Art: Gesture by Allen Forrest
TURTLES, BIRDS, AND OTHERS
(Observational Haiku)
- Turtles
9/10/16
a big turtle crawls
on the base of the river,
a school of small fish
9/23/16
the big turtle sits
on a rock in the river
as the water flows
3/29/17
the big old turtle
rests in the warm noonday sun
on the riverbank
7/8/17
the big turtle walks
against the current of the
slow moving river
- Birds
10/11/16
a crow sits in the
persimmon tree, amid the
green leaves, orange fruit
2/8/17
a kingfisher sits
on a branch in the river
as the cars go by
2/9/17
three plastic bottles
in the river and a bird
that flies far away
4/1/17
have you ever seen
two little sparrows mating
on a windowsill?
- Others
9/10/16
brown snake slithering
on the shoal, did you know that
snakes slither on shoals?
9/23/16
the spider dances
under the neon sign light
in the rural town
10/17/16
it floated away,
the little red robot on
the green river-reeds
1/24/17
little crab crawling
on the bed of the river,
the water flows, flows
About the author:
Alzo David-West is a writer, poet, and academic. His creative writing appears in Antimatter, Cha, Eastlit, Grief Diaries, K’in, Missing Slate, Offcourse, Star*Line, StepAway Magazine, Tower Journal, Transnational Literature, and 365 Tomorrows. He is also the editor of scifaiku and tanka translations in Silver Blade and Star*Line.
Art: Gesture by Allen Forrest
In the artist’s words:
Allen Forrest is a writer and graphic artist for covers and illustrations of literary publications and books. The winner of the 2015 Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University’s Reed Magazine, he lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada. His Bel Red landscape paintings are part of the Bellevue College Foundation’s permanent art collection in Bellevue, WA. To find more of his published works, please visit him online at http://art-grafiken.