Miriam Sagan: EVERGLADE HAIBUN

It took me a day and a half to get from Santa Fe in northern New Mexico to the Everglades in southern Florida. I left a busy life of family and teaching for more than two weeks of almost uninterrupted solitude. As I pulled up to the Park Service offices I had a moment of terror—what if I’d made the whole thing up and the residency wasn’t real? I was reassured to meet Alan Scott, the ranger in charge of the artists in residence program. He gave me a brief orientation to the park, which focused on:

The Four Poisonous Snakes Of The Park
The Two Poisonous Plants
Mosquitoes, And West Nile Virus
Why To Never Touch A Caterpillar
When To Back Away From An Alligator (if it hisses and comes toward you)

Then he took me outside to a conveniently located poison wood tree covered in poison ivy vines and had me identify each one. “Now,” said Alan, “on to the dangers of man.” Serial killers? Psychopaths? “People drive worse on vacation than they do at home,” he said, “be careful, particularly in parking lots.”

The apartment I was to stay in looked simple but pleasant, and turned out to be a great place to write. The first thing I did was move my desk—card table really—to the screened porch, facing into the forest of slash pine.

a lizard

living

in a rolled up shade

One day I counted almost a hundred turkey vultures riding the thermals above my house. I was just a few minutes from the Royal Palm Visitor Center and the Anhinga Trail. A few years ago, I’d made a dash of a day trip through here and part of my motivation was to come back—and simply sit and look. I walked the boardwalk around the slough almost every day. Each time I saw something new. I saw a cormorant catch a catfish—it is the only bird that has figured out how to eat catfish—bludgeon it and break its spine and swallow it in one gulp. I also saw:

tree bromeliads—

two anhingas

build a nest of twigs

.

man with a cane

crosses paths with

a tiny turtle

.

child pats the palm tree

ignores

the alligator

I wanted to make a poetic map of the park. The poem was getting bigger and bigger, then finally settled into seven sections. Some sections required actually going somewhere—some moved in time and imagination. I went to Flamingo, and out among the mangroves, to Shark Valley and to the Gulf Coast and by boat among 10,000 Islands. I saw crocodiles, a rare tree snail, a nest of baby alligators, golden-bellied spiders, and birds of all kinds—herons, egrets, ibis, purple gallinule, anhinga, osprey, hawk.

tree snail gleams

in the leaf canopy—

stolen ghost orchid

And there were things I didn’t see—a panther, not even a bobcat. No pythons, either, those unwelcome visitors. I also explored the border of the park, agricultural lands that interrupt the water flow, the Redland area and Krome Avenue, nurseries I would have simply thought lush and charming if I hadn’t been focused on water drainage and wilderness preservation.

out of the palm trees

a peacock darts—escaped—

but from where?

There was a journal that each artist had written in. Alan Scott had suggested I not read it right away, and that was a good idea—I had my own experience first. It surprised me, though, when I did read it, how similar everyone’s experience was—the bliss of being in such beautiful surroundings combined with intense inspiration to create. The only conflict described, one which I shared, was whether to work or to jaunt about. One artist had drawn a detailed image of a green leaf and one of a snail.

only the most

delicate colored pencils

draw the tree snail’s shell

I felt a familiar twinge of jealousy—the ability to reproduce the world visually. Still, I found that here I was working as a poet almost the way painters must work going out, looking at something, recording it in my notebook.

hurricane downed

tree roots, nurse log

what green comes next...

.

tree canopy

butterfly, and purple glade

morning glory

.

rare buttonwood vine

looks like any foliage—

but rare...

.

a leaf drops in

the mahogany hammock—
without season

The artist who was in the apartment before me had left me a big board covered in foil. The first thing I did was put up a map of the Everglades. Then came photographs by my friend Mary Peck that had been exhibited at Miami-Dade Community College. The images of the park were in black and white, meditative long horizontals. Then I added three postcards of birds, including one ibis and one egret. I had trouble telling them apart and was plagued by not knowing what bird I’d actually seen. I kept changing them in a poem, changing the sound, trying to get it right. I hung up a pair of beautiful long beaded earrings and an even more lavish turquoise, white, yellow, red and black necklace. The ladies at the at the Miccosukee Indian cultural center had helped me match them. Over it all, I pinned up a painting of a model of the solar system. Why? I guess because I felt far from home but also at home in a vast space.

On the boat out of 10,000 Islands I met a family from Pasadena. The woman and I got to chatting, and at the end she exclaimed: “I’ve never met an author before!” I, on the other hand, had never seen white pelicans before—hundreds of them taking off from a sandbar.

raindrops’ circles—

yellow spatterdock flowers

floating green pads...

.

two shy vultures

pick raindrops

off the car’s roof

.

cypresses

drawn in an inky line,
overcast afternoon

.

leaf’s

drop tip

implies rain

by Miriam Sagan

Santa Fe, New Mexico
first published in Santa Fe Poetry Broadside 54 (2007)

Ingrid Kunschke: GINKGO BILOBA

.

