keyhole—
the sun lets itself
in

8-31

**

**

winter chill
a love song my father wrote
not to my mother

8-30

mountain hike
a cairn
a rock higher

Johnette Downing



Recipient of the 2017 Louisiana Writer Award, the 2024 Robert Spiess Memorial Haiku Award, and the 2026 NOTCF Literary Arts & Humanities Award, Johnette Downing is a North American poet and artist specializing in haiku, senryu, haibun, and haiga (haiku and art). Cofounder of the former New Orleans Haiku Society, and the first Art Editor of bottle rockets (2023-2025), Johnette is the author of Singing Waters, A Selection of Haiku, Senryu, and Haibun, which is a collection of over one hundred of her previously published poems in one volume, (April 2022, buddha baby press).

midsummer—
the boat tips
toward the whale

-Johnette Downing

polka dots
farther apart
at the hips

-Johnette Downing