prune juice

Issue #42

Editors: Antoinette Cheung and P. H. Fischer

Cover Art: Remnants #6 by Shloka Shankar

Founded by Alexis Rotella in 2009, Prune Juice Journal is recognized as the

longest-running international literary journal dedicated solely to exploring
new directions in English Senryu and related forms, including Kyoka,
Haibun, Haiga, and Rengay.

© April, 2024
ISSN 1945-8894

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 Contents

_____

Best of Issue p. 3

Senryu & Kyoka p. 4

Haiga p. 14

Haibun p. 22

Linked Verse p. 41

_____

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 Best of Issue
Each new issue of Prune Juice features a best-of-issue senryu chosen by one of the
co-editors.

her first period added to the watchlist

Julie Schwerin, USA

For this first issue of 2024, it felt apt to recognize a poem that centres on
transitions and change. Prune Juice itself faced a shift in the editorial team (we
miss you, Aaron!), but this transition has offered us an opportunity to reaffirm
the values of our journal, which the three of us have cultivated together in the
past year. We hope that these values are evident in the selections for Issue #42.

Julie’s poem reminds us that change is multilayered and complex. The forces
rippling out from one moment may tug us in directions that we aren’t prepared
for, much less have control over. As I reflect on this poem on International
Women’s Day, I sense a cruel irony embedded between its layers. The oppression
that women from a century ago so courageously campaigned to change seems to
have merely mutated from generation to generation; any change that arose
from their efforts was only successful within that particular context. The
existence of oppression remains unchanged. Instead, it lurks around the
peripheries of societal consciousness until a more-than-willing host gives it
power.

We are in a time when these hosts write the law. Their laws have taken away
from the already anxious and broken. And, as our winning poem subtly
highlights, one of the things they have taken away is the chance for girls to
anticipate a coming of age milestone, even if it’s interwoven with anxiety, à la
Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (incidentally, a banned book,
but that discussion is for another day). Coming of age instead becomes
synonymous with loss of agency, which is certainly not a milestone to celebrate.

Despite the distressing subject matter and threatening undertones in this poem,
the fact that Julie has penned it, and with such great skill, is a win. Not a word is
wasted, and not a word is wanting. In this way, she assures us that the tools
used to create restrictive laws, i.e. words, are the same tools we can use to
dismantle them. The visible craft of this poem, together with its poignancy,
reinforces that it is deserving of the Best of Issue award.

Antoinette Cheung, Co-Editor

April, 2024

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Senryu & Kyoka

what the tree remembers generational trauma

Rowan Beckett, USA

white suburb—
the diversity
of stone walls

Brad Bennett, USA

empty pockets
a flash of gold
in his smile

revolution
just around the corner
anarchists at dim sum

petro c.k., USA

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a finger lifts
from the pickup’s wheel
deep country namaste

David Chandler, USA

bumpy road
the bobblehead’s
indecision

Mary Ann Conley, USA

subconscious
not deep enough
to bury the whale

Bill Cooper, USA

we can't split
the difference
baby blues

Shane Coppage, USA

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wildflower meadow . . .
holding mom gently
in a plastic bag

I write
my obituary—
self-checkout

Dan Curtis, Canada

sumi-e calendar
shades of grey
in my schedule

Maya Daneva, The Netherlands

dad's memorial bench

the scent of cherry blossoms
and dog shit

giant hogweed
the stealthy creep
of my menobelly

Adele Evershed, USA

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pulling up stakes
the holes
we leave behind

Terri L. French, USA

one way street preacher

Michael J. Galko, USA

self-talk
overwhipping
the cream

Lisa Gerlits, USA

singing the blues

she blows me
a kiss-my-ass

LeRoy Gorman, Canada

my valentines
in her bin
Ash Wednesday

Nicky Gutierrez, USA

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inching toward
middle-age
still a caterpillar

Kerry J. Heckman, USA

at this age
as I was saying
at this age

Bob Lucky, Portugal

open coffin
into his starched suit
the unsaid

Richard L. Matta, USA

fried chicken
the family eats
my pet

Wilda Morris, USA

coughy and cigarettes

Robert Naczas, Poland

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Miss July
my father
on display

Peter Newton, USA

high noon
she leans in the car
“You’re a good boy!”
then looks at me
“not you”

