by Alyson Hagedorn

Dancing feet have no room for tears.
They stomp without fear
or weakness.
They are brave and they are flexible.
They are free and they feel everything.

Dancing arms have no room for headaches.
They are graceful and spasmodic
and fluid and functioning.

Dancing hips have no room for jealousy. 
They sway with the rhythm 
and against it— 
this way and that
inviting you to be present.

Dancing feet 
and arms 
and hips 
lead to dancing spirits
and I rather like that possibility.

* * *

ALYSON HAGEDORN is a High School English teacher living in Dutchess County, New York with her husband and two sons. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from SUNY Brockport and later received a Master of Arts in Teaching English from Stony Brook University.

by Leonard St-Aubin

Windblown pale dry sand
sweeps down the tall dunes and drifts
north across the land. 
Like the Sahara, you say.
But these shallow pools
at our feet, like no mirage,
contain the deep sky,
a patchy blue with white clouds, 
on wet-hard tide flats.
Eagles on the crest of dunes
survey the wide beach,
spread their wings and ride the wind
in circles, searching.
We search too, for driftwood, yes,
and new memories. 
We turn when the sky turns grey.
I follow your red hoodie
like a beacon on the shore.

* * *

LEONARD ST-AUBIN divides his time between Ottawa, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island. His poems have been published in The Hoolet’s Nook, in RED: The Island Story Book, in bywords.ca, and the Pownal Street Press collection FIONA.

by Zoë Davis

but never the silverfish
​eating history
sometimes wallpaper
feral in a bookshelf. I relate
to being called
something I am not
sexy sibilant sanguinity
static air
thumb-rubbed roll-up
yellowing tin. In the attic
other insects are singing
belly full of coins
I scoffed the pair
placed over my eyes.

* * *

ZOË DAVIS is a Sheffield-based writer, wheelchair rugby league player, and stubborn FND fighter. Her poetry and prose blend the fantastical with the mundane. Find her work in Strix and Roi Fainéant, or chat with her on X @MeanerHarker.

by Eli Noel

I yearn to see life through a child’s eyes
To find wonder in the sky, the trees, the ground
To wonder why a road was built and where it leads
To feel how big the world is once more
To see different people and not wonder where they came from, but rather why they are here
To smile and laugh freely
To feel solid where I stand
To understand who I am without worrying about who I need to be
To love a dog like a brother, because dogs never die
To dream and believe they will come true
To leave the trials of life to the adults, because I am just a child

* * *

ELI NOEL is a student at the University of Nebraska-Kearney. In his free time he coaches football at Kearney Catholic High School. He currently resides in Kearney, NE.

by Leah Mueller

It is time
to get rid of
our yellow teacups.

You’re not
coming home
for tea.

* * *

LEAH MUELLER's work appears in Rattle, Best Small Fictions, Certain Age, Writers Resist, The Shallot, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Outlook Springs, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has received several nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net.

summer night
the long twinkle
of citronella flames
​
​
kingfisher
if only your blue
filled the sky

                    ​Joanna Ashwell

​​

stormy night 
rewilding
the neighbour's dog


rush hour tube
only the baby
makes eye contact 

                    Ben Oliver

​

beach stroll
looking for the cat 
again


contrails
from that side to this side
gaza strip


autumn deepens. . . 
the sharp curve 
of the hospital corridor

                    Neha Singh Soni
​
​

* * *
​

JOANNA ASHWELL is a short-form poetry writer from the UK who is widely published in both print and online journals.  She has won awards for her poetry and has been on the Touchstone Shortlist for her haiku in 2020 and on the longlist for her haibun in 2025.

KATJA FOX is a British artist and poet. She loves writing short-form poetry, many of which have appeared in leading journals and anthologies across the world and also in her two poetry books “out of nowhere “ and “there was a moment.”

A copywriter by day and a poet by night, MAARJE GORTE writes haiku to stop overthinking and other verse to start it again. She lives in the Netherlands with her husband, three children and the ghosts of many cats.

GARETH NURDEN has had pieces of haiku, senryu and haiga published in nineteen countries worldwide and has had several pieces nominated for The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for individual poem in 2024 and 2025.

