Month: September 2026

FORTH naturally wants motion, but today’s poems find very different reasons to move. Diana follows the season forward from fading blooms toward frost and winter; auntie jj moves from a stung heart into the night; B-lu sends an impaired reveler safely onward on foot. Debbie takes the cleverest detour: after two lines of solemn, almost textbook poetic imagery, “So on and so FORTH” casually punctures the whole performance. It’s a reminder that Worku can use the conventions of haiku seriously—or use those same conventions as the setup for the joke.

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STOKE naturally wants something already alive—a fire, anger, desire, resistance—and today’s poems exploit that beautifully. Diana’s first poem is a particularly strong lesson in presence: creak, twig, howl, then the immediate decision to add another log. Nothing is explained because we’re too busy being there. Her Linked Worku stretches that same technique across two poems, moving from a spike in a dark road to a makeshift fire and one ominous “Wait…” Elsewhere, STOKE fuels corporate scandal, inner calm, primitive fire, anger, and resistance. A good target word can finish a poem; STOKE often makes something inside the poem keep burning.

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This week’s theme is presence, and PAGER turns out to be almost perfectly designed to disrupt it. Debbie gives us perhaps the quietest example: two people settled together with their books until a vibration enters the room. Diana and Paulette interrupt a theatrical moment with an ill-timed page, while auntie jj lets inspiration arrive only to be pinged again. Across the set, the pager keeps asking the same question: where is your attention now? Sometimes presence becomes easiest to see at the exact moment something steals it.

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SHONE gives this group a useful contrast between brightness and whatever threatens it: aging teeth, grit in a scone, tears, dubious triumphs, and even a replacement tooth that shines briefly before breaking again. The Mick/Robo collaboration shows the quieter, haiku-like route, placing the unpleasant crunch of stone beside warm sunlight that continues unaffected. Diana and Lari bring this week’s movement theme directly into the action—a floating hat, a shove, a Radio Flyer—while Debbie moves emotionally from comedy into memory. And Mick’s second poem takes movement literally and figuratively: forge ahead, make the replacement, watch it shine—and then start over when it breaks.

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