Five sijo and haiku

.:1:.  Snow, Wind, and Plums

Our plum tree’s always breaking and growing back. Snow, wind, and plums.

Bees adore her double blooms so she ripens flesh upon stone.

Plums, plums, plums! No wonder she breaks! Snow, wind, and plums, our daughter.

(first published as an Honorable Mention in the 2024 Sejong International Sijo Competition)

.:2:.  The Horse on the Monument

You ask what I remember? An apple green between my lips.

Now it’s lost. The worthless sculptor put no treats in this high hell.

Him on my back? I can’t see but he’s heavy with pointed feet.

.:3:.

sakura ringtone…

its lullaby plucks you out

of my coldfoot bed

.:4:.

mom making curtains

in the nursery…

she talks of Ivan Ilyich

.:5:.

canned peaches

another one turns nineteen

as the trenches thaw

(first published, NeverEnding Story, December 2024)

Joseph Howse is a Canadian writer, computer scientist, beekeeper, and orchardist. Some of his award-winning poems appear in The Poetry Lighthouse Anthology: Volume II and in paint me: The NZPS Anthology 2024. His novels, The Girl in the Water and its sequel The Circus and the Atom, won the Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction in 2023 and 2026. nummist.com/stories.