One gust of wind and the ginkgo trees along the road scatter their leaves: golden birds, golden hearts against this azure sky. I snatch one out of the air and put it between the pages of my Moleskine. But I'm sorry to see its bright color vanish behind so dark a cover.

this ginkgo heart

abandoned, yet

unbroken

and claiming it

this brittle, brittle me

.

translated from the German by Ingrid Kunschke

.

.

.

Ginkgo biloba

Ein Windstoß und von den Ginkgos entlang der Straße trudeln Blätter herunter: goldene Vögel, goldene Herzen vor einem blauen Himmel. Ich fange eins aus der Luft und lege es zwischen die Seiten meines Moleskines. Aber es tut mir leid, seine leuchtende Farbe hinter einem so dunklen Einband verschwinden zu sehen.

.

this ginkgo heart

abandoned, yet

unbroken

and claiming it

this brittle, brittle me

.

by Ingrid Kunschke

Porta Westfalica, Germany

from Gekritzel im Maulwurfsheft, unpublished

Michael McClintock: ONCE IN A MEADOW, NEAR LOS OSOS

.

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the One who with a single thought filled the universe, God of the Exodus and the empty tomb:

In the year the snows came late and the coastal ranges alone made room for spring, many times dandelions delayed my journey, their faces all innocent, clean, wholesome—they called me off the road, they unraveled my purpose like a spool and threw away my coat, crowding in upon me, they and the daisies and the poppies—most especially the poppies, fields of them, in riot and aflame, wanton and loving with color.

My heart was rampant and willing and so into their beds I went radiant and sprawled naked among them, embraced and kissed, flaring like a candle.

God forgive me what was done among the dandelions, the wildflowers, most especially the poppies.

........a poppy . . .

................a field of poppies!

................the hills blowing with poppies!

.

by Michael McClintock

Fresno, California

first published in American Haibun & Haiga 4 (2003)

Jeffrey Woodward: DEAD LETTER OFFICE

Although you may count me among that number who are inclined to say, I would prefer not to, midway in my journey I do not find myself disoriented in a forest but here, in the Dead Letter Office, where the Fates, busily foreshortening somebody’s thread, have secured a position for me.

I often hear those white-robed and pale sisters over my shoulder, softly humming the Te Deum while employed at their spinning. Good Greek girls, they, too, are converted.

Meanwhile, my position is secure, for the sorting of this mail will not end. I almost said my purgatorial business but, in this trade, there is no cleansing. Instead, letter after letter with a bad or illegible address, with an intended recipient long departed – judgments for debts overdue, offerings of condolence, confessions of love: the destiny of every petition, no answer.

.

.

by Jeffrey Woodward

Detroit, Michigan

first published in Quartet (Teneriffe, Qld.: Post Pressed, 2008)

Ingrid Kunschke: ONE STEP ASIDE

.

The grey bundle, that I struggle not to get jostled against, moves doggedly down the shopping mile. Just in time I manage to step aside, then, pushed by still other people, yet more at ease, I can let my gaze wander freely.

'World champion' the bundle reads, in type you'd expect to see on tea boxes. Underneath it to one side there's a worn-out traveling bag. For a moment I walk neck and neck with the man who lugs this burden and notice the yellow headband with the three black dots around his brow. He doesn't scan the pavement with his walking stick; he pokes at it, rather, with all his might. Sounds like the crack of a whip. And on I go with the crowd, past rubbish and sun glasses that I don't want, never wanted at all, but to stop and pause is what I want, to watch that child over there almost dancing for about three steps: a little Turkish boy.

Now I'm ahead of the blind man. 'Either!' he shouts. But that's all he was going to say, and even the racket of his stick is drowned in the hustle and bustle in front of a new shop.

Only at night

do the streets exhale:
they shuffle, squeak, stomp
and patter like
small wheels
tired feet
tender children
hobnailed boots
but who
will lend his ear
will keep his eye on it

translated from the German by Ingrid Kunschke

.

.

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Ein Schritt zur Seite

Das graue Bündel, gegen das gedrängt zu werden ich mich wehre, bewegt sich beharrlich vor mir die Einkaufsstraße hoch. Gerade noch gelingt mir ein Schritt zur Seite, dann kann ich, von wieder anderen Leuten geschoben, aber jetzt ruhiger, meinen Blick frei schweifen lassen.

"Weltmeister" steht auf dem Bündel, in Lettern wie man sie auf Teekisten erwartet. Seitlich darunter klemmt eine abgenutzte Reisetasche. Kurz gehe ich gleichauf mit dem Mann, der daran schleppt, und sehe um seine Stirn das gelbe Band mit den drei schwarzen Punkten. Den Stock führt er nicht vor sich her; er stößt ihn mit Wucht seitlich aufs Pflaster. Ein Klacken wie Peitschenhiebe. Und weiter geht es mit dem Strom, vorbei an Ramsch und Sonnenbrillen, die ich gar nicht will, nie gewollt habe, stehenbleiben will ich, dem Kind zuschauen, das da gerade drei Schritte fast getänzelt ist: ein kleiner türkischer Junge.

