Harvest by Daniel Skach-Mills

Pawan Yadav

Harvest

Crooked bones, crooked branches

Mrs. Yee cares for her persimmon tree 

like family,

works the soil of another year 

with Dao, prayer—

whatever keeps the crepe-paper dragon’s

torn-and-taped accordion vertebrae 

stretching across her window

Centuries, ancestors,

hers is but a blink in the steady gaze of generations,

a brief breath, inhaling petrichor’s instructions:

mulching, loam grows rich,

watering, roots go deep,

pruning, space appears 

between thoughts

Come autumn, fruit plumps—

round Laughing Buddha bellies 

on the branches 

Ash powders the red-and-gold joss pot

burning sandalwood outside her door

Overnight, a FOR SALE sign 

stakes its claim in her yard

Realtors report American home buyers 

want new houses that look old:

mantels, railings, floors 

Contractors complain they can’t find 

enough qualified artisans to carve, 

fire, and paint the thin veneer 

of a hundred years 

into the tile, wood and walls 

of a ninety-day construction job:

a look that’s aged and distressed,

provided, we don’t have to wait too long

Provided, it’s not our faces—

Next door, Mrs.Yee pulls out her ladder,

positions it under the tree, 

climbs rung by rung 

like incense into the air, 

another year behind her, going up in smoke 

Neighbors roll their eyes, shake their heads:

persimmons, three for a dollar at the market! 

The rickety stepladder they’re sure will be her death!

So much to believe in 

that can’t be seen—

solace, shade, 

her husband’s ashes 

buried beneath the branches 

The love that keeps her reaching

to gently squeeze

more than half her lifetime

to feel if it is ripe

© Daniel Skach-Mills

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Daniel Skach-Mills

A 2026 Pushcart Prize nominee, Daniel Skach-Mills’s poetry is forthcoming in The Pensive Journal and Wild Roof Review. His book, The Hut Beneath the Pine: Tea Poems, was a 2012 Oregon Book Award finalist. A former Trappist monk, Daniel lives with his husband in Portland, Oregon, where he served for 15 years as a docent at Lan Su Chinese Garden. He was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in 2024.

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Rain Haiku by Joshua St. Claire

Ali Ramazan Çiftçi

Rain Haiku

all day rain

now that I no longer know

you

raising their hands

to the rain

skeleton elms

a rain squall extinguishes

the cherry blossoms

                     …petrichor 

alone

in the circumference

of rain 

rain lash

seven pelicans

right into the storm 

scars

rains slashes

the window

storm over the Atlantic rains dissolve the horizon

acute angles

a southern gale blasts long mountain

with rain

bitter tea

sinking down

in all day rain

all there is rain on rain

© Joshua St. Claire

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Joshua St. Claire

Joshua St. Claire is an accountant from a small town in Pennsylvania, working as a financial director for a nonprofit. His haiku and related poetry have been published broadly, including in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Mayfly.

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THE BELLS by Gregg Norman

Nicole Weiser

THE BELLS

Ushered onboard in the heart

Of a deep prairie winter

Almost as cold in the coach

As it is outside in the snow

The conductor gives me a blanket

The cars shuttle and shriek

Through frozen fallow fields

Distant farmyards seem dead

In a dead landscape

I can’t stop shivering.

I try to summon a boy’s courage

And a sense of adventure

I wonder how my parents felt

When they saw me off

Too cold to stand and wave

My white breath clouds

The window fogging over

My view of passing lands

I burn the ball of my hand

Rubbing a circle to see through

I am alone in the long coach

Winter passengers are rare

The train begins to slow

When it approaches the village

I pull my scarf tighter

A classic station house 

With a long platform 

Stands over a row of tiny houses

Squatting in the drifts

By a school and a false-front store

Stooped and hushed and cold

I take one burning breath

Before running inside

To huddle by a pot-belly stove

Radiating welcome warmth

Another hole rubbed

In another window shows

The faraway farm buildings

A dark distant wrinkle

On an endless blue horizon

Soon enough I see a speck

Growing over the snow

As horse and cutter come on

When I can see the steam

From the horse’s hairy nose

I hurry outside to pet him

Then I’m helped up 

By a leather-mittened hand

Greeted with a thin-lipped grin

Above a frosted grizzled chin

I snuggle under a horsehide robe

Backed with heavy flannel

My feet dangle over hot bricks

My grandfather clucks to his beast

And we’re off to the jingle of bells

© Gregg Norman

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Gregg Norman

Gregg Norman lives and writes in a lakeside cottage in Manitoba, Canada, with his wife and a small dog who runs the joint. His poetry has been placed in journals and literary magazines in Canada, the USA, the UK, Australia, Europe, and India. He is a 2024 Best of the Net nominee.