David Oates, USA

Dobbs ruling
The Handmaid's Tale
in non-fiction

Helen Ogden, USA

snow dusting
the earth stains
her angel

Ben Oliver, UK

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a celebrity's death
and now
the weather

Roland Packer, Canada

sunday mass
she refuses to leave
her wand behind

John Pappas, USA

thin walls
the couple next door
prays for me

Vandana Parashar, India

first time . . .
the transition of girlhood
into rain

if I were moonlight . . .
the freedom to walk
after dark

Pippa Phillips, USA

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 grad night
the pepper spray
in her vanity bag

R. Suresh babu, India

her first period added to the watchlist

in case one day we want out gaps in the border wall

Julie Schwerin, USA

on his headstone husband of hydrangeas

Richa Sharma, India

her gentle laugh in the unlikely event of a water landing

leaving her
the spot where the door sticks
even when slammed

Matt Snyder, USA

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Geminids
teaching kids to spot
mass shooters

Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta, India

breaking news tremors in dad's handwriting

Carly Siegel Thorp, USA

scolded child dragging his shadow

David Watts, USA

warmth through the pane coltrane’s my favorite things

Marcie Wessels, USA

third pint—
special relativity
starts to make sense

Juliet Wilson, Scotland

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in my lover’s ashes forever chemicals

Susan Yavaniski, USA

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Haiga

John S Green, Jordan

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John Hawkhead, UK

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Marianne Paul, Canada

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Poem: Vishal Prabhu, India
Artwork: Shloka Shankar, India

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Shloka Shankar, India

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Debbie Strange, Canada

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Debbie Strange, Canada

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C.X. Turner, UK

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Haibun

Entwined

She holds my wrist tightly. I am surprised by the strength she still

has at her age. In her youth, she carried water from miles away in
earthenware pitchers. Later, she moved to the city. She was
always there, sitting on her diwan knitting. I would share
anecdotes from my school and college with her.
I look at her calloused and weathered hands. Wiry veins stand out
against a backdrop of sunspots. She looks at me and smiles. “I
am lucky to have you in my life,” she says. Suddenly the grip
slackens.

twisted yarn—
the many times
I asked why

Mona Bedi, India

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Phoenicians

A fairy is beginning to regret the ruse. This whelp traded for own
offspring has turned out to be entirely boorish and ill-mannered,
a detestable lout, terminally lazy and rotten to the core, that
worst sort of snobbish milksop, with halitosis to boot, cheating at
dice games and tormenting small animals for sheer malice. Our
pixie reckons it’s got the raw end of that time-honored informal
transaction, and is unclear how these swindlers keep convincing
them to donate their gentle heirs, their own virtuous flesh and
blood, for such shoddy, inferior replacements.

neon finger to blood red lips cabaret

Jerome Berglund, USA

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MRI

Maybe the contrast material contains nanos that will repair my

brain and body. I’ll come out in perfect health.

renewable energy
the dawning
of an immortal

It never occurs to me that it’s equally as likely to be filled with

poison.

lab rats
there’s more
where they came from

Susan Burch, USA

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Latitude

Their pillboxes are full. The grandchildren have their first active
shooter drill before their first kiss. But they still walk hand in
hand. Marvel at the power and beauty of a washed up red cedar.
Stand against the root ball. They ask passersby to snap a photo.
The selfie stick their kids gifted them still in its box.

gray matter—
a cricket
scales the nightstand

Aidan Castle, USA

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Mother

I got some sourdough starter from a friend of mine, who got some
from a friend of his, etc., etc. I have no idea how old this starter
is.

“Who do you think started the first starter?” I ask my husband

while out on our daily walk.

Without hesitation, he replies, “Lucy.”

“Lucy? Lucy who? Lucy Ricardo?”

“No, silly, the first Lucy, discovered in 1974 in Africa, our 3.2
million year old human ancestor.”

“So, the first Lucy invented sourdough starter? And just how did
she bake her bread?”

“Over an open flame,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Fire use was only discovered 400,000 years ago.”

