Five Haiku Poems by Martina Matijević

 

          

         Five Haiku Poems

1. Atop the sea cliff
   wild urge to fly—
   gravity stops me.

2. The fast-fashion store
   half-price black heels searching for
   a short-term owner.

3. Drifting through space,
   mission’s to find a planet
   where no war exists.

4. Cigarette smoking—
   hot fume gently kisses fog;
   love’s gone in no time.

5. The mangrove forest,
   roots deeply hug the soil,
   forming Mother’s veins.

Martina Matijević is a poet from Croatia with haiku published in several magazines.

Two Poems by Julie de Belle

 

I AM TREE

 

 

Bones like branches slightly twisted

With knots and veins

Sinuous

Skin like bark

Tattooed by time

I am a tree

Weathered to leather

Beaten to solid

My heart soft like moss

The space for my soul safely swaddled within

Blossoming with a myriad of memories

Thought-mushrooms

Rooted to my life

My arms reaching out to those I love

I stand like a tree on the path of history

Strong like oak

Warm like fir

Sweet like spruce or lilac

More beautiful and bountiful than an apple tree

In full bloom 

JAMES BAY

Bug bites

                    Black bugs

Speckled air

                         With sand and fleas

     See siipii flow

See piisum glow

Sweet smell of evergreen like lime

Mornings of mist

And forever fog over rivers and lakes

Scent of iron on children’s skin

Muffled whispers wearing moccasins in the night

Rocky roads flanked by copper niipii

Afar afar

A peak

The soft green stomach of mountain

And sand stone at its feet

 

Siipii = river

Piisum= sun

Niipii= water

Julie de Belle - Born in Ottawa Ontario, but living in Quebec, Julie de Belle has been writing poetry in both official languages since her early teens. She was a member of the Literary Translators of Canada where she first discovered the craft of translation with Words on the Move. She retired from her teaching career as a drama and second language teacher (French and English) and dedicates most of her time to writing, poetry and fiction, and being involved in a community of writers. 

Five Poems by Rustin Larson

 

Fighting the oligarchy one bunny hop at a time. lulu.com

Black Rabbit

 

Eating dandelions

near the swing set

outside the laundromat.

 

He won't run.

I am a box

with a carrot inside.

 

I am a blanket

of strawberry plaid.

I am a picnic

 

near an abandoned

firetruck. He runs now.

He is wild.

 

Lute Broadcast

 

The slow part

makes me think

of a donkey

forced to carry

broken shards

in a burlap sack.

 

Owls

 

We burned twigs

in the park's barbecue.

We roasted hot dogs.

 

It was late September

and night came earlier

than it did in August.

 

We watched the embers glow.

The train from Denver

no longer stopped in our town.

 

We sat in the park

with no train whistles,

but we watched the embers

 

and felt the owls fly

above us.

 

Dreaming on Amtrak

 

The music pursues

toads over rotting logs

and vast forests of mushrooms

 

The train waits there

for seven hours

No one knows why

 

Finally a sailor

gets up from his seat

and tracks down the conductor

 

Something about a bridge

Something about

a missing rail

 

Golden Hour

 

Suddenly it is one o'clock. Where

do we go? The sun follows us everywhere.

What if we could follow the sun?

At 6 pm, late September, it is

the golden hour: everything is

silhouetted in a haze of gold.

What if we could always follow

the sun, the golden hour, and be

bathed in gossamer dream light?

 

Rustin Larson's writing appears in the anthologies Wild Gods (New Rivers Press, 2021) and Wapsipinicon Almanac: Selections from Thirty Years (University of Iowa Press, 2023). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, Puerto Del Sol, The Penn Review, North American Review, and Poetry East. His latest collection is Russian Lullaby for Brother Donkey (Alien Buddha Press, 2024).