The new chapbook, The Matter of Words, was published a few weeks ago. A new full-length collection has been accepted for publishing. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/.
guarding the gate . . .
sweet the dryad
for golden apples
~
Sharon Ferrante is a Scottish Witch, who practices magick daily. She's also been seen, now and then, writing some poetry.
~
Roberta Beach Jacobson is an American writer in love with words—flash fiction, poetry, song lyrics, puzzles, and stand-up comedy. Her two poetry journals are smols and Five Fleas Itchy Poetry. Roberta's latest book is Demitasse Fiction: One-Minute Reads for Busy People (Alien Buddha Press, 2023).
Scott Wiggerman, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, is primarily known as a poet, instructor, and editor, though he has been interested in art throughout his schooling and career. Since retiring and moving to Albuquerque from Austin ten years ago, where he was librarian at the Fine Arts Academy, he has experienced a renaissance in his love of art. Primarily a collage artist, he has expanded his media into acrylics, ink, charcoal, colored pencil, and prints. Locally, he has had work in shows at Tortuga Gallery, the New Mexico Art League, and the UNM Law Library, as well as a letterpress broadside in collaboration with Holland Hardie in a Remarque Gallery display at the Open Space Visitor Center. As someone who continues to work as both poet and artist, several times he has had his art featured in print: "Dwelling in Possibility," a cut-out paper portrait in We Talked with Each Other About Each Other: Works of Art Inspired by Poems of Emily Dickinson (2019); "Jardin," a two-sided mixed media drawing on parchment paper on the cover of David Meischen's Anyone's Son (2020), and abstract art on the covers of three other books of poetry, Gayle Lauradunn's The Geography of Absence (2020), Lyman Grant's ostraca (2023), and the Haiku Society of America's national anthology Fractured by Cattails (2023). Other artwork has appeared in such journals as ABQ inPrint, Cholla Needles, and Rattle. Other samples of Wiggerman's work can be found at https://scottwiggerman.myportfolio.com/.
wake of vultures
the ceremonial white
of widows
~
Anne Fox, considered a witch-child from birth, is an off-planet soul doing psychopomp work behind the scenes for our dying civilization.
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rusted fence how we bleed without knowing
~
Scott Wiggerman, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, is primarily known as a poet, instructor, and editor, though he has been interested in art throughout his schooling and career. Since retiring and moving to Albuquerque from Austin ten years ago, where he was librarian at the Fine Arts Academy, he has experienced a renaissance in his love of art. Primarily a collage artist, he has expanded his media into acrylics, ink, charcoal, colored pencil, and prints. Locally, he has had work in shows at Tortuga Gallery, the New Mexico Art League, and the UNM Law Library, as well as a letterpress broadside in collaboration with Holland Hardie in a Remarque Gallery display at the Open Space Visitors Center. As someone who continues to work as both poet and artist, several times he has had his art featured in print: "Dwelling in Possibility," a cut-out paper portrait in We Talked with Each Other About Each Other: Works of Art Inspired by Poems of Emily Dickinson (2019); "Jardin," a two-sided mixed media drawing on parchment paper on the cover of David Meischen's Anyone's Son (2020), and abstract art on the covers of three other books of poetry, Gayle Lauradunn's The Geography of Absence (2020), Lyman Grant's ostraca (2023), and the Haiku Society of America's national anthology Fractured by Cattails (2023). Other artwork has appeared in such journals as ABQ inPrint, Cholla Needles, and Rattle. Other samples of Wiggerman's work can be found at https://scottwiggerman.myportfolio.com/.
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~
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.
~
Stephanie Zepherelli, a former dance professor, is a long time student and teacher of Iyengar yoga, ballet, and contemporary dance; a student of Zen master Robert Aitken; and a reluctant clairvoyant descended from Romanian Gypsies. She was introduced to short form poetry via Triveni Haikai India. Stephanie lives on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, with her tribe of Madagascar geckos.
when you think
about it
life is
a pyramid scheme
~
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.
Incantation for Release or Confinement
inside the mind
outside the mind inside the body
outside
the body inside the room
outside the room inside the house
outside the house inside
the wood outside
the wood
~
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.
sit a spell
fellow phantom
all are welcome here
~
Sarah Mahina Calvello lives in San Francisco and writes mostly haiku. She loves nature and is addicted to coffee.