Schon bin ich vor dem Blinden. "Entweder!" entfährt es ihm. Mehr kommt aber nicht, und auch das Klacken geht unter im Trubel vor einem neuen Geschäft.

Erst in der Nacht

atmen die Straßen aus:

ein Schlurfen, Quietschen, Poltern

und Trippeln

kleiner Räder

müder Füße

zarter Kinder

plumper Stiefel

aber wer

hält sein Ohr daran

hält seine Hand darüber

.

by Ingrid Kunschke

Porta Westfalica, Germany

Michael McClintock: HIS GRACE ON THEE

.

In Vietnam, skinny Alvin carried an M60 machine gun weighing 25 pounds and humped over a thousand miles. I remember his letters from the big base at Chu Lai, where his battalion stayed when not in the field. He always made it sound like he was having a party over there, but then would slip in how all he wanted to do when he got home was go fishing under some shade at Marble Lake, like he did regularly as a kid —which for him meant before he was drafted into the Army.

.

"Only this time," he would add, to make the point he wasn't a kid any more, "I think I'll bring some beer with me, and a girl . . . like maybe Janet." I remember that letter especially, that mention of Janet.

.

There were a few more letters after that one, and then his mom, over in Kinderhook, called and told me Alvin "had got himself hurt" and would be coming home from a hospital in Japan in a month or two. "Home to stay," she said. "My little boy . . ."

.

Alvin lived with his mom in Kinderhook until she died just a few years ago. Now he lives at a place called Parkland, over in Coldwater, where he has a room and some independence, and where on most fair-weather days you can find him there in a leafy green place thick with elderberry bushes and maple trees.

.

Janet and I make a point to visit Alvin about once a month; they won't allow us to bring him any beer. We do it anyway, because we love him.

long summer day . . .

launching worms into the pond,

a boy with a stick

by Michael McClintock

Fresno, California

first published in Modern Haiku, Summer 2001

Rona Laycock: ARRIVAL

We land with a bump and two hops, the wheels rumble below us and people at the back of the plane begin a round of applause that peters out before it reaches us. We rock to a stop and the cabin crew open the doors. Air, as thick as water and sauna hot, invades the cool dry space to which we have become accustomed. The first tentative sniffs of a place are always an adventure and Karachi is no exception.

invading our plane
dust and spices
from another world

The airport building rings with noise, its walls ping the shouts back and fore, back and fore. Confusion reigns around the baggage area but out of the turmoil a line of sorts forms and meanders uncertainly in the direction of officialdom.

A doe-eyed immigration officer sits in his cubicle: bang-bang, bang-bang, he stamps the documents. Each passport is perused, each face glanced at, bang-bang, bang-bang and we're processed.

The confusion of the arrivals hall gives way to chaos outside the building. Bodies weave through bodies in a blurred tapestry of many colours. Mostly men; small, dark and wiry with a way of snatching a living perfected over years of poverty and self-reliance.

Crowds consume the creeping taxis; buses bully their way through but even they have to admit defeat as family after family are reunited and celebrate with ululations, drumming and clapping. Pick-up trucks are laden with people singing and shouting; children slip through the legs of their parents like fish through seaweed. Touts and beggars and whole families down from the country to meet and greet or to say goodbye.

feet scuffing feet
avoiding
a fallen pigeon

by Rona Laycock
Avening, Gloucestershire, UK

Ingrid Kunschke: AUTUMN

.

On the first day of summer, on the calendar’s first day, my little girl fetched me a withered leaf.

"What about summer?" I read in her eyes.

Well, summer has come—she can wear her new dress—but while she runs across the orchard, assured of admiring glances, I hear autumn draw near in the high rustling grass. The morello cherry's twigs are no more now than fine strokes of the brush against the sky, with just a solid dark dot here and there where a fruit remains unpicked.

.

In the evening, when the light flows like honey, the last cherries are dipped in a warm glow. And the flock of pigeons flying low over me—even a single crow—carries in its feathers a hint of the radiance of these shorter days.

finally

having found myself

I clearly see

autumn's light here

is like fall’s back home

.

translated from German by Ingrid Kunschke

.
.
.
Herbst

Am ersten Sommertag laut Kalender brachte mein Töchterchen mir ein sprödes Blatt.

"Und der Sommer?" las ich in ihren Augen.

Der Sommer ist gekommen—sie kann ihr neues Kleidchen tragen —, aber wie sie der bewundernden Blicke sicher durch das hohe Gras läuft, höre ich darin das Rascheln des Herbstes. Die dünnen Zweige der Sauerkirsche sind nun nicht mehr als feine Pinselstriche am Himmel, mit nur hier und dort einem satten dunklen Punkt, wo noch eine Frucht hängen geblieben ist.

.

Abends, wenn das Licht wie Honig fließt, legt sich eine warme Glut über die letzten Kirschen. Auch der Taubenschwarm, der tief über mich hinweg fliegt —ja, sogar eine einzelne Krähe—trägt im Gefieder etwas vom Glanz der kürzeren Tage.

