my wife hasn’t fallen in a while 
no scenes lately 
of my going from the kitchen 
to her 
flat on her back in the hall 
eyes rolled into her head 

I nudge her 
she doesn’t respond 
I’m halfway 
through dialing 9-1-1 
when she wakes 
and we get her on her feet 

in the E.R. 
her blood pressure’s too low 
stays low 
enough to give her blood 
she doesn’t want 
to stay in the hospital 

my neighbor’s porch light flips on 
whenever my wife 
sits evenings 
in her white lawn chair 
ankles crossed 
propped high like a cowboy 

he’s seen her legs 
in cast after cast 
thanks to brittle bones 
one taken from her lower leg 
to reconstruct her jaw 
from cancer 

and balance issues 
from radiation to the head 
she’s also accident-prone 
he didn’t 
walk in on her 
on the floor that night 

nor has he stopped 
between dinner and dessert 
to walk 
with her to the bathroom 
in case she needs help 
staying up 

my neighbor 
thinks something else 
he doesn’t think 
about the line in the vows 
in sickness and in health 
he just thinks 

I walk behind her 
and watch 
she still has a nice butt 
but I’m watching 
her legs 
in case they buckle 

*Title is a micro-poem by Melissa Allen first published in NOON: journal of the short poem (Issue 26, September 2024); appears here with Allen’s permission.

Melissa Allen

holds degrees in library science, and Russian language and literature. An American technical writer and editor based in Wisconsin, she’s also a short-form poet whose haiku and haibun have been widely published and anthologized in venues such as contemporary haibun online [US]; Frogpond Journal [US]; Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years edited by Jim Kacian, Philip Rowland, and Allan Burns (W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2013); Heliosparrow Poetry Journal [UK]; NOON: journal of the short poem [Tokyo]; and several annual collections of 100 notable haiku edited by Scott Metz and Lee Gurga (Modern Haiku Press).

One of Allen’s senryu was shortlisted for the Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems, 2011, and one of her monoku won a Touchstone Award in 2012.

Allen has edited for Haibun Today [US], Bones: journal for the short verse [Denmark], and the Haiku Society of America; has served on the advisory board of the American Haiku Archives (California State University, Sacramento); and is the author of the haiku blog Red Dragonfly (May 2010–January 2019). She’s also the founding editor of Password: the journal of very short poetry, which launched online in January 2024 and is published three times per year.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Plastic, a haibun by Melissa Allen in Frogpond Journal 46:1 (Winter 2023)

⚡ What’s Missing in Contemporary Haibun Online 14:1 (April 2018)

⚡ What I Read, What I Didn’t, a haibun by Melissa Allen, and Random Praise..., commentary by Bob Lucky in response; both pieces appear in Contemporary Haibun Online 13:1 (April 2017).

Jonathan Yungkans

listens to the pouring Southern California rain well in the wee hours of what some call morning and others some mild form of insanity and types while watching a large skunk meander under the foundation of a century-old house. He is thankful when his writing is less noxious than that jittery creature on the other side of those floorboards. During what some choose to call normal hours, he works as an in-home health-care provider, fueled by copious amounts of coffee while finding time for the occasional deep breath.

His poems have appeared in Book of Matches; Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor; Gyroscope Review; MacQueen’s Quinterly; Panoply; San Pedro Poetry Review; Synkroniciti; Unbroken Journal; West Texas Literary Review; and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize and was published in February 2021 by Tebor Bach.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ And All Our Wasted Time Sinks into the Sea and Is Swallowed Up Without a Trace, ekphrastic prose poem by Jonathan Yungkans, after Symphony of Night by Leon Lundmark, in Issue 26 of MacQueen’s Quinterly, aka MacQ (January 2025)

⚡ Only a Poodle Separates This Life From the Next, a prose poem by Yungkans in MacQ-20 (September 2023); nominated for the anthology Best Small Fictions 2023

⚡ A Quartet of Prose Poems: “Answering Neruda” in Issue 17 of MacQ (29 January 2023)

⚡ It Belongs to Each of Us Like a Blanket, Winner of “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge, in MacQ-15 (September 2022)

⚡ Le fils de l’homme, ekphrastic poem in MacQ-11 (January 2022); nominated for the anthology Best Spiritual Literature 2023

⚡ Two Duplex Poems, plus commentary by Yungkans on the poems and on the form, in MacQ-10 (October 2021)