“Oh, ok, never mind.”

walking to school uphill

Wonder Bread bags
in my snow boots

Terri L. French, USA

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In My Own Hands

I’ve read that taking testosterone will take away some of what
I’ve come to know as normal; emotions will become more singular,
less complex, and anger will be much easier to achieve. In other
words, maybe I will finally be able to say, No more!

shivering
after the fight
I coax my daughter
out from under
the bed

Thomas Haynes, USA

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To be a Man

I lay face down on the examination table folding my arms into a

pillow, ready yet not. It takes a minute and a half for the shot to
be administered. The paper crumples underneath me and I realize
how alone I am. Anything could happen in the following moments,
and there would be no one to call. The bright lights sting my eyes
while I zip back up my pants. The nurse sets a timer for half an
hour and leaves me to pace the room and wait. They’ve never
had an acute reaction, but just in case, I wait.

voices
through the wall
my breath slows

We make the next several appointments and I silently neurose

about the time I’ll need to take off of work and what excuses I
might be able to use. I thank her while she checks my vitals
again. Back in the lobby, I fumble with the paperwork and wonder
what will happen first. What changes I’ll see. Whether I will be
able to weather them without someone to talk to in the middle of
the night. Whether it will all be worth it. Whether I’m really ready
for this. Ready to be me.

parking lot
Google tells me
what to do next

Thomas Haynes, USA

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Backdated

When we were kids, we climbed trees together, rode bikes, fished,

played ball. Then one day when we were wrestling on the
grass—we must have been about eleven years old—I noticed the
tiny nubs of her budding breasts. I felt excited—and betrayed. We
were no longer just kids. Then the prom, that kiss. Fifty years
later, the reunion. I told her of my marriage, a daughter,
grandchildren. She smiled. “I once thought that might be us.”

tattooed on her breast

my name in a heart
(invisible ink)

Brian Kates, USA

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Coming home

My hands tighten on the steering wheel. At seventy-plus miles per

hour, I can’t jerk away from the debris flying toward me. The best
I can do is hit the brakes and grit my teeth.

last goodbye—
a comforting squeeze
from the dying man

Julie Bloss Kelsey, USA

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Refluence

Appa holds amma's hand every night while he drifts in and out of
sleep.

Now, he looks at her. His eyes glisten. I wait for the tear to drop.
It doesn't.

fetal pose
beginning the end
of the enso

Anju Kishore, India

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The Rhinoceros

Its rusted body is cool to the touch. Behind it, a pink hellebore
bends down. All around are last year’s leaves crunching
underfoot, seven kinds of oak, a few tufts of grass.

Metal plates crisscross its body, spine and ribs. In the filtered
light, a single horn dimly glints. Its right-front knee bends, rising
to take a step that will never land. Why is it—he—here? Solitary
in this woodland field? A nine-foot model of this great creature of
the East in suburban Virginia? Puzzled, I stand with him in
silence.

year after year

in this foreign land
I call home

After a while, I place my hands on his ear, intricately curved like

an iris petal, now warm in the midmorning sun.

Ryland Shengzhi Li, USA

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I Ask Too Many Questions

My wife and I are sitting outside at a café. It’s spring. The plaza is
alive. “If you could ask any of these people a question, who would
it be?” I ask.

She downs her espresso and says, “That guy,” pointing to a

slightly younger and definitely more fit man than me. He has a
beard, like me, just not grey and ragged, and a nice haircut,
unlike me. And he’s petting a well-behaved Beagle.

“Why him?” I ask, puzzled and, honestly, a little hurt. “I’d ask
that old woman limping across the street. Or that guy, the one
with the tattooed face near the fountain. I’d want to know if they
think life is worth living.”

She says nothing.

“What would you ask him?”

“What’s your phone number?”

spring chill the statue’s stiff nipples

Bob Lucky, Portugal

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Sea change

I was born with a tiny ‘mouth’ on my neck halfway between jaw

and collarbone. This slit opened and wept clear fluid if I got angry
or ill. “She has a fish gland”, the doctor told my mother. In a
1960 New Scientist journal, marine biologist Sir Alister Hardy
published his aquatic theory of human origins. Early embryos of
mammals, birds and amphibians look alike. Their shared
evolutionary fingerprints are branchial clefts, a hint of former
gills. As human embryos develop, these grooves fuse, forming
blood vessels, muscles and our features. Fishy vestiges fade. But
not always, witness my fish gland. In ‘The Descent of Man’, Elaine
Morgan suggested humans evolved during ten million years of
the Miocene/Pliocene from ocean swimmers into uprightness,
before wading out on the beaches of Africa. I did my own
evolving when the fish gland closed the year I turned five.
Sometimes if I get emotional, my neck twinges.

neap tide
the ocean’s tug
on my blood

Marietta McGregor, Australia

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propaganda billboard

The secretary tells me that her cousin shot its lights out before
turning the gun on himself.

memorial day
I raise my glass
to an unknown soldier

Sarah E. Metzler, USA

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war

The desire to root for a side is strong.

birdfeeder
the shadow
of a hawk

Sarah E. Metzler, USA

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Flight of Fancy

The sweet older lady at the garden store sells me the liquid
hummingbird food concentrate. Despite the directions printed in
plain sight on the container, she tells me how to dilute it down
with water. With one curious added step.