Jetzt, wo ich endlich

bei mir angekommen bin,

jetzt erst sehe ich:

das Herbstlicht hier ist genau

wie das Licht daheim im Herbst.

.

by Ingrid Kunschke

Porta Westfalica, Germany

first published in Vuursteen, Volume 24 Issue 2 (Summer 2004) in its Dutch version Herfst

Michael McClintock: INTERVAL

.
...............day’s end . . .
........the dog pokes his bowl
..........for something to eat

“Not yet,” I tell him. Movement in the kitchen window catches my eye and I walk to it, look quickly, and step outside.

My land falls in a gentle swale down to a paved road that divides the world into small dirt farms on one side and open range on the other. The sun is low and I squint, surprised by what I see.

open prairie . . .
in the summer wind
a golden horse

The horse was no dray or farmer’s nag. It was tall and broad, powerfully muscled in the chest and haunches. The sunlight bathed and burnished it with a luminous perfection. The beast’s natural color was white or cream, pure and flawless; perhaps it was a very light gray. I’d never before seen such a naturally poised and handsome animal. No saddle or bridle—nothing whatsoever to encumber that wild form, standing in the shaggy meadow.

The horse did not come alone.

My visitor appeared to come right up out of the ground and straight up the old wagon road, flapping like a bird, huge and ungainly, the Apocalypse itself yapping after him. Momentarily he was framed by the red, afternoon sky. I thought possibly I recognized him, but I was cautious.

He was dressed all in black, clothes three or four sizes too big. His right hand clamped down on the flat crown of a canvas hat, the long fingers splayed out, as if stretching to cover every inch possible, the hat’s wide brim catching the wind and wanting to fly off his head. He held his left arm like a rudder or balancing beam, now bent at the elbow, now extended straight, the heavy cloth of his suit snapping and tugging at his long, skinny limbs. His gait was steady and powerful but seeming to be at all angles, he struggled so with the wind that buffeted him. Where I stood there was not the slightest breeze.

.....a grasshopper
.....jumps into it:
.....the gathering dusk

He looked like a gaunt country preacher, one of those lonely souls that follow the seasons and go town to town, exhorting all who would listen, except that he lacked the cleric’s white collar and carried no book that I could see. He brought no sheaves with him, as it were. His feet were huge, encased in rough, square shoes—it seemed as though those colossal feet were the sole reason he maintained his hold upon the earth at all. And hold it was, more than just the force of gravity. But for his awkwardness, and his flailing limbs, one might have thought that he was dancing . . . there was a wild rhythm in his movements and progress up the road.

At each step rose a puff of dust, much like those I had seen made by big raindrops on that same road, or in the dirt in the side yard of the house. But these were heavier, almost sticky, and elastic like smoke. The wind tore them away from under his feet and sent them smoldering into the grass, like wisps from the hot embers a prairie fire leaves behind.

“This your farm?” he was asking; he repeated this question several times before I took it in. “I think you know who I am, and why I’m here.” He spoke with a drawl, and though the words came slowly, almost casually, there was a distinct, odd undercurrent of being somehow in a hurry, of restrained impatience, but a desire to be finished quickly with what he had come to do.

“No,” I lied. “I don’t.”

“Oh, I think you do. Sure, you do.” This he said matter-of-factly. I resented his tone, and his sureness.

“Maybe you’d rather ride?” he asked. He gave a long backward glance to the horse, now a quarter mile away. It was a disconcerting gesture; his eye seemed to stretch out from its socket more than it should, giving his face a mawkish expression.

“No, no, I do not, Sir,” I hesitated, wondering at this statement and my own formality. “I have work yet to do, to finish,” I said. “And a dog that wants feeding.”

He appeared astonished. “A dog?” His clothes dropped limp in folds about his frame as the wind stopped. “Do you know what traveling I’ve done to get here?”

His voice had changed in register to that of a nine or ten year old boy. I saw then that his face was hairless—no eyelashes, no discernible eyebrows, no indication of any kind of beard or facial hair. His hands were hairless. There was hair on his head only, wiry and grizzled, sticking out from his hat brim over his ears, with a large number of renegade strands, thin as corn silk, mere filaments, that drifted out from his head and glinted, as if tipped in a copper wash. His gray eyes were like pools under an overcast sky in which nothing dropped or thrown could ever make a ripple.

“Have you come far?” I asked.

The question baffled him. “You’re not what I expected, “he said, and we took measure of each other. There was no shadow between us now.

“Nor are you,” I confessed, “—what I expected. You know, one day we had to meet. It was always somewhere ahead of us.”

“Perhaps it’s this place,” he said, “these circumstances I didn’t expect, more so than you . . .” He did not finish this confused thought.

I shrugged, feeling some sympathy for him.

“I thought there’d be a struggle in the end!” he blurted. “A fight!”

“That would be meaningless,” I said, stating the obvious, making my voice as calm as I could. I did not wish to be harsh about it.

“The banality of it!” he cried.

“Yes, there is that . . . But have you looked at yourself lately? And look at me!”

