Haiku by Loretta Oleck

Cicada Shell

She wants attention

just the same as the children.
Twining vines choke trees.

We have become one

of those couples without words.
Longing for mangoes.

Thirteen moons later

he leaves before I knew him.
No compass, no lamp.




Loretta Oleck is a poet and psychotherapist. Her poetry has been published in The Westchester Review, Feminist Studies, The Mom Egg, Commonline Journal, St. Somewhere, Laughing Earth, Poetica Magazine, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Marco Polo Arts Magazine, among others. More recently her work has been performed at The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, as well as at other venues in and around New York. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from New York University.