March 2026 Exchange Complete! Please Enjoy Two Sample Poems

CONTACT: fishwritespoetry@gmail.com

This is a very exciting issue of the exchange. It features a lot communal cross-pollination. In addition to writers from Plum Village, including a poetry debut, we have writers representing The Open Circle, a monthly Queer oriented meditation group from a UU Church in Cambridge. They can be reached at: open.circle.uu AT gmail.com (the substitution helps with spam). We also have two writers representing the Self Educating Poets Network, including myself! This group taught me poetry in the first place. 

I always appreciate technical feedback on the site and process. This feedback is how we got a form for submitting, a form for requesting back issues, and I have now been encouraged to include a contact info more visibly. I am new to this, and cyber-security is a concern. In particular, making the site work for new people is always a top priority. 

I hope this cross-pollination continues. The core of my vision in this endeavor is a poetry community that spans different traditions and groups of practice. I have sincere gratitude towards anyone who contributes their work to this project, and I hope that with every month, some small improvement to the process or magazine is made.

Mega Metta, and Happy Writing!

Jade K

Sample 1:

The Sway of the World

byPiero F.

I am held here, cradled in my hammock,

where the air is silver and the temperature, just right.

My eyes drift from the distant horizon to the weave of the rope;

I see the vast and the minute, all at once.

The breeze is a soft palm against my skin,

and I am anchored in this serene, safe grace.

This is my sanctuary—a place where the pulse of the world

slows to match my own.

Then, the intrusion: Trump arrives,

marked by that familiar, synthetic orange glow.

A troglodyte thumping through the quiet,

dragging a loud, unevolved ego into the stillness.

He is a teenage tantrum in a suit,

shattering the silence just to hear his own voice,

hungry for the hollow feast of being noticed.

But I recall the morning Sangha, the shared breath of the wise.

Equanimity.

I remember that beauty and ugliness are twin threads,

woven into the same restless fabric of the world.

This is the nature of things—the lotus and the mud.

So, I turn back to the sway of my hammock,

letting the bully dissolve into the background,

and reclaim the quiet majesty of the view.

Joshu's Without

by Jade K.

my pain is fundamentally without

without is fundamentally without

I look at my toe - without!

I think of the sky,

of my shoes,

of a tank

and a pistol

then a flower -

I think of my thought

and neither goes.

without mind this tree

in front of me

is just

                                        without is a word (!!)