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swollen knee shrunken prostate spring equinox 

-Bruce H. Feingold, USA
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A strikingly honest iteration of karumi, Feingold’s poem plays with both balance and contradiction. The opening of this monoku sets up a perverse balance of swelling and shrinking, bodily infirmity and repair. It is fitting to juxtapose these balances with an equinox. Yet, the poet chooses a spring equinox, not an autumn one. It instills the poem with a spirit of contrarianism, as well as the sense that the protagonist may be in denial of age. Or perhaps he is at peace with it, seeing in his decline the eternal return. ​
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​a vanessa flutters light’s thesaurus

-Marshall Hryciuk, Canada

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A Vanessa is a genus of butterfly, named after a character in Jonathan Swift’s poem “Cadenus and Vanessa.” The phrase “light’s thesaurus,” a description of the way light shifts and varies, imbuing the poem with a sense of yugen, or mystery. “Thesaurus” in particular suggests that there is an author behind the fluctuation. Although this poem can be read in terms of disjunction—a butterfly in flight, and shifting light—it can also be read through as a whole. Read as a singular line, the author of the light’s fluctuations is revealed: it is the butterfly’s wings disturbing the light.
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winter virga caught in a lie 
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-Polona Oblak, Slovenia
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What is nice about the juxtaposition of “virga”—the appearance of trails stemming from clouds—and “lie,” is that it makes you contemplate a certain aspect of a lie—its tendency to leave a trail. Thus, the poet was caught. However, the tone of the poem is light, not heavy—the wintery clouds conjure up the phrase “white lie,” undercutting the tension the poet has created.
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in the sandbox building my Bollingen Tower

-Marianne Paul, Canada

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Psychiatrist Carl Jung built a house by Lake Zurich that came to be known as the Bollingen Tower. It is an oddity with four towers whose construction was largely dictated by his symbolic thinking, adorned with inscriptions and mythic figures. Each tower signifies some aspect of psychology. Influenced by Freud, Jung’s psychoanalysis regards childhood as a forge in which one’s identity is constructed. Here, a child playing, a seemingly inconsequential act, is suddenly loaded with significance. In play, one finds and forms oneself.

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courtyard of dead leaves lust blooming in this heat

-Shonin, USA
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Despite the implied autumn setting, this poem is a reverberation of heat on heat—the carnal heat of lust and the implied compost heat of the pile of dead leaves, the heat of an act meant to create, and the heat of something decomposing. Although both elements have heat in common, the process of love and the process of death oppose each other. Despite the poem’s Eros/Thanatos earthiness, the first word surrounds us with buildings, domiciles. The bit of nature preserved at the center is a beating heart, and we may wonder, like Bashō, how our neighbors’ hearts beat.
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red moon she counts his ribs apple to apple

-Elisa Theriana, Indonesia
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Although this poem follows in the lineage of haiku’s many “x moon” constructions, in appealing to the color of the moon, the phrase is somewhere between description and naming. “Red moon” suggests menstruation, while the ribs an unnamed Eve counts invokes her own creation—a juxtaposition of masculine and feminine creation. Naming is a form of creation—Adam’s naming of the animals is yoked to their creation. With the phrase “apple to apple,” the poet invents a novel unit of measurement—but it also recalls the game Apples to Apples. Language can also be a game. This aspect strikes the poem through with a light, playful form of karumi.
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Pippa Phillips is a wanderer who finds refuge in stories and words. She tries to speak truly but isn't sure what truth is. She wishes she lived closer to the ocean.
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Lizard Lounge From ​​Issue 2: The Use of Repetition in Haiku