wrote a book
called Midnight Butterfly
metaphors
crept across pages
secret caterpillars
munching on manic truth

you’ve gotten your poems.
where’s my book deal?

Lucid adventure poetry:
17:45,
Refuge at the Fressay Supermarket
In post-radiated Maebashi City.

Grey clouds,
Overcast gray streets,
Grey characterless structures;
No contrast today in Zozo Town.

Japanese faces
On the street
Look like they are
About to explode
From hidden worries.

Meeting my friend,
Drinking Hojicha,
We step into a toy store
Out of toxic precipitation.

Mio says “kono ame wa chotto abunai desu ne.”
Less than 200 miles away, pure Plutonium exposed;
Iodine, Cesium, radiating steam lifts up into the air
and down on me, an idiot in the rain.

Those 3 nuclear meltdowns,
Into the land and water cycle;
A permanent poisoning of
The Earth around me.

Me, with no umbrella, 
Just a red sweatshirt, a train ticket,
And a dangerous curiosity
To continue life, as is.

The spirit of Japan is secretly crushed:

I can read between the lines…
Of the mangled structural frames of Fukushima Daiichi,
Of water-soaked trash lining the streets of Sendai,
Of the deep red and black newspaper kanji scripts,
Of hand-holding train patrons, waiting to go home; forced to walk in the darkness
Of Tokyo subway tunnels.
Of long queues to get gas and food,
Of somatic nomads welding exposed amino acid strands,
Of heavy petting in the Garden of Earthly Delights,
Of a toxic world (that we made that way),
Of the souls of the dead living in the spectrum of light and sounds,
Of concern on the faces of Shinya and Makiko,
Friends who invited me to their Japanese ryokan inn
To voice their recommendation that I go home,
Because the government was lying and I am still youthful.

Of all the poems I didn’t write,
When circumstances occurred,
To achieve some semblance of emotional catharsis,
Yet in failed efforts to find a pen or
Clairvoyantly rearrange letters and sounds to
Try to mimic and transfer the same series of
Brain patterns and chemical neurological responses,
I let go.

slathered in slaw,
chili,
and caramelized onions
and delivered on a plate
to someone more deserving
of 4,000 joules of
energy
who won’t waste it
whining
about the contents
of his crowded pantry

Alice Arrives at a Conclusion

The world is either too large, or it is too small.

Sunday afternoon in bed:
Your Sacagawea teaches my Clark
how to explore unknown lands. 

Speaking not in whispers, but softly,
you tell me of your childhood:
The games you played in the fields,
the gods you worshipped each day. 

I hear the pinks and purples
of sunrise at a new river bank.

On your Wedding day,
Hail, Mom and Dad
up in Heaven!
I,
Your daughter,
doomed to live on,
salutes you!

                                                 Zlatna Kostova

what you want to tell the pharmacist when purchasing anti-depressants and barbiturates: a haiku

i’m a hurt frog
these fall rains are different
this script is off-label

Five Ways to Make Me Cry

Old dogs tethered to leather leashes
who smile at me. Rainbows 

that won’t show themselves after
five days of rain. The way 

my mother used to say
hello on the telephone 

before she got sick, so eagerly
expectant I wish I’d kept 

the tapes from my
old answering machine 

so I could listen to her
tell me the news of that day— 

a haircut, the sun came out,
she wasn’t sure what to make 

for dinner. Somewhere
a landfill in central 

Pennsylvania is a graveyard
for the voices of the dead 

on tapes that will never
biodegrade, will never 

be played. A museum to what
was once common but rare 

now in its currency. I
know: That’s only three.

Triolet

Choose a moonlit night in July
to search for signs of a sea turtle digging.
If her tracks through the sand go awry
you’ve chosen the right moonlit night in July.
Should her clutch appear in the long search light,
step clear; she might abandon her nesting
on that one moonlit night in July
while you search for signs of her digging.