BEN OLIVER grew up on (and in) the River Thames, where he developed a deep affinity with nature. Having studied Biology, he works at Westonbirt National Arboretum, helping people engage with the majesty of trees. 

M.R. PELLETIER lives in Kansas, but his haiku poetry travels the world. He has published in multiple journals including Creatrix, Cold Moon Journal, Presence, and Wales Haiku Journal among others. 

PIPPA PHILLIPS, co-editor of Prune Juice Journal of Senryu, is an educator living in North Carolina. She writes long things and short things. Her work had appeared in The Heron's Nest, Frog Pond, Modern Haiku, The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls, The Drabble, and Galaxy Magazine.

VALENTINA RANALDI-ADAMS is an internationally published poet specializing 
in haiku, senryu, and haiga.  She won a 2024 Art of Haiku Gold prize among
others.  Valentina's haiga have been exhibited at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum and on the Haiku Foundation's website.

NEHA SINGH SONI is a Chartered Accountant from India, with a deep love for poetry, especially haiku. She primarily focuses on love poems and nature-inspired verses. Her work has been published in renowned online magazines.

Spring has arrived, and with it, a brand new issue of The Hoolet’s Nook—our biggest one yet! 

While compiling the issue, it became evident how drawn we are to work that whispers and invites reflection—pieces that sometimes unfold further with a second reading. It’s a quiet sensibility that THN will continue to hold space for.
​
To all our contributors and readers, thank you for your kindness and support—we hope you enjoy the issue. And if something speaks to you, please consider leaving a comment. It means the world to our authors.

Namaste,
G.R. LeBlanc
Managing Editor

Thinking of submitting? Our next reading round opens June 1. Guidelines are available here. ​

IT NEVER WAS ABOUT THE COFFEE, by Foster Trecost
PROBABLY RIGHT, by Louella Lester
THE MODELS, by Natascha Holenstein
THIN AIR, by Beth Sherman
THE SNOW INSIDE, by David Henson
PORT OF DRAGONS, by Leigh Loveday
THE BILL WAS ASTRONOMICAL, by Mikki Aronoff
​SUMMER NIGHT MELODY, by Andrea Tillmanns ​

by Sophia Adamowicz

not fresh flowers, because desiccated petals never wilt, and because lopped-off buds require no water and no sun, and because, when the dried orange peel and cinnamon sticks lose their fragrance, I can lavish them with artificial sweetness, and because nothing in this house ever grew as it should, and because flowers with the suppleness of a child’s cheek remind me of the times I never wiped yours.

Let the fresh flowers remain at the field’s edge, where they may spill their seeds to the wind and never have to bear the weight of what one person owes another.

* * *

SOPHIA ADAMOWICZ is a writer and tutor based in Cambridge, UK. Her work, both fiction and nonfiction, has appeared in several publications including Cunning Folk, Crow & Cross Keys, Haven Speculative and Trash Cat Lit. Her debut novel, The Brink, releases next year.

by Tim Love

I hold up the old red dress that she was wearing when I first saw her. When I return to the hospice I'll put it on her. It will fit her again now. She's been unconscious all day. I will sit beside her till the end, hoping for the impossible again, lost for words again, just staring.

* * *

TIM LOVE’s publications are a poetry pamphlet Moving Parts (HappenStance) and a story collection By all means (Nine Arches Press). He lives in Cambridge, UK. His poetry and prose have appeared in Stand, Rialto, Magma, The Forge, The Cortland Review, etc. He blogs at litrefs.blogspot.com/

by Moira Richardson

Do you remember picking black raspberries, staining our fingers with their juice, laughing in the sunshine? Your hair like diamonds, lips stained red. Your hand on the small of my back. The way the brambles scratched our skin. 

​You’d run your thumb along my lip, kissed away my tears when I confessed what I had done. You’d never stop loving me, you’d said. 
​
I’d believed you. 
​
But the next summer, when I drove my old truck along the cowpath to the back of your family’s property, our secret berry patch was gone, all that remained a burnt patch of earth.

