LOTHLORIEN POETRY JOURNAL, November 2025

 EDITOR: STRIDER MARCUS JONES

 

Snowflake

One fine day, when you will see a single snowflake, it will not be a sign of winter coming, but of me being close to you.

                             Alzheimer’s –

                             the purest snow is nothing

                             but masked mud

 

Twisted destiny

The more people she surrounded herself with, the more enticing solitude became, and so she left. After years, I’m going to look for her. My path clings to the river and turns inland, to wear away into a sea of sand with burdock flowers, and scarlet dragonflies on its crests. Atop an old lighthouse, two storks chop up the sky. While looking for a house, I come across a simple shelter. In a mollusk shell, a trace of ash. Destiny darkened by the glowing sands.

inner cold –

to make a fire or a ladder

of the dry tree

 

 

                              Paraphernalia

This nun village has spread around the monastery as myrrh on a forehead. Some scent of incense shrouds me, as a door opens and an old green-eyed woman beckons me into her room filled up with icons and jam jars. By the window, a coffin which she bought in her 20s, according to custom, when she joined this community. As I wonder silently, she smiles, lifts the coffin lid and takes out a bottle of water and a few walnuts for me: Never know how long you have to go.

enforced night –

by the hollow window

a rope ladder

Cold Moon Journal / November 2025

 belated news -

mom's flowers

warmer than her hands

Société Littéraire de Laval, Canada – Revue Entrevous 29, Octobre 2025

 Contexte de Création
La poète roumaine Lavana Kray a reçu le Prix André-Jacob–entrevous 2023 pour sa suite de haïshas intitulée Maintenant la Roumanie, parue dans entRevous 21 (février 2023, p. 34-35). Pour sa seconde collaboration à entRevous 25 (juin 2024, p.11), elle a fait paraitre deux haïbuns, L’hirondelle et Le champ. cette fois, elle met au jeu cet haïku. Danielle Shelton a relevé le défi d’y associer une oeuvre d’art.

Lavana Kray 

terre brûlée –
la fontaine se remplit
de serpents d’eau

 

 Image trouvée par Danielle Shelton, directrice artistique et codirectrice littéraire.

 

Fireflies’ Light / A Magazine of Short Poems / Issue 33 October 2025

 Co-Editors: Mason Arledge, John J. Han

 

 

 

 

Haiga im Focus - October 2025

 

Talking about strawberries all of the time / OCTOBER 06, 2025

 Edited by Malcolm Curtis.

 

 

Light and dark

The stars are high up, and I'm lazing about this holiday village. An owl calls and flies away from a house, while, rising from the reeds, fleshier than in the city, the moon makes its golden way. On a rock, by the river, a dry face of many wrinkles turns to me: See this boat? it was my man's. We were together like thirst and water, but one fuliginous day, he didn't come back. After a while, my son left home too; the butterfly doesn't stick around its caterpillar for long...
                                shell strings
                                hanging by the window –
                                marital horizon

  

 

Lifeline

On the wall in front of the house, an old man with his feet dangling towards the road. Sunlit or shaded (as the clouds will), he seems related to a piece of stone. He stays up there all day long, sometimes even at night, to be closer to the road and the angels. At home, there's nobody, even the trees have dried up, but he has this wall. His parents built it to protect them against the winters and the people, when they were listening to Radio Free Europe. In a shady corner, a ripe wild cherry tree.
                                lifeline –
                                from one thistle to another
                                hands and feet

 

 

Hidden paths

In the harsh light of noon, the woman’s hand over the eyes trembles like a broken wing She lowered the garden fence, so she can see as far as the horizon, where someone appears now and then, but never reaches her. As the  sparrows are dozing off among blue morning glories, the silence seems too hard to be broken, but a ship’s horn sounds and some ray of hope is flitting across her blushing face. Time to pull off the weeds on the pathway home again...
                                two cups of tea  –
                                coming at the right time
                                a cloud of rain

 

 

Waiting

Dawn. Shouldering my Nikon, I hunt along a narrow Danube channel. Poking around in the reeds, I come across a woman sitting by the water, a few rods and yellow water lilies aligned before her. We are close enough for a dew drop to reflect us both. She smiles, holding an envelope, but I feel her soul keeled over and her voice fluttering like a newborn butterfly says: I got this letter a few years ago but I won't open it. I postpone my joy until the second one will arrive.
                                I wait, you wait –
                                never enough time
                                to leave as one

 

 

Dust clouds

Holding a clay pot by the brook, a woman in black shroud asks me: What does it mean when you dream of an excavator? It was driving along, dragging the forest behind it, and the wild animals were running in the village, with their young in the mouth. Then, it cleared the graveyard for bones and dropped them in ash-pots, but my man’s wasn’t there, so I got this clay pot for him. In the meantime, I changed my mind.
A dream is just a dream. And yet, where does this billow of dust come from?
                                people on the road –
                                a two eye-spotted shadow
                                swept up by the wind

Daily Haiga / August 2025

 

Pan Haiku Review issue 5 haibun & tanka-bun edition part two Summer 2025 ed. Alan Summers

 

 Adam's apple

 
For about two hours the skinny man has been looking at the yellow apple, as if he's found a new planet. He holds it on his lap for a while. He would eat it, but this is the only one he has, and it belongs to the worm that touched it first, which pokes its head out, now and then, so the old man has someone to talk to. I feel his dilemma becoming mine, so I let him wonder about cutting the apple into halves, or pair it up with the moon by sticking it on the wooden fence.

hooting owl –
a pair of helpless arms
in self-embrace

Kokako A haiku journal based in Aotearoa NZ / iSSUE 43 / 2025

 

Otiosity

A flock of sheep crosses the orchard, mashing golden overripe

plums under their hooves. It smells like grandma's old hearth

boiling jams. Ahead of me, a convoy of villagers meanders

steadily on the horizonless path, waking the ancestral dust from

its slumber. Some people complain about the hard times, some

say jokes. They know a lot about all things, and next to nothing

about the man they follow on the last road, except that he used

to roam the hills and wrote poems...

 

the leaves no longer fall

at the poet's house –

excavators