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Bhaiya by Steffen Horstmann

 

Vogelartinfo - Own work, GFDL 1.2

Bhaiya

At dusk the nightingale sings

Beneath a flowering yew, Bhaiya.

Parvati's aura is adorned 

With beads of starlit dew, Bhaiya.

Our rooms echo the songs

We sang in Urdu, Bhaiya.

The sky reflects Himalayas

When the moon turns ice blue, Bhaiya.

The Ganges now shimmers

With the sun's rarest hue, Bhaiya

© Steffen Horstmann

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Steffen Horstmann

Steffen Horstmann's poems and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout the world, including Baltimore Review, Free State Review, Istanbul Literary Review, Louisiana Literature, San Antonio Review, Texas Poetry Journal, and Tiferet. He has published two books of ghazals, Jalsaghar (2016) and Ujjain (2017), and has recently completed a new book of poems, Ellora.

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An Indentation of Love’s Thumb by Loralee Clark

 

Ebahir

An Indentation of Love’s Thumb

knows the balancing places,

feeds itself on dulcet drones of insects,

thick and sweet

moon’s light, grey twinnings of nerve and

other delicate matter,

articulating memory which is not memory;

gaps of calm and willingness to hear the beginning.

She cleaves the heart signifying deep knowing,

comes in dreaming,

its infinite and hidden grace heating itself 

from the fire of aimless, puzzling pockets.

This pockmark is etched on the inside of an elbow,

between furrowed brows and on the delicate skin

of the earlobe,

perfectly curves against the left hip bone.

Memory grazes remembering and sinks into

unconsciousness, not needing language.

© Loralee Clark

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Loralee Clark

Loralee Clark has a fourth chapbook forthcoming, Neolithic Imaginings: Mythical Explorations of the Unknown (Kelsay Press, 2026).  Clark has been nominated for three 2026 Pushcart Prizes.  She resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark. Her Substack, which focuses on the process of creativity, is nosuchthingasfailure.substack.com.

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New Morning by Mitchel Montagna

Tom Fisk

New Morning

There was a luminous globe
in the Northern sky
Like a torch sent to probe
through ages gone by

​It seemed real as the moon
tending dreams far and near
You could feel its soft tune
like the warmth of a tear

​Bright lights showered the field
with ripples of dawn
The night dwellers reeled

as summer had gone

​On the crest of a hill
fog swirls through the trees
There’s the ghost of a chill
in the new morning breeze

© Mitchel Montagna

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Mitchel Montagna

Mitchel Montagna has worked as a special education teacher, radio journalist, and corporate spokesman. He is married and lives on Florida's West Coast.

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It’s Vast by Peter A. Witt

Francisco Huerta

It’s Vast

Driving from Houston to Amarillo
leaving the traffic of I10, the cities
and the suburbs, to enter
the Hill Country, with its rolling
landscape, gullies created
by the runoff from a torrential
downpour, a few cattle per acre,
searching for something green
to chew, and the black vultures,
mile after mile of black vultures,
circling overhead for something
dead.

Then it's the open landscape
with the occasional city or town,
some still alive, one just a post office,
others, a gas station, a barely surviving
store, and houses left to the forces
of wind and rain before they
fall in upon themselves.

Somewhere along the way, I stop
to use the bathroom at a country store,
one toilet, in need of cleaning,
a man sitting behind the counter,
as if he hasn't moved for years,
but up for a friendly how's your day.

Purchase a stale coffee and chips
and I'm on my way, as the sun blinds
the windshield and I get ready
for three hours of headlights,
dodging jack rabbits,
and the sound of the road
rubbing against my tires,
as Willie sings about country
roads and going home.

© Peter A. Witt

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Peter A. Witt

Peter A. Witt is a Texas poet and a recovering academic who lost his adjectives in the doldrums of academic writing. Poetry has helped him recover his ability to see and describe the inner and outer world he inhabits. His work has been twice nominated for Best of the Net. He also writes family history and is an avid birder and wildlife photographer.

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