“Remember to put just a dash of rum in the dilution,” she says.

“The birds will smell it and come from miles around! They love the
smell of rum! Be careful though. Once, I put in too much and got
the poor things a tad bit drunk. Nothing sadder than little
hummingbirds lying around the patio napping it off.”

afternoon tea
grandma adds a little
from her flask

Bryan Rickert, USA

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YouTube Chronicles

Another video of all those zombie folks on Kensington Avenue in

Philadelphia shooting up horse tranquilizer mixed with fentanyl.

And after that, one of a man in a pig slaughterhouse yard

shooting rats with a high-powered pellet gun, their very last looks
on this earth photographed by his night-vision camera.

Am I my brother's keeper?

Valentine's Day—
the roof bites down
with its icicles

Andrew Riutta, USA

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The Universe Dreamed I: 3rd September 2023

The Universe dreamed I kept it in a tank. It was a goldfish. It

swam around, content with its scenery of rocks and water. I
looked closely and could see its link to mammal. Within its sheer
fins, tiny embryonic hands pushed through the water. I looked
closer again and its plump body was that of a rat's.

As per the instruction manual, I made an island of rocks for my

pet. It climbed out of the water and onto the rocks occasionally to
sun itself. When I checked in on the Universe one morning, it had
rearranged the rocks. An elaborate tower rose five feet out of the
water: a few small rocks stacked on top of a large rock, and so on,
until the Universe was out of rocks. It swam around its tower.
Around and around, side-eyeing me with a smirk.

spinning top
the head outweighs
the body

R.C. Thomas, UK

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Diving off a deep-sea vessel

into calm indigo waters, I float for a while with unanswered

questions bobbing in my head. I think about what it would be like
to die in a sea like this; to disappear beyond the reach of sunlight
into a dark abyss where everything is quiet.

hospice visit
I turn the phone
to silent

C.X. Turner, UK

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Linked Verse

Rengay

Reverberations

rural jail
teens playing
the game of life

echoes of laughter
from the staff

outside traffic
the machine gun tapping
of the pileated woodpecker

next move . . .
the ratchet creaking
of the metal bench

the attorney’s no-nonsense approach

a Harley backfires

letters from home

read only by
the prosecutor

Jim Krotzman, USA

& Eric A. Lohman, USA

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Flock of Crows

blood moon—
a red spot on the back
of the mirror

the neighbors discuss

his dark side

periodic screams
and moans—
and then the silence

through fence slats—

a freshly tilled garden
in the backyard

more questions than answers

when no one sees her again

one by one
hemlock berries
drop to the ground

Angela Terry, USA

& Julie Schwerin, USA

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 Sequences

On the Fringe

outliers

rural desert
the oddballs
getting odder

locking the gates

an arsenal
in every garage
itchy trigger fingers

around their god

don’t tread on me
a wind-whipped
rattlesnake flag

Cynthia Anderson, USA

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Repast

last dinner

reflected in her spoon

my whole world upside down

the sweet and sour

a last stand
losing my will at the touch

of her tongue

our lives together

lost in translation

a tablecloth

matching stains
how old themes recycle

absorbing the lies

disguising our disaster

origami napkins

Peter Jastermsky, USA

& Bryan Rickert, USA

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Lashon Ha-Ra

oil spill spreading the blame game

I wipe the kitchen table

of our indiscretions

oil spill spreading the blame game

rumors of pandemic origin

fueled by tiktok

oil spill spreading the blame game

drinking whiskey
from a teacup

Roman Lyakhovetsky, Israel

& Vandana Parashar, India

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 Next Issue: August, 2024
Submissions: Open June 1st – June 30th, 2024

© April, 2024
ISSN 1945-8894

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