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      Nika is the pen name of retired educator Dr. Jim Force. His haiku and haiga have been widely published in print and online journals and anthologies.

      Daylight and Dust The real horror is a body like an empty glass slowly forgetting itself – trying to remember how to hold anything but daylight and dust. This is how men are taught to feel pain, learn which parts are allowed to break whilst they...

      Corner Block Vigil in Cowboy Hat I’m five years old, crouched on the knee-high brick fence next to the letter box. I’ve scraped my legs getting up there. I’m wearing a cowboy hat and a man’s striped dressing gown with long red beads, and watching...

      At the Royal Ontario Museum Four hundred pounds of rose pink muscle, the dead heft of a whale’s heart, a mass worthy of Rubens, worthy of Moore. Visitors lean in to feel the quiver of sea, pinned and plinthed under glass, the thought of Arctic...

      Turned Injun I Turned Injun, didn’t yeh. Riders whoop across the screen, red skinned, paint, and painted Paints. And the boy’s jolted by her cheers – outlaw to his young years, music to such green ears: Auntie Val’s rooting for the baddies. More...

      beltane (may day poems, glastonbury 2019)   pale- moon sun: slow,   heavy drops on the site                         of arthur’s tomb (his                                     queen in small   print!) – a quarter of a millennium, the...

      The Farmer’s Prayer He lies across the cow’s prone side and prays for healing. Smooths her flank, half-expecting some bright heat, a glowing surge to match his prayer, a vision of angels, a chorus of song. Beside them lies her calf, warm and...

      Faceless extinctions A moth arrives like a small hand passing over my face and when I open my eyes a heartbeat thuds against my bedside shade. Leave your window ajar and your lamp lit – why, that’s an invitation, says he. White ermine, little...

      Waiting I am in the room, waiting to be called, with several ahead of me in the queue. Vincent’s iris on the wall droops from a vase of others, not much perkier. With each buzz and change of light from red to green, someone gets up, approaches the...

      Placenta Laid flat on the floorboards it’s an autumn tree crown with boughs rising skyward from a severed trunk. It’s a glistening viscus grown by mother and daughter, brought home in a carrier bag, preserved in the freezer, planted out in spring,...

      John Clare on the Tube Frit by the crankling train that storms the brigs of Harrow clock-a-clays & woven twigs are soodling passengers - theyre sleeping tight clothéd in rawky natures faded light & younkers maul & lease their mothers...

      Professional Crier My sister’s a professional crier. She cries on cue, lilting, soft cries or wails as anguished as a cantor’s song. She makes money too. They hire her to cry at the ballet, at dinner parties, Episcopal Eucharists, even at...

      An Early Lesson in Fake News One paper said that my mother, The Venus of Vodka, was blonde; another that The Russian Doll was a sexy redhead. A third was certain that the nude model, From Russia With Love, was brunette. She planned world...

      Tenant Tides rise as I sleep. I wake up to a desert mouth and the sound of drilling. Panic shooting up spine. The scaffolding holding the building together usually blocks out the feeble Berlin, February sun. But a ray reaches my forehead today....

      Each Rock is A Potala Palace The sunshine is mellow wine and there are golden palaces inside the sun. Where a giant is its master, he told me that I was his shadow on the earth. I will still be much greater, like a mountain, each rock is a Potala...

      Weak Core I have hauled laundry, sucker-punched Tuesday, bent, switched and twisted, and my spine despises me. You have a weak core, she says. Should be pulling up and in, she says. Imagine a stuffed burlap sack half-hanging from a squealing...