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- Written by: Julia Vaughan
I need new glasses. My cataracts have grown, a little. Life is blurred in patches. At SpecSavers, I whittle down to two choices; a grey and silver, elegant, delicate pair, and their limited edition, Fred Hollows range, donating profits from them to the Foundation. (I love that.) This time, Australian Aboriginal artist, Helen Dale Samson did a magnificent painting, Puntawarri, from which SpecSavers took their spectacular design.
Loud, bright colours. Swirls, dots, dashes. Circles and more dots. Like a crazy, mesmerizing kaleidoscope. Random people stop me in the street, to say they love my glasses.
Cataracts
Choose new specs
Eclectus
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- Written by: Biswajit Mishra
I wake up in a non-somnambulistic state and warm myself with a perfect cup of tea brewed without footprints. I no longer live in the house my great-grandparents built because I have heard they didn’t have enough doors and had more locks. Their windows weren’t even big enough for bird calls. I have seen their great pictures of sunrises on the wall, sunsets were grander in their photographs. We can’t imagine how that would have been to live with. I am told that I have risen from ashes, so I stopped burning having burned again and again. I fly through every world without casting a shadow.
hopscotch
missing some
touching some
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- Written by: Diana Webb
Why should I make excuses? Why should I justify my style to the critics? I'm playing what I feel, see, hear in the moment. Playing what I almost touch in the moment. You beside me, Ever beside me. That is my truth whether it's Mozart. Satie. Debussy. Each note at my fingertips drips with the same. Drips with a certain synaesthesia.
'jardins sous la pluie'
so many portraits merge
in a single tear
Author’s Note: ekphrasis from The Concert by Vermeer with title from Shakespeare Sonnet 113
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- Written by: Rafał Zabratyński
After the Big Bang, all photons were trapped in a hot and thick soup of matter. The universe was opaque to light but then it expanded rapidly and cooled enough to allow electrons to bond with protons. As a result, the first neutral atoms of hydrogen were formed, at the same time releasing light and turning the universe transparent.
sleepless night
switching the light on
and off
Presumably, the evaporation of the last black hole in the universe will cause the last flash of light, most likely unnoticeable to anyone or anything. The expansion of the universe will eventually lead to photonic cooling, approaching absolute zero and rendering time to become meaningless at the Big Freeze.
farewell message
the last full stop
triggers memories
Perhaps a collision of our dying universe with a parallel one may ignite another Big Bang, creating a baby universe and opening a brave new volume of photon tales.
harvest moon
a pear snack boots up
the belly kicking
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- Written by: Jenny Fraser
Autumn whispers
furrows till the silence
Time
to uncoil a basket of muka
thread with air
Riff close to the sun
Drift featherweight
on river clouds
be shredded
by wind
dawn’s
bright notes spill . . .
piwakawaka
*muka - flax fibre
*piwakawaka - fantail, a native New Zealand bird
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- Written by: Srini
It is a still afternoon. My nephew says it looks like the map of India, pointing to a white cloud. And that one looks like the map of Nepal. I join him in the naming game and point to the maps of countries, near and far, floating in the blue sky. Soon a steady wind blows the clouds away. We have some errands to run…
the lightness of being wildflowers
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- Written by: Manasa Reddy Chichili
I try to sleep, but I cannot.
I remember everything tonight:
Mom's lullaby, Grandmother’s old stories
The beautiful moonlight …
Now, in my dusk of life
I wish to shine
As bright as a star in the sky again.
winter moonlight
glitter dew drops
on a shaded window
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- Written by: Milan Rajkumar
Battle of Imphal –
written on a soldier's grave
'Known Unto God'
Once again, I flip through the worn-out pages of the big volume of WWII. It's not the strategies or forces of the Allied and Axis powers that intrigue me, but rather the aftermath and human conditions. Leaving behind their families and loved ones, the soldiers came in droves and made the soil red.
archive photos—
forgotten tales fading
in monochrome
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- Written by: Sandip Chauhan
In my dream, I walk through the azure days of my childhood. The gentle breeze carries the sweet fragrance of jasmine petals, mingling with the scent of blooming gulmohar trees. Days when weddings were arranged, and old copper pots and gleaming silver spoons bore new names. The gentle sound of mom's hands rolling out rotis fills the kitchen, as I watch them rise in the warmth of the hearth.
autumn dusk
stars settle gently
in open palms
Having crossed many oceans, the homeland I left behind is a soft echo—its presence lingering in my heart. Suspended between two worlds—past and present—I feel the lingering taste of pomegranates, a gentle brush of that distant home.
gentle whispers
the ocean’s pull
in a quiet room
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- Written by: Lavana Kray
Day after day, after day, after day, until one day...
And then, not even a day goes by and someone
(someone else) comes to clean up the place...