* * *

MOIRA RICHARDSON lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her partner and three grumpy cats. She’s been published by Rat Bag Lit, Dragon Tomes Publishing, ELA Literary magazine, and The Writer’s Workout, among others. 

by Luanne Castle

When she saw the umbrella she envisioned their hereafter. Tattered, dirty, obviously pulled from a nearby trashcan, the umbrella’s frame still functioned. He held the umbrella without any help from her. They were separated by a foot. The over-sized umbrella was a castoff from a golfer’s cart, so they both kept dry. She debated herself. The umbrella’s skeleton seemed sturdy. But the tatters. Eventually holes would form, and in a storm, she would be drenched.
 
Now the rain’s velocity had reduced to a trickle, yet they both stayed motionless, he gazing off in a direction opposite her, she toward her future.

~After photo of umbrella, man, and woman by Naveen Ketterer on Unsplash

* * *

LUANNE CASTLE has published four award-winning poetry collections. Scrap: Salvaging a Family,  a memoir-in-flash, was recently published by ELJ Editions (2026). Her ekphrastic flash and poetry collection Hunting the Cosmos is forthcoming from Shanti Arts in fall 2026.

by Emma Phillips

We’re astronauts, floating. I’m the stronger swimmer. Hey, you say, it’s as if we could reach out and pocket the Earth. Like a marble, like God. I grin at the contrast in colors. Every single star feels like mine.

There’s unexpected joy in weightlessness. You release a cape from my hospital gown, pull back your hands and make superhero arms. Out here, constellations are strung to fairy lights. Where are we going? you mouth. I shrug. In recovery, gravity will do its work. Enjoy, I whisper. It’s a long way down.

* * *

EMMA PHILLIPS lives by the M5 in Devon, which sometimes lures her away in search of adventure. Her words appear in print and online, and have placed in competitions such as the Bath Flash Award and NFFD Microfiction Competition.

by Cailín Frankland

She was of two minds, and in more ways than one—her parents’ divorce drove the rift between her brain’s hemispheres long before the surgeon called for a scalpel. A simple procedure, really—the skull drilled through, dura pulled back, axons carefully severed—her seizing neural clusters were neatly quarantined, the cognitive effects negligible. Cortices are hardy things, she learned. Marriages, less so.

​Her left brain led her public life, reducing her right self to a stowaway on her commute, an eavesdropper to her mother’s calls. Her right mind maintained ambivalence, cluttering her home with life-sized portraits of her father.

* * *

CAILÍN FRANKLAND (she/they) is a British-American writer and public health professional based in Baltimore, Maryland. They live with their spouse, two old lady cats, a rotating cast of foster animals, and a 70-pound pitbull affectionately known as Baby. You can find them on Twitter/X as @cailin_sm.

by Karen Baumgart

Oh love, don’t apologise—I understand. It’s not you it’s me, right? I wonder, though, could you maybe just hit send sometime? Let them see you’re anxious, how it comes from a wounded place? Stop saying I think maybe when you’re sure?

​I remember how your dad would return each letter with grammatical corrections; there’s such shame behind your impeccable use of semi-colons. My darling, what I’m trying to say is: maybe it’s fine to soften an email with three exclamation points, or to sign off with a pink flower emoji. Maybe, sweet girl, your first draft is always ok.

* * *

KAREN BAUMGART lives in Australia and adores beautiful quotes, pink things, cats and chai lattes. She used to be an English teacher and is quite certain that writing is, indeed, the best therapy.
Instagram @miss.cake.girl | Bluesky @cake-girl.bsky.social | Twitter/X @cake_girl__

by Alastair Millar

We married young and uncertainly, seeking security in a time of portents—when storms, wildfires and UFO sightings made the future precarious and frightening. Then we weathered the natural disasters, inevitable conspiracy theories, and First Contact; turned out that those were the challenges that would really bring us together.

* * *

ALASTAIR MILLAR lives in the Czech Republic, and enjoys good books, bad puns, coffee and travelling. His flash science fiction collection ‘Mars & More’ was published in 2024. Find his social & other links at: https://linktr.ee/alastairmillar