Afternoon of February 12, 2026

Snowdrift

The last time you held my hand,

As we went down the sledding hill,

Fingers not quite intertwined,

Should have been the clue,

That you were leaving me,

For someone with a stronger grip

Of reality.

~Shawn Scott Smith

Each day is its own

failure, add them up

and down.


~Noah Berlatsky

dry month

surrendering to the boulders

a stream

~Tejendra Sherchan

the

steady

vibration

of grasshopper legs

is the perpetual love song

for Eos as she

dissolves night

into

dawn

~Marie C Lecrivain

TARDIS key

the timeslip

back into space

~Joanna Ashwell

dancing shoes the corner mouse slips inside

~Joanna Ashwell

moon bridge gathering all the fairy dust

~Joanna Ashwell

Crime

Crime always pranks by leaving evidence.

~Partha Sarkar

How

does one

learn to love

a scary monster?

That’s easy. Start by gazing

at your reflection

and repeat,

I love

you.

~Marie C Lecrivain

inspiration

love over hate

Bad Bunny

~Jennifer Gurney

sometimes

my favorite place to go

nowhere


~Jennifer Gurney

Someday I will learn how to perform

simple life tasks.

But not today.

~Noah Berlatsky

my catastrophic hypotheticals dismissed

we drove home on the rims

~Patrick Sweeney

sipping coffee

and simultaneously trying to process the news

of a fifty-car pile up

~Patrick Sweeney

easy, he says:

consult the fire scars on the cedar stump

before you were born

~Patrick Sweeney

snow fog

the place I was trying

to get to...

~Patrick Sweeney

admin should all take the Rorschach

and I've no doubt one of them

will brag he 'aced it'

~Patrick Sweeney

Evening of February 9, 2026

 

 

designer turncoat delivering putin the pralines

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

snuffed out

on jesus’s behalf

little lights

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

crunch of gravel

even the cat sleeps

with one eye open

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

revitalizing zine culture

for posterity . . .

       the damned

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

bullet train

one inch

either way

~Michael Henry Lee

dead poets

a society

unto themselves

~Michael Henry Lee

two blocks to school

most of the sidewalk

full of ICE

~Randy Brooks

friend and foes

equally

TARIFFied

~Randy Brooks

amidst the materialists

pebbles fascinate me more

than the diamonds...

sharing all the bugs on earth

1.25 billion in my lot

~Tejendra Sherchan

When you have a child

you wish many things

and one is to die

before they do.

It is a long race

and you start well ahead

and you lose if you’re standing

at the end.

~Noah Berlatsky

Smog Alert

pretending the orange cloud goes poof

meaning the nightmare is over

so we can go back to being ourselves

cooperative and kind

inclusive and compassionate

right now we’re trapped in a smog alert

the cloud is orange

with no end in sight

it just goes on and on

we’re choking

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

one final vote

on whether we ever

get to vote again

~Noah Berlatsky

airbrushed 

still the sharpness

of your absence

~Arvinder Kaur

super bowl

I tune in for

the halftime show

~John J. Dunphy

Afternoon of February 7, 2026

I am weary

of the responsibilities of the world

longing for more time to just be

~Jennifer Gurney

painted toenails-

a      bouquet      hidden      under      socks

~Patricia Nellene Deal

farewell six spiders on my wall

~Bernadette O'Reilly

wages of his sins our death

~dan smith

candlesnuff fungi some elves write poetry at night

~Pegah Rahmati Nezhad

unfazed by human chaos phased moon

~Pegah Rahmati Nezhad

snow moon

my sister says

don’t come

~Ingrid Bruck

his goal~

live long enough

to regret it

~Ingrid Bruck

in concert

       with dripping icicles

my nose

~Ingrid Bruck

on thin ice

fawn’s legs spell out

help in Morse code

aiming the weapon

between its eyes

Donald Duck shoots out

…flowers

the ducks name him

“tyrant of petals”

~Martina Matijević

retirement day

all his binder clips

emptied

~Barrie Levine

from sea to shining sea . . .

deadly route

through the political climate

~Barrie Levine

Some things won’t fade

If your teacup’s empty

Time to go home

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

Invasion

invasion by plastic....

Hollow universe and

deep oceans are already dethroned,

next our cognition will get plastic.

