It was the ultimate yard sale find. As big and thick as the family Bible. Oxblood leather cover. Onion-skin-thin pages with full color plate illustrations scattered throughout. In gold leaf on the spine: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. All the plays. All the poems. In perfect stasis on my bookshelf. Once or twice a year, I pull it down, crack the pages, smell it, leaf through a bit, and put it back. I don’t read it. Not ever. Not really. I have the Shakespeare app on my phone for that. It just sits there in the dark corner, taking up space. I could never part with it, of course. The world being what it is. What if I needed it? What if this was the only one? The last one? What happens when the lights go out...

marble
and gilded monuments
hypersonic warhead

Joshua St. Claire

is a certified public accountant, financial reporting director for a non-profit, and a poet who lives in Pennsylvania. His haiku and related poetry have been published broadly, including in Frogpond, hedgerow, The Heron’s Nest, Lothlorian Poetry Journal, Mayfly, Modern Haiku, and Rattle, among others. His work has received recognition in the following international contests and awards: British Haiku Society Award for Haiku, Gerald M. Brady Memorial Senryu Award (2022), Robert Speiss Memorial Award, San Francisco International Award for Senryu, The Touchstone Awards for Individual Haiku (shortlisted, 2022), the Trailblazer Award (2023), and the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Ten Haiku by Joshua St. Claire in Lothlorian Poetry Journal (12 March 2025)

⚡ [his smile] by St. Claire in Rattle Poets Respond (29 September 2024)

⚡ Haibun on John Ashbery’s Haibun 6 by St. Claire in The temz Review (Fall-Winter 2023)