Melissa E. Jordan

Over the bassinet and out the window 
came bristly small things, then orangutans and giraffes, 
stomping primevally up the gravel driveway 
before scattering, 
fading into the cottonwoods.

I tried to joke about it most mornings.
“My brain’s gone all wrong,” I’d drawl, 
my palms pivoting on the windowsill.

But the last word dragged out, not comically, 
but a lunatic gong, 
wrooooooong
And I couldn’t stop peering through the screening brush.

One morning I heard an elephant’s strangled trumpet,
and the treetops begin to shimmer —
I heard the faint screams of humans.
I was awake, I was surely awake, 
but the sound came again, a monster’s cry.

Then a hot air balloon breached the closest mesa,
braying air and filling the sky,
glorious and grotesque:

How it was so suddenly there,
an assault of color and shriek.
Like that birthing room shock, the surreal trick —
a woman splits in two, then holds herself in her arms.

MELISSA E. JORDAN lives in Connecticut. Her recent poetry collection, Red Low Fog/Transcript (Animal Heart Press, 2022) is a hybrid of poetry and fiction. Her previous collection, Bain-Marie (Big Wonderful Press) was published in 2015. Jordan’s poems have appeared in The Cossack Review, The Dillydoun Review, Open: Journal of Art & Letters, Word Riot, Otis Nebula, Terrain, Off the Coast, Rat’s Ass Review, and elsewhere. 

Ruth Holzer

heavy traffic
edging past
a car on fire

behind me
the Garden State
Where did our love go?

RUTH HOLZER‘s poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies. Her recent chapbooks are “Home and Away” (dancing girl press) and “Living in Laconia” (Gyroscope Press). She grew up in New Jersey and now lives in Virginia; these haiku were written on trips back and forth, listening to the radio.

Randy Brooks

boney fingers
the miners clock in
at dawn

elevator shaft darkens
going down
a joker’s light

sprig of plum blossoms
from his gal
a young miner’s cap

cloud of coal dust
wives and neighbors
gather at the gate

a wide-lens photo
of soot-faced miners
the survivors 

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.