Nikki Allen
(a dizain)
I am a fisherman who caught old boots,
seaweed sometimes but never any fish.
I’ve snagged old instrupments: one snare, two lutes—
I’ve scored a place setting: spoon, knife, fork, dish—
sweatpants and collared shirts, new toys with squish.
Call me foolish for the junk in my boat—
poke fun at the anchor rust on my coat;
I may forever stink like stupid sea,
but don’t forget the diamond at your throat—
where do you think gifts come from, when from me?
NIKKI ALLEN is the author of numerous books, including Hotwire (River Dog Press ‘21) and Ligaments of Light/Tigering the Shoulders (Night Ballet Press). She believes in revolution, strong coffee, the hard knocks & the sweetness.
Randy Brooks
snow swirling
outside the food truck
the sizzle of fajitas
windmill pump
a flapping Jolly Roger
feed bag flag
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.
Simon MacCulloch
Above a sheen of estuary, below a cloud-clod sky
Is where the light comes crawling when its time has come to die,
And spend itself in spasms on the silken ebb-tide waste
Until its dancing glimmers lapse, dissolved to muddy paste.
In sunless gulfs an unlit moon goes bobbing blindly by.
So now the scene is set for what was separate to merge
In mindless dim fulfilment of the primal cosmic urge
To be itself, the way it was before the great delusion
Of ordering perception marred the peace of perfect fusion;
All contrast, conflict, draining in a slow liquescent purge.
And that is how the hapless parts become the happy whole,
Denying the distinctions of a body or a soul;
The undistinguished lump that is existence in the raw,
Through which, with probing snout and gloss-black fur and scooping claw,
A god who’ll never speak again comes burrowing like a mole.
SIMON MACCULLOCH lives in London. His poems live in Reach Poetry, The Dawntreader, Spectral Realms, Aphelion, Black Petals, Grim and Gilded, Ekstasis, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Ephemeral Elegies, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Emberr, View from Atlantis, Altered Reality, The Sirens Call, The Chamber Magazine, I Become the Beast, Lovecraftiana, Awen and elsewhere.