~
Barbara Anna Gaiardoni and Andrea Vanacore, known as gaia & vana, are finalists in the "Writings Leith" competition in Edinburgh. They were shown at the "Artfarm Pilastro," an exhibition of contemporary art and performance. Douglas Pinson of "Spinozablue—An Eclectic Journal of the Arts" describes their work as "Fine art/poem." Barbara and Andrea are life partners residing in Verona.
https://barbaragaiardoni.altervista.org/blog/haikuco-2/
cleaning house
for other-worldly guests
new ofrenda candles
~
Randy Brooks is Professor of English Emeritus at Millikin University, where he teaches courses on haiku, tanka and Zen poetics. Randy and Shirley Brooks are publishers of Brooks Books and co-editors of Mayfly haiku magazine. His most recent books include Walking the Fence: Selected Tanka and The Art of Reading and Writing Haiku.
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.
mixing a bottle
of hook vine and mandrake
dusk 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.
Cicada Remnants
A husk
without its own energy,
momentum;
aimless in its
wind-tumbling
as it floats away on the water
light and airy
carried along by buoyancy
to one day sink back
into the earth
thick with sleep
saturated
and purposeful.
~
Loralee Clark's latest chapbook, Solemnity Rites (Prolific Pulse Press, 2025) is an account of reimagined myths and truths of who we are as humans and how we live our histories. She has a chapbook forthcoming, Neolithic Imaginings: Mythical Explorations of the Unknown (Kelsay Press, 2026). Clark resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark.
Portals
always open in my favorite science fiction movies—gleaming and churning through spacetime with the promise of adventure and a new beginning for the story's protagonist—but
peeking
beyond my front door—
just another Tuesday . . .
~
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.
curled leaf
a secret taken
to the grave
~
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.
hidden
within the temple ruins
gnosis
~
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).
~
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.
praying
for the weight of woes
to lift . . .
the mercy of a raven
fleeing the branch
~
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.
fantastic this one dream no make it seven
her fingers dance among the glasses as if they were a piano. she's had vermouth from the cocktail glass, cognac from the snifter, rosé from the flute, beer from the mug but enough of that. now she drinks vodka from the wine glass, scotch where you'd pour the highball and beaujolais out of the jug. satisfied, she waves to the bartender, her voice steady like an anvil. "now the absinthe, mon cher. the whole teapot."
message in a bottle
how much reality
does one person need
~
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.
The Origins of Perfume
What are the origins of perfume?
The word "perfume" today is used to describe scented mixtures and is derived from the Latin word "per fumus," meaning 'through smoke'. Many ancient perfumes were made by extracting natural oils from plants through pressing and steaming. The oil was then burned to scent the air.
Perfume is simply a mastery of some of the most frequent scents and the artful combination thereof to produce a unique smell for the individual.
To understand perfume, we would need to start at its inception back in the time of the ancient Egyptians. Egyptians were responsible for the origin of perfume with the earliest records dating from 2000BC, where incense was offered at the burial of mummies and perfume was believed to be the sweat of the sun god Ra.
Other origins of perfume are thought to be of Mesopotamia and Cyprus. With the Egyptians incorporating perfume into their culture, the ancient Chinese, Hindus, Israelites, Cathagielians and Greeks followed suit, and perfume itself was further refined by the Romans, Persians and Arabs. Perfume and perfumery also existed in East Asia, but its fragrances were incense-based.
The oldest perfumes ever found were discovered by archaeologists in Cyprus. They were over four thousand years old. A cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia, dating back more than 3000 years, identifies a woman called Tapputt as the first recorded perfume maker. Perfumes could also be found in India at this time.
Persian and Arab chemists started codifying the production of perfume, and its use spread through the world of classical antiquity. The earliest use of the perfume bottle is Egyptian and dates back to 1000BC. The Egyptians invented glass, and perfume bottles were amongst the first common uses for glass.
The rise of Christianity saw the decline in the use of perfume for much of the dark ages. It was the Muslim world that kept the traditions of perfume alive at this time. In France, there was an explosive interest for perfume in the 16th century amongst the upper classes and nobles. The court of Louis XV perfumed everything from gloves to furniture.