“But isn’t this what is called a dirt farm? And what is that miserable town over the hill there?”

“Quealy,” I answered him. “Quealy, Wyoming.” He was grasping at his pride, and he found it wanting. “There’s a kind of perfection to the simplicity of it, isn’t there?” I coaxed. “The future was never ours to see.”

A few more words, and I went into the house and got the shotgun from its place under the wall clock. I checked both chambers and rejoined him outside. “We can be quick about this,” was the last thing I said to him.

I buried the body in the side yard that same hour, just as night fell, then went into the house to feed the dog. I confess I gave no thought to the horse.

not knowing
what more to do
. . . crickets

by Michael McClintock
Fresno, California
first published in Modern Haiku

Jeffrey Harpeng: LIBERATION

.

On the mani stone by the pathway is a Buddhist prayer for the peace and liberation of all beings. A couple with dogs on leashes pass by. I am following the Avon down to the daffodil lawn where I said goodbye to her, five years ago. On top of the stone somebody has twined supple pine branches and set in feathers and a cone to form a kind of crown. For the once and future king.

Om mani padme hum, the prayer is written. The sky is frosted blue. There is a giddiness in me as if I had just filled with my breath a hundred balloons for a child’s party. Under the grass daffodil bulbs await the spring sun.

a frosted blue balloon
drifts into a vacant lot

by Jeffrey Harpeng
Macgregor, Qld., Australia

Barbara A. Taylor: THOSE GOOD OLD SCHOOL DAYS

Mother talks to me of walks to her country school, along honeysuckled-scented lanes of hawthorns and high hedges, collecting chestnuts on the way, to skin and string, to play conkers with our aunt Serena. She asks, “Remember, you sat behind me?” Then, silence. She looks away. She dislikes me watching her walking in and out of heir-loomed rooms, lost, looking for something familiar. Today, with glee, she screams she’s found me: “Ah, there you are, Serena!”

her sister is dead
has been for ten years
and I am
my mother’s
darling daughter

by Barbara A Taylor

Mountain Top, NSW, Australia

Roberta Beary: DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

We are at the mother of all sales, scrunched up against the hats, the no-good, the bad and the downright ugly. Try this one, she orders, and this, and this. There is no room to move, let alone try something on. With stone face, I lift my hands and obey. She is, after all, my big sister. Buy the red one, she points, yelling for all to hear, it makes your nose look less big.
.
.

snow-mush
my neighbor's tree kicked
to the curb

by Roberta Beary
Washington, D.C.
first published in Shamrock Haiku Journal 6

Roger Jones: ICU

A warm light and the night nurse in the hall padding by. I’m hooked to machines with changing green numbers, tubes in both hands. Heartbeat and blood pressure steady. Drifting into the harbor of sleep.

schoolyard dream
laughter echoing
through fog

by Roger Jones
New Braunfels, Texas

Ingrid Kunschke: MARKET DAY

For as long as I’ve been lining up at the Turkish deli stand, I haven’t seen the old lady across the aisle serve customers. On a folding table she’s arranged plastic baskets with plums, blueberries and green grapes. A zinc bucket with flowers is standing to her left. I spot some cosmos and a pretty weed. The woman weighs out the same pears time and again. A little while ago she flashed me a glance, to see if I might need anything, but I said no with a regretful smile.

Nobody’s heading for the stall next to her either. Over there, in front of a van, cartons and wired baskets filled with eggs are placed on shelves supported by two timber trestles. A hunchbacked old dear keeps bustling about busily between the car and her display. To do so, she leans on the foremost shelf with her knuckles, making the eggs bop up and down whenever she swings aside a bit.

I have another olive. There! Someone’s actually pushing his bike towards the fruit stall. He orders plums and gets four, five hand-picked grapes on top. —Why! The idea! But with their faint glow among the plums’ purple velvet the old lady wins me over for good. Sei Shōnagon’s robes cross my mind and the shades of a worn out cabbage white. Next I find the cream-white semolina pudding glazed with cherries and their black sheen. And then without fail I’m reminded of my daughter’s hair, sparking with sunlight.

still unaware
of losing her brows
my darling girl
skips a rope, kicks a ball,
comes in tired

.

translated from the German by Ingrid Kunschke

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.

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Markt

Solange ich nun beim türkischen Feinkostwagen anstehe, habe ich das Mütterchen gegenüber keine Kunden bedienen sehen. Auf einem Klapptisch hat es ein paar Schalen mit Zwetschgen, Heidelbeeren und hellen Trauben aufgebaut. Zu seiner Linken steht ein Zinkeimer mit Blumen. Cosmea erkenne ich, und ein hübsches Unkraut. Umständlich wiegt die Frau ein ums andere mal dieselben Birnen ab. Vorhin hat sie zu mir herübergeschaut, ob ich nichts brauche, aber ich habe mit bedauerndem Lächeln verneint.

