Afternoon of June 28, 2026

  

 

empty parking lot the solo cup tumbleweed 


~Bryan Rickert

 

 

tattered wings the butterfly’s anvil

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

 

playing in traffic the crows of my youth

~Bryan Rickert

 

2026 wall-to-wall bed lamp

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

 

raven feathers

 

night photography

she flies

with the shadows

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer/Isabella Mori

 

mountain magick

another puff of dust

from the chainsaw

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

Then why? 

As there is birth....so is there death...

Then why does one keep vacuum between two lights? 

~ Partha Sarkar

day or night

the crescent moon

on my palm

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

 

 

 

bumpy landing

reentering the atmosphere               

of morning

~Anne Fox

 

  

https://drifting-sands-haibun.org/submissions/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evening of June 25, 2026

Submit anytime: Medusa’s Kitchen

https://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com

the abstract gesture of forgotten thought

~dan smith

the purple prose of yellow journalism

~dan smith

mom’s watchful eyes after this white butterfly

~Maya Daneva

eating quantum pi at the Science Fair

~dan smith

waiting for straight talk

in talks about

the Strait


~Douglas J. Lanzo

 

leaping for joy

FIFA players

at first hydration break

~Douglas J. Lanzo

 

The silence 

Between our names 

Fills with moonlight 

~Sarah Mahina Calvello 

 

No more war

No more violence 

No more division 

No more excision

No more genocide 

No more femicide

No more nature drowned

No more debris on the shore 

No more trees felled

The crow's voice caws "NO MORE"....

~Olinda Ninolakis

 

war

again 

~Mykyta Ryzhykh

ouija board

the spirit keeps

misspelling words

~John J. Dunphy

 

leaving

the smell of diesel exhaust

at the bus terminal

~Joseph P. Wechselberger

Deadline July 31: Horror Senryu Journal (print version)

https://horrorkujournal.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

Deadline July 15: Modern Haiku

https://modernhaiku.org/submissions.html

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

 

Afternoon of June 14, 2026

 

 

Kitchen Wink

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

homeless shelter

a round of applause for

the class valedictorian 

~John J. Dunphy 

 

from unhoused

to housed

in an ICE detention center

~John J. Dunphy

 

Lenin

if you put him in 

a cowboy hat 

~Jerome Berglund

local law enforcement 

investigating 

themselves 

~Jerome Berglund

 

meddlesome 

good representation 

despite,

never ever 

because of

~Jerome Berglund

They say 

only the meek

surrender;

but, have you

ever heard

the roar

of a waterfall?

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

in lieu of ellipses and em-dashes a squiggly line 

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

dew-warped 

the three-liner

left out overnight

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

white worm . . . 

well damn me 

for an amateur 

been too focused 

on secular conspiring

~Jerome Berglund

changing the system 

or endorsing it 

appendicitis 

~Jerome Berglund

thoughts and prayers

they would have us 

second guess them

~Jerome Berglund

 

under the nails —

a line

that won’t print


~Jacek Margolak

 

broken press —

a fingerprint

in the margin


~Jacek Margolak

 

 

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