Evening of June 24, 2026

Open all this month: Only Human Senryu

https://www.onlyhumansenryu.com/guidelines

Open through July 1: Kokako

https://kokako10.wordpress.com/submissions/

Writer's block - 

my inner critic

never short of words

~Caroline Ridley-Duff

dark laughter

vultures hover over

the hospital

~Bob Carlton

 

dawn in

the sewer the

crazed rat

fidgets and

waits for

his chance at

what he

knows not

~Bob Carlton

 

he said something about the dangerous individualism of the wren

~Patrick Sweeney

with Ice at the door: would I calmly eat my pot-au-feu

like Labiche in "The Train'

~Patrick Sweeney

happy in our gravity: we agreed we'd be crushed on Jupiter

and dunking from the foul line on Mercury

~Patrick Sweeney

 

 

Box of ghosts

All those crooked photographs 

Ashes of youth 


~Sarah Mahina Calvello 

though he lightly touched on the ripple effects of 1096

people kept moving away from him

~Patrick Sweeney

 

all I had to do was sit in the sun and count my freckles

~Patrick Sweeney

tracing my anxiety back to the Three Little Pigs

and a possible flaw in the mathematics of revolving doors

~Patrick Sweeney

the bin

filled to the brim again

this eternal fuss over

who takes out the trash

~Jackie Chou

 

exasperated 

in a long bus ride

I lose track

of what I want in life

~Jackie Chou

I've been in the middle of nowhere before

~Patrick Sweeney

Submit anytime: Circle of Salt Mag

https://circleofsaltmag.blogspot.com/

Submit anytime: smols

https://smolspoetryjournal.blogspot.com/

 

 

Afternoon of June 23, 2026

Before the Art
 

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

 

 

The Devil

Nipping

at my heels

as I race

up the stairs . . .

He stops

at the single

upside-down

baluster

~Kimberly Kuchar

moth

fights to escape a cobweb

earthquake

~Tejendra Sherchan 

Rag doll in the attic

staring into space.

Tornado

~Jeffrey L. Taylor

Under one umbrella

both of us

get half wet.

~Jeffrey L. Taylor

The Critic

Pay me and I will evaluate

the art you love. It isn’t great.

~Noah Berlatsky

for one day

we saw and remembered

presidential

~Jennifer Gurney

words are spells 

even mermaids

drown,

words are spells;

you are meant to 

create not destroy:

both worlds and

people.

~linda m. crate 

French onion soup

the long stretch

of a rendezvous

~Randy Brooks

In The Cosmic Nursery

time stretches

voids yawn

it's a gas, man

~dan smith

house

with barbed wire fence

a dead tree inside 

~Tejendra Sherchan

after the second beyond  a wait

~Vijay Prasad

stagnant pool all the reasons why we parted

~Neena Singh

 

 

Five Fleas Swag

https://www.zazzle.com/store/five_fleas

Afternoon of June 18, 2026

 

 

common assault and battery life 

~John Hawkhead

 

 

 

memorandum of understanding nothing 

~John Hawkhead

M

You sleep around my sleep

because you dream of me

while I dream of you or

because the other way around or

because you went to sleep first

and woke up later.

~Noah Berlatsky

old graveyard 

something sprouts  

beneath the oaks 

~Deborah Karl-Brandt

sea waves

lap the rocky cliffs

and rebound...

my heart finds its way

to AI love

~Tejendra Sherchan

she told me she saw

faces in the rock, but

she didn’t know if

they saw her

~Tom Blessing

strangled my voice out back

at last it’s not me

talking

~Noah Berlatsky

Secretive 

Ready stretch the tally of the years, ready beckon and tantalize, ready buy with an open 

heart, a box to conceal, make or break the truth on the table when your nerves are shot 

and moments are walking with crutches.

~John Vlachos

Anxiety of Influence

 

Pound was a fascist ass;

Shelley a philandering jerk.

Yeats was a weird misogynist.

Ted Hughes was even worse.

 

Poe was racist. Stevens too.

Great poets white, male and dead—

away with them! I will live

and write doggerel instead.

~Noah Berlatsky

feeling invisible

every piece of mail in my box

not for me

~Jennifer Gurney

off grid

a snail goes

it's own way

~Melissa Dennison

the seeker of the origins of the Universe,

finished third on Jeopardy

~Patrick Sweeney

because they let him take long lunches

he never calls in sick at the drone factory

~Patrick Sweeney

studying the dorsal wing of a fly

he said: 'you always knew how to have fun'

~Patrick Sweeney

In  a  Zen Garden

The gnomes 

all seem to dance.

I become a prayer.

The world a chalice.

The wounded sky

grows faint and Earth

but shadow of a scar.

~dan smith

cherry blossom

fooling

nobody


~Stephen Toft

 

garden buddha

has moss

for hair

~Stephen Toft

Tiredness 

Tiredness has no last chapter. 

~Partha Sarkar