Auch an den Stand neben ihr tritt niemand heran. Vor einem Lieferwagen stehen dort Pappen und Drahtkörbe voller Eier auf locker über zwei Holzböcke verlegten Brettern. Eine krummgewachsene Alte wuselt geschäftig zwischen Wagen und Auslage umher. Dazu stützt sie sich mit Fäusten auf dem vorderen Brett ab, so daß die Eier leicht wippen, wenn sie sich ein Stück zur Seite schwingt.

Ich nehme mir noch eine Olive. Da schiebt tatsächlich jemand sein Rad an den Obststand heran. Der Kunde kauft Zwetschgen und bekommt als Zugabe vier, fünf handverlesene Trauben mit in die Schale gelegt.—Was für eine Idee! Aber dieses matte Leuchten auf dem samtenen Dunkellila nimmt mich noch mehr für das Mütterchen ein. Sei Shōnagons Gewänder kommen mir in den Sinn, und die Schattierungen eines müden Kohlweißlings, über die ich zum Cremeweiß von Grießpudding finde, glasiert mit Kirschen, so dunkel, daß ein Flor über ihnen liegt. Und unweigerlich dann das Haar meiner Tochter, von dem im Sonnenlicht die Funken sprühen.

still unaware
of losing her brows
my darling girl
skips a rope, kicks a ball,
comes in tired

.

by Ingrid Kunschke

Porta Westfalica, Germany

Michael McClintock: GREAT ROCKAWAY

.

tin cans rattling

in a bag—the music

of Paradise

I'd been retired for a month and it was time to arrange for the payout of those special investment funds I'd squirreled away for the past 20 years to supplement the meager pension. Several of my work colleagues had done the same, and from one of them, who heard of my plans, I received this strange letter:

.

I, too, had funds with "Great Rockaway." Let me know what you plan to do when you at last come to realize it was all a myth, a spun-sugar fantasy. I could have warned you about all this, but decided not to, as I wanted to observe how you would react to the situation—a sort of a rat-in-the-maze kind of problem. I have always had a clinical-type interest in you, not unlike the entomologist's feelings for his subject. This should now get really interesting. Thank you for bringing me such happiness and pleasure.

.

.......................................................................................Yours, —

.

I folded the note away and made a quick, uneventful trip to Glendale. I easily found Central Avenue and drove on to 500 North Central, where I saw a large building with a strange shifting sort of sign. I could never quite catch the name of the building. I parked in a trash truck lot conveniently nearby and trekked to 500 North Central.

ah the city

tumbles under

the sun in

blue gulfs

of air

Once there I took the elevator to the 2nd floor, expecting to find room 220. I went down the hall to the right of the elevator, and found 200 and 210, but no 220. So I went to the left of the hall and found 230 and 240, but no 220. All the doors were locked so I could get no help. I went down to the lobby but it was abandoned. There I found an old gent leaning on his broom, apparently a custodian. I asked him where I might find the Great Rockaway office, or room 220. He asked if I had tried the 5th floor. I said no; he said you might try that.

I went up to the fifth floor and found only scaffolding and construction, but no people. No 220. I went back down to the lobby and found the old gent again. I told him I could not find 220 on the fifth floor. He looked bemused and shook his said saying, "Hmmm, it was there last week." He thought a while and said a lot of times people came in and couldn't find 220. He said it seemed to move and shift and some never found it. I said I HAD to find 220! As all my money was there. He asked if it was much money. I said it was to me.

He could tell I was quite agitated and said I might go try 260½. Sometimes people got help there. He said the entrance to 260½ was off a janitor's closet and pointed the direction. I made my way there and up a flight and a half of stairs until I found a door labeled 260½. I timidly opened the door, and found a ceiling only four or five feet high—it was a half floor! I crouched my way in and saw no one. On a desk was a stack of papers saying "Take One," then some complicated directions on this half floor that would lead to room 220. I worked my way from there, following the instructions.

I began to smell the warm aromas of comforting food. I approached a door and emerged—into a MC DONALD'S! I turned over the instruction sheet and found a coupon for free French fries with the words "We have moved and have no forwarding location. Enjoy the fries. Great Rockaway."

Bereft, I made my way back to where I had parked. As I walked by 500 North Central the sign continued to shift — it seemed to be winking at me. My car was gone and the lot locked. I walked over to the Glendale Library, where I sit now. I booted Miss Ross off an internet computer and got into my email via MailStart. I am going out to pick up cans and see if I can make cab fare back to my place. Wish me luck.

Animal Control

took my cat this morning

my caged bird stopped singing

months ago

now I’m alone and bitter

by Michael McClintock

Fresno, California

Rona Laycock: RICE PUDDING AT THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

We pause at the top, like on the best roller-coaster, then we are off. The death trap, rattle-box taxi takes the bends wide, a wheel is airborne, hovering above a rusting hulk that did not make the corner last year.

