dearest taken
willow oak—
my sister, too
*
blackberry sky
the oversoul in
a murmuration
*
silent saturday
slowly opening
my fist
*
Joshua Eric Williams’s work usually focuses on the intersection of the human, the wild, and the spiritual. His poetry can be found in many online and print journals, including Rattle, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Literary Matters. His website is thesmallestwords.com, and he can be found on X, @Hungerfield.
two haiku
*
playing me
by heart
birdsong
*
empty swing
still swaying
wildflowers
*
Joshua Eric Williams’s work usually focuses on the intersection of the human, the wild, and the spiritual. His poetry can be found in many online and print journals, including Rattle, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Literary Matters. His website is thesmallestwords.com, and he can be found on X, @Hungerfield.
grass bows
around my rotten fence
the church of now
*
Joshua Eric Williams’s work usually focuses on the intersection of the human, wild, and the spiritual. His poetry can be found in many online and print journals, including Rattle, Modern Haiku, and Literary Matters. His website is thesmallestwords.com, and he can be found on X, @Hungerfield.
[haiku]
no birds
to speak of
birthday rain
*
The dawn’s good
news: I’m glad,
though sorry for
the losses, cloudless
sky, and droughts
like dragging nights.
They’ll come again
with encased light
and shadow puppets,
but now, sunlight
dries the darkness
until I wish
for night again.
*
Joshua Eric Williams graduated with an MFA in Poetry and an M.A. in Nature Writing from Western Colorado University. His poetry has appeared in Measure, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Sonic Boom, Rattle, and many other print and online journals. In 2014, he won the Eclectic Poetry Prize. His recent honors include: the selection of his poem “Barriers” for publication in an anthology of pandemic writing, The Great Isolation, his collection, The Strangest Conversation (Red Moon Press, 2019), receiving an honorable mention in the Haiku Society of America’s 2020 Merit Book Awards, Rattle nominating his poem “haiku” for a 2022 Pushcart Prize, and The Haiku Foundation featuring his haiga for the month of March this year.
Outbuilding
We’ve got too many self-
monuments: our towns of sheds
and storage units, the private shrines
we call our closets. Their usefulness
is emptiness. Every cabinet,
drawer, and pocket warehouses
pasts none of us visit enough
to know we have too much.
We’ve forgotten how to forget.
*
Joshua Eric Williams graduated with an MFA in Poetry and an M.A. in Nature Writing from Western Colorado University. His poetry has appeared in Measure, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Sonic Boom, Rattle, and many other print and online journals. In 2014, he won the Eclectic Poetry Prize. His recent honors include: the selection of his poem “Barriers” for publication in an anthology of pandemic writing, The Great Isolation, his collection, The Strangest Conversation (Red Moon Press, 2019), receiving an honorable mention in the Haiku Society of America’s 2020 Merit Book Awards, Rattle Magazine nominating his poem “haiku” for a 2022 Pushcart Prize, and The Haiku Foundation featuring his haiga for the month of March this year.
