By Marc J. Elzenbeck It’s true that when you travelyou’re never free of Woody Allen.Every sidewalk artist knows himand four score more sketchable actorswho’ll ambush you from here to Thailandicons of the monoculture from which we come. Such harbingers. It reminds me how the prophetssaid the ends of earth express a single sum.Some foretell of…
May 2024, Poetry
5th Annual Mukai Haiku Festival Winners
Hosted by the Mukai Farm & Garden, the Mukai Haiku Festival 2024 received over a hundred haiku from 12 countries around the world. We are delighted to present the prize winners and their haiku, below. Category, Heritage First place:On Vashon Islandwhere our ancestors made home—the strawberries’ scent!~ Geoffrey Philp (Jamaica) Second place:Spring at Mukai FarmCherry…
April 2024, Poetry
Poetry by Ona Gritz
In Sycamore Park A narrow path overseen by a few metal benches leads to the massive wonder this place is named for, limbs the size of trunks, and a plaque that dates it back to 1650. Today, beneath that great latticework of shade, my friends discuss what is known about the communal network of roots. Even a stump, otherwise dead, still shares what it…
March 2024, Poetry
Southbound From Donbass
By Ivan SnowaTranslated by Marc J. Elzenbeck I see you on the beach so healthywith umbrella yellow and the sunheating strong and rolling overinto my skin with pleasant panic. You’re with the babies smilinglaughing but beckoning me backfrom the waves where I’m drowningI snap awake and grab the wheel. Scraping the mile marker post47 just…
March 2024, Poetry
The Ladder
By Claudia Hollander-Lucas I love how history can teach us – if only we’d remember it for current times – especially with rising tension around the upcoming presidential election, (re)surging wars on a global scale, and democracy under threat. This alphabet poem is in remembrance of the twentieth century when modernist art-invention, feminism, two world…
February 2024, Poetry
After Snowmelt
By Yvonne Higgins Leach From Yvonne: This poem appears in my new book just released by Kelsay Books titled “In the Spaces Between Us”. “After Snowmelt” is my attempt to come to terms with what humans are doing to nature and the environment.
February 2024, Poetry
You in Preview (Paris in the Winter of 1913-14)
By Rainier Maria Rilke, translated by Marc J. Elzenbeck You who I foreseethe lost beloved who never comesI won’t know your favorite songsso have stopped trying to stopthe waves of your next momentswhich will surely obliterate this landscape. The cities, towers and bridgestwist and turn in their coursesof lands forever tremblingin the thrall of intermingling godswho…