Fear has an interesting taste, a metallic tang at the back of the tongue. Another bend, another prayer to whomever may be listening. We are at the mercy of a maniac who puts the car into neutral and switches off the engine for the downhill run.

everlasting journey
promised by each hairpin
to the careless traveller

Peter loses his nerve and screams at the driver who rolls his eyes and asks, "Why engine? No need, this way cheaper!"

dust covered Death
scythes through time
driving a taxi

Images flash by: a burqa clad woman, children playing with chicken heads, fat-tailed sheep, Lee Enfield rifles carried with enviable nonchalance and a Liverpool Football Club shirt.

We reach the city. Outside a bank a line of hippies wait to cable Mom and Dad back home to send more money. Their speech is slurred and dotted with 'Cool man,' 'That's radical, man,' and 'He sells the best shit this side of 'Nam, man'. We head for Chicken Street to find a cheap hotel where we can revel in being the only non-Afghanis in the place. A welcoming pot of Jasmine tea and the journey is forgotten for a while.

'Sigi's Restaurant:
Good Food and Rice Pudding'
unexpected in Kabul

by Rona Laycock
Avening, Gloucestershire, UK

Ingrid Kunschke: AIR

.

This isn't some fancy sleight of hand, is it? The walls of the stuffy room I lurch across in my dream are falling apart in a whirl of tiny pieces. From now on I dream myself in an airy place, enclosed only by a few roller shades dangling from nowhere and representing a door and windows. The breeze passes through freely and makes their shadows dance. Farther and still farther they unroll, while the pattern of their fabric becomes ever richer. What was linen is now damask and brocade, now silk undulating lavishly like sleeves of Chinese princesses. No fabric would be precious enough to hint at this fresh air. I inhale it greedily and widen myself like the breezy room. Relieved I stop sweating at last.

.

At breakfast then the new heat record. And as usual two sandwiches with tea and two, one and two drags of the brown, purple and blue asthma-spray.

from abroad

a parcel maybe

with a fan:

the coolness I'd feel

unwrapping

translated from the German by Ingrid Kunschke

.

.

Luft

.

Das wird doch kein Trick sein? Die Wände des stickigen Zimmers, durch das ich mich im Traum schleppe, zerfallen in einen Wirbel kleinster Schnipsel. Von jetzt an träume ich mir einen luftigen Raum, eingefaßt nur von wenigen Rollos, die aus dem Nichts herunterbaumeln und für Tür und Fenster stehen. Der Wind weht frei hindurch, läßt ihre Schatten träge tanzen. Immer länger rollen sie sich ab, reicher werden die Muster ihrer Stoffe. Was eben noch Leinen war, wird Damast und Brokat, verwandelt sich in leichte Seide und wallt, als wären es Ärmel chinesischer Prinzessinnen, in fließenden Bahnen herab. Kein Material ist kostbar genug, die frische Luft anzudeuten; ich sauge sie begierig ein, weite mich wie der durchwehte Raum. Erleichtert, höre ich endlich auf zu schwitzen.

.

Beim Frühstück dann die neuen Hitzerekorde. Und wie immer zwei Stullen, dazu Tee und je zwei, einen und zwei Hübe vom braunen, lilanen und blauen Asthmaspray.

Aus Übersee

ein Päckchen vielleicht

darin ein Fächer:

welche Kühle würde mir

schon beim Öffnen zuteil

.

by Ingrid Kunschke

Porta Westfalica, Germany

first published in Haiku heute, September 2006

Jeffrey Winke: REFLECTIVE TAPE STRIPES AROUND EACH LEG

With the 18-inch red glowing parking wand visible, the stout presence of Ernest stands solid in the dark boulevard wearing his fluorescent-yellow breathable safety pants with two horizontal reflective tape stripes around each leg that makes him feel god-like powerful while directing the steady flow of luxury automobiles streaming their headlights into the gated parking lot where he occasionally—just for fun—halts a shiny black Jaguar XK to a full stop to leer at the strapless twenty-something trophy sitting in the passenger seat while growling "you gotta slow down, bud-DEE" to the silver-haired captain of industry who glares at Ernest with utmost contempt.

closing time
bartender collects empties
filled with stories

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Cherie Hunter Day: MOCKINGBIRD

You're a lovely liar on this moonlit night. I detect snippets of cricket, cell phone, and crow in your repertoire. Is this a spicy spring accent or just vocal graffiti? Repeating it doesn't make the meaning any clearer. We could go to the park for a tête-à-tête or you could teach me to whistle. Then I'd have something to add. Or maybe we can make tapes of quiet conversations and play them back at half speed. Voices are sexier in the lower register. Yes, I'm on the edge of my chair. What more can I say?

nuptials
her bouquet brimming
with gardenias

by Cherie Hunter Day
San Diego, California

Announcement: KIKAKUZA HAIBUN CONTEST—ENGLISH SECTION

Kikakuza is a group of haikai (linked-verse) poets founded in 2005 in honour of Kikaku (1661~1707), Basho’s celebrated disciple. We wish to help revive the tradition of haibun which gradually went out of favour after the Meiji Restoration. For this purpose, we have created a Haibun Contest and invite foreign writers to enter. The contest will be judged by Nobuyuki Yuasa and Stephen Henry Gill. The results of the contest will be announced in the Kikakuza Bulletin and on its homepage, and awards will be sent directly to the winners. All entries must meet the following conditions.