Eau de cologne was invented in the 18th century, helping the perfume industry to boom yet further.
But it was the Hungarians who ultimately introduced the first modern perfume, made of scented oils blended in an alcohol solution, and was made in 1370 at the command of Queen Elizabeth of Hungary and was known throughout Europe as "Hungarian Water."
Perfume Creation
Although there are numerous flowers that are used in perfumes, some are more frequently chosen for their strong fragrance. The most popular flowers include roses, jasmine, violets, lillies, orange flowers and plumeria. Others that are used include lavender, magnolia, moonflower, chamomile and sweet pea.
Natural ingredients including flowers listed above as well as grasses, spices, fruit, wood, roots, resins, balsams, leaves, gum and even animal secretions are used in the manufacture of perfume as well as resources like alcohol, petrochemicals, coal and coal tar as preservatives. The amount of alcohol that is added to the blended oils to obtain the desired scent determines whether the liquid will be a cologne, perfume or Eau de toilette.
Cologne is the least potent of the three; it contains the most alcohol and up to 10% essential oils. Eau de toilette has up to 15% essential oils and contains less alcohol than cologne. Perfume, containing the least alcohol, has the strongest scent of up to 40% essential oils.
Extraction Methods
It is the oil from flowers and plant material that is used to make perfume. To separate the oil from the plant parts, it must be extracted. There are various methods to do this. The easiest method is 'expressing,' during which plants are basically squeezed until the oil releases. Maceration and enfleurage are other way to extract plant oils. These methods use warmed fats or grease to extract the oils. This process is called steam distillation. An example of why perfume is so expensive is that a 15mm bottle of French perfume requires the oil that's extracted from about 660 roses.
The Aging Process
After the oils are extracted, blended and mixed with alcohol in the desired concoction, it is ready for the aging process. For this period of time, the perfume is set aside in a cool, dark space, undisturbed for up to a year. This process binds the alcohol and oils together. The scent also increases with the aging process. Once tested by an expert, this is the time any additional blending or adjustments can be made.
~
Katherine E Winnick is a British poet with an Eastern philosophical outlook on life due to her upbringing in the third world. Her senryu collection, My Hennaed Hand (Alien Buddha Press, 2023) is available internationally on Amazon.
witching hour—
the soft cacophony
of old bones
~
Shane Coppage is a poet and artist. His poetry has been published in various journals and anthologies, most recently Frogpond and Wales Haiku Journal. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with his growing family.
Technical Interview #517
They say another day, another dollar. I waste half a dollar on interviews. Their problem states that a dollar and ten cents will buy a ball and bat.
Ouija widgets
I conjure
my software code
~
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.
trapped inside
a crusting salt circle
middle-age demons
~
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.
Over and Out
I look out the window that
my dreams did not wash clean.
I see the bench where we first met
is empty and decayed.
I know the bridge we used to walk
has nothing left to say.
It keeps for me a wilted rose
from my wedding bouquet.
~
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 by Masticadores and LatinosUSA.
Website: https://writingaddiction2.wordpress.com/ and https://nolchafox2.wixsite.com/nolcha-s-written-wor/blog
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nolcha.fox/
sudden thunder
swallows the daylight . . .
my black candle flickers
~
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.
underworld
. . . do you come
here often?
~
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 firth full-length collections of poetry were released by Setu, Meat for Tea, Motus Audax Press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Fevers of the Mind.
Christina is a painter and a haiku poet. A three-time Pushcart Prize 2025 Nominee. She is a four-time recipient of Top 100 in the mDAC Summit Contests. They were exhibited at the Palo Alto Art Center, California. She is also the sole haiku contributor for the MusArt book of Randall Vemer's paintings, published by ArtReach Publication, Portland, Oregon. Among her awards are 1st prize, 34th Annual Cherry Blossom Sakura Festival Haiku Contest; 1st prize, 8th Setouchi Matsuyama Photohaiku Contest; and two City Soka Saitama's haiku prizes. She is published in numerous exclusive journals and anthologies, including Japan's prestigious monthly Haikukai Magazine.
hail hypnogogia
hekate speaks to me
of rustling leaves
~
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 an "entry fee" that poets document their volunteer work. Isabella calls themselves a Christian-Buddhist Pagan and has a special relationship with Hekate.