Few garbage bags: our memories.
rustling shadows –
an origami crane
through the shredder
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- Written by: Joanna Delalande (prose) & Oscar Luparia (haiku)
Here where I live, it seldom snows. Sometimes tiny flakes fall from the sky unexpectedly, only to disappear just as quickly, leaving no trace. Just an old photo I saw this morning was enough to make the memory of a real winter come alive. This view recalled snowy stretches shimmering gently in the January sun, footprints left by the crows, and the silence that accompanies the infinite whiteness, the moments I long for . . .
It was a time of long walks and small joys. Also today, I celebrate this ritual from the past, I lightly follow a familiar path, feeling a hint of spring. It is like a different land of small vegetable patches covered at present with the remains of last year's harvest, fruit trees, and a pergola where vines grow whenever the weather is mild. And a pond with redfish. Nature is never in a hurry. Even the raindrops slowly fall from the last leaves. Here and now: the moment I am living.
still winter
a lonely chirping
colors the day
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- Written by: Chen-ou Liu
The verdict blasts from the wall-mounted TV. The diners, mostly white, freeze, and the silence falls over the room. Suddenly, clapping, cheering, and yelling from waiters and the kitchen staff.
frosty window
in gathering dusk I stare
into my reflection
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- Written by: Lakshmi Iyer
The open summer drawing class starts in summer vacation. This time, Grandpa accompanies me despite his fragile and weak body. I carry cotton balls for the clouds; blue, white, black, and brown tube colours, one thin and one thick brush, a palette, and water. I am all set to have my maiden strokes with my first painting brush under the banyan tree.
mackerel sky
the crunch
of the forest fire
I stick the cotton on the passing clouds and a little brown on the fallen tree, mix a little black to strengthen the branches’ crust. The uprooted roots catch my attention as the brown and black colours get smudged.
My eyes meet Grandpa's as he waves his hands to carry on.
geriatric window
a tender creeper hooks
on a rose plant
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- Written by: Subir Ningthouja
Tomorrow, both of us will enter the monastic life. We have given off all our worldly belongings. After our simple supper, we sit together on the balcony. I have trained my mind long and hard. I remember our laughter at the little harvests from our kitchen garden. We promise to retain the smiles on our faces despite the frenzied nursing of our illnesses.
revolving door ...
momentary glances
hold a lifetime
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- Written by: Lorraine Haig
Beneath our feet, the dense and springy moss creeps to the lake’s edge. Our warm coats repel the chill while we watch the sunset cast pink and mauve over the ranges, deepening shadows to violet. The peaks fall into blackness. In the press of night, the lake gathers up the cold. Against the dimming sky, cockatoos screech as they fly to their roosts. A wombat waddles into view and pademelons emerge to start their nightly forage.
We retreat indoors to a glass of red and an open fire.
Huon pine
housing two thousand years
of growth rings
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- Written by: Anthony Lusardi
ancient orb of space. your light has finally reached earth. as i sit in my backyard. adding wood to a firepit. swigging a stella. and wondering . . . are you now long gone from this universe? what planets and solar systems have you seen? and do they still witness your glow?between the specks of venus and mars. the summer twilight fades. your light remains bright. and my thoughts drift . . . if we could ascend further into space. should we care about the dangers?the journeys we make are never ending. time is relevant. and whether on earth. or beyond the stars. we must make the most. of what arrives now.
fire embers
up into the night
the way fireflies
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- Written by: Robert Witmer
I listened with impatience to a language I couldn’t understand. They ate food I didn’t like, and things smelled funny. I preferred to stay home and watch TV, but my parents made me go. I suppose that now the farm is a housing development, similar to where I grew up. Over time, everything became more and more like me – and, slowly but surely, I wished it were different.
first snow
a little boy uncovers
the last strawberry
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- Written by: John Zheng
(Ekphrastic Haibun after Eudora Welty's Wildflowers)
Two girls pose side by side by the road,
one smiling shyly with a bundle
of wildflowers in her arms,
the other showing a faraway look.
Standing before the framed photograph,
two old women, each holding
a cane in their gnarled hands,
chat excitedly about the girls.
One says, “They are my classmates.
The smiling girl is Daisy.
I don’t remember the other one.”
Another adds thoughtfully,
“She looks like a hollyhock bud.”
Both laugh and walk to the next frame.
spring break
the antique wall clock
rewinds old-time music
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- Written by: Pamela Garry
When the paramedic had finished his shift during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he saw the broken sparrow on top of a parked ambulance. He heeded yet another call and brought the bird home.
The bird gradually convalesced with gentle care from the whole family. When she could spread her wings for balance, she went outdoors and eventually joined a flock.
Quite often, the bird returns, drinks water from the familiar birdbath and tweets with family back and forth.
a seedless hull
on a cloud
in a puddle
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- Written by: Don Baird
staggering through the plethora of toxic thoughts stirring pilled-cocktails heartless shrews bend ears for pennies found in rattling pockets filled with spent dreams swallowed by deep lure where lust remains sleepless in profits drowned by sink scum shaking hands with the underworld of stained memories
new storms slush funds twist lies truth lies