1 Subject: Free, but discretion must be used to avoid slander and obscenity.

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2 Style: No restrictions, but special attention must be paid to honour the spirit of haikai.

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3 Length: Not more than 30 lines, each line of not more than 80 spaces long.

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4 Haiku: At least one haiku should be included.

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5 Format: Print on a sheet of A4 size paper and write at the bottom your name and your pen name if you have any, together with your address and telephone number. Your privacy will be strictly protected, and the judges will not see your names.

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6 Deadline: All entries should reach the following address by 31 January 2009. Entries received after this date will not be accepted. Kikakuza (c/o Kifuu Futagami)117-1 Nakogi, Hadano-shi, Kanagawa-ken, Japan 257-0024

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7 Entry Fee: All entrants residing in Japan are kindly requested to pay 2000 yen into the following postal money order account and send Kikakuza a receipt (or a copy of it) together with your haibun.Postal Money Order: 00250-4-95332 Kikaku no KaiNo entry fee will be requested from those living abroad. We cannot accept personal checks because it is so costly to process them.

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8 Questions: All questions should be sent to the Kikakuza address above or by fax to the following number: 0463-82-6315.

Jeffrey Harpeng: HORSE TALE

a wild horse
galloping toward me
granddad’s fingers

The mantle clock chimes as if it were an omen in a fairy tale. The opening notes of a slow waltz. Blue notes. How beautifully the mermaid dances on pain made out of daggers. How the tin soldier’s lead heart is heavy as ammunition. How the beanstalk winds toward heaven lithe as smoke from a smelter’s chimney. How I listen as my fingers gallop toward my granddaughter, off the table and on out the window.

Outside the almost laughter of a kookaburra, the supernatural quardle of magpies and her answering the “h-h-h-oo” welling from the hearts of the doves.

by Jeffrey Harpeng
Macgregor, Qld., Australia

Michael McClintock: KOI IN WINTER

.

It's true — a snowflake screams as it enters water.

.

George had read my haibun about the dish at Arecibo that listens to the stars. "This is the other end of the spectrum — micro sound."

.

George smiled at my alarm. We were in his backyard, near the koi pool, testing the sensitivity of sound equipment he was engineering for the next Martian probe, intended for landing at that planet's southern pole.

.

"What do you make of it?" he asks. "I thought you'd appreciate it. Our senses are gross. Imagine a disk the size of a quarter. Lay a human hair on it. The human hair represents the breadth of what we see and hear of the world. Poets write about the human hair—that's all." He said this teasingly; he was always at me about my interest in poetry. "Of course, you're welcome to it. But for me that's not enough data to draw conclusions."

.

I am unnerved by what I hear. Snowflakes are falling into a shallow pan of water. Thin, insulated wires run from the pan to a book-sized electronic device, into which our earphones are jacked.

.

George sniffs the air, like a dog. "Perfect conditions today, just a few flakes falling." He turns to his meter. "Here, listen to this . . ."

.

I hear heavy panes of glass falling into a street and look at him in disbelief. There is screaming among the falling shards.

.

" . . . a snowflake hitting this little metal plate," he says.

.

That was four weeks ago. I gaze over the wall into his yard, at the wind-sculpted white. I listen to the sifting shadows. A bright half-moon shines hard in the dogwood tree, a splintered wedge.

.

I keep going back to what George had asked so casually. I wonder what he meant when he said, "What do you make of it?"

..............................................do they dream?
...........................................................the fish pond

...........................................................deep under snow

by Michael McClintock
Fresno, California
first published in Frogpond, V25, N1, February 2002

Ingrid Kunschke: RANDOM NOISE

.

I can't recall her face or the way she was dressed, but this much I know for certain: I watched a bag lady push her shopping cart along this road. The point is, she vanished before my very eyes.

There's a deserted bird's nest in a tree over here. It's got tangled audio tapes woven in and dull pieces of plastic. I can go there and assure myself of that. In fact, I do so every once in a while. And those tapes, should I play them, might even hold some random noise. At least, that's what I like to imagine. It would be nice for the wind to add his own recordings: clicking sounds of marbles, a blackbird in alarm.

Sure enough, that woman must have been here, even if nothing indicates so. Did she leave the road untouched then? Perhaps she just passed through that world of hers, truly visible only to those who are lost as well.

flips me

a bird,

some character

acting

in a graffiti

blown

to the bus shelter:

more leaves

and yesterday's

fading headlines

gossamer

clinging to my face—

tired

I give into

a catchy tune

translated from the German by Ingrid Kunschke

.

.

Rauschen

An ihr Gesicht oder ihren Aufzug erinnere ich mich nicht, ich weiß es aber doch ganz genau: Ich sah eine Stadtstreicherin ihren Einkaufswagen diese Straße entlang schieben. Die Sache ist die, sie löste sich vor meinen Augen auf.

In einem Baum hier ist ein verlassenes Nest. Verhedderte Tonbänder sind darin verwoben und stumpfe