~Partha Sarkar

bullfrogs stacked in the tank

she said: 'Remember when we used to breathe through our skin?'

~Patrick Sweeney

thunder snow

calling out to the last

of the Taoist magicians

~Patrick Sweeney

deep snow

the forest isn't talking

again today

~Patrick Sweeney

 

 

 

when the world

emits harsh

all I crave is soft

~Jennifer Gurney

Morning of February 4, 2026

 

his cat doesn't care if he's an abject failure

 

~Patrick Sweeney

everyone knows what's wrong with everyone else's hair

~Patrick Sweeney

old

pond

a

frog

leaps

into

a

block

of

ice

~Patrick Sweeney

eye witnesses

multiple angles

of truth

~Christa Pandey

moon

illuminates your shadow

in fairy dust


~Sarah Mahina Calvello

comedy club

the recovering alcoholic's

dry wit

~John J. Dunphy

uphill walk

a down feather guides

me ahead

~Tejendra Sherchan

streetsweepers abiding by the order of duct tape

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

crowdfunding the circle of crows

~Hifsa Ashraf

lawsuit the whereabouts of magpies


~Hifsa Ashraf

Afternoon of February 2, 2026

 

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

altostratus moon

step by step

into Fimbulwinter

~Joshua St. Claire

twilight walk home insecurity cameras

~Wendy Cobourne

passing through bushes

the smoke shadow

as it leaves me

~Jerome Berglund

Even if

Even if I do not want to,

AI will compel me

to forget my own entity.

~Partha Sarkar

deserted street

the pigeon returns

to the puddle

~Francoise Maurice

Minneapolis

bitterly cold wind

so much ice

~Marie Derley

kindness

feels like a dream when the world

is so full of ice

~Jennifer Gurney

our guides to peace

a poet, a nurse and

barefoot monks in snow

 

~Jennifer Gurney

 

the world

is a witness

cellphone video

~Jennifer Gurney

loaded with truth camera

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

Microbes of the mind

passed on by someone

who does not love us.

~Jeffrey Taylor

city park

a squirrel reaches

for a handout

~Gareth Nurden

night train

lives pass by

in the blink of an eye

~Gareth Nurden

letting

the first mosquito go

not the second

~Hynek Koziol

The Bagman

shuffles by in tattered Nikes

pushing a rusty shopping cart

with one hand, a half empty

bottle in the other.

He is singing ( slightly off-key 

I notice ) " climb in " he says

" oh, most ethical one

let's have one more cup

before we go. "

~dan smith

work in progress

revising

my life

~M. R. Pelletier

 

 

 

Where to submit your work this month

 

tinywords

https://tinywords.com/submit/

Only Human Senryu

https://www.onlyhumansenryu.com/guidelines

Circle of Salt

http://circleofsaltmag.blogspot.com/

smols

https://smolspoetryjournal.blogspot.com/

Horror Senryu Journal

https://horrorkujournal.blogspot.com/

Kingfisher Journal

https://kingfisherjournal.com/submissions/

theme: sex, drugs, and rock & roll

Afternoon of January 30, 2026

  

 

worried about what he might've said under anesthesia

~Patrick Sweeney

soon they'll be wanting the names of poets who are making notes

on the complexity of the red dahlia

~Patrick Sweeney

this downward spiral all uphill


~Anne Fox

sleazemore

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

running into the other autocorrect

~Vishal Prabhu

bracing himself for catastrophic replacement

~Patrick Sweeney

high treason in the streets

then back to walking

his dog

~Patrick Sweeney

Too much chaos

Thoughts put

On ice

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

Aging star

Illusion

On illusion

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

there to greet me

first thing in the morning...

the heebie-jeebies

~Mark Meyer

what didn't I do?

she says I always never

or never always

~Mark Meyer

no map required...

on the road

to Wit's End

~Mark Meyer

no payment due

for 18 months

shady windows

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

full moon

mixing acrylic colors

in the cauldron


~Roberta Beach Jacobson

Curiosity

Curiosity of childhood-only simplicity that one loses forever.

~Partha Sarkar

winter night

crescent moon holding up

a drunkard

~Tejendra Sherchan

she knew I needed a big slice of cheesecake

~Patrick Sweeney

fading away a graveyard of deadnames

~John Hawkhead

full disclosure, I used to pick fleas off the pink belly of our Siamese cat

~Patrick Sweeney