half-way to the sky
we perch by a waterfall
deep in the mountains
once I was young
and you were still alive

my mother taught me
many things: the last was how
to die; she no longer 
spoke, yet friends brought armloads
of red maple leaf boughs

coming, coming 
the singularity
when a smart machine
releases a viral genie
from her own shining lamp

vanilla moon
the burnished gold of
softly rounded hills
fills with purpling shadows
where a donkey brays

mango season
the woman’s skin turns golden
she holds her man
in her hollows and hills
in her bold tangos

on the counter
where I left it, jam
the color of my heart
you called and I ran
I cannot stop running

J. Zimmerman

won second prize in the 2011 Tokutomi Memorial Haiku Contest and first prize in the 2011 Yuki Teikei annual kukai. Her haiku, tanka, and haibun have been widely published in Daily Haiku, Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Roadrunner, Runes, and elsewhere. She was one of 17 poets published by invitation in A New Resonance 8: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Dragonfly Press, 2013). She writes articles on the Japanese forms, teaches workshops on tanka, co-edits poetry at Ariadne’s Web, and in summer 2014 served as Poet in Residence at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Her poems have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, and German.

Patricia J. Machmiller

combines the arts of brush painting, printmaking, and poetry. Her work in the visual arts started in 1996 when she began exploring watercolor as a means to augment her haiku writing. At first blush these media, print-making and brush painting, might seem very far apart, but their relationship to writing is at the heart of their appeal.

A published poet, Machmiller has been writing since 1975. Her interest in the natural world and the environment finds expression in both her writing and her art-making. Art is the means by which she explores the interconnectedness of the natural and the human world.

More information at her website: www.patriciamachmiller.com

See also her profile at Silicon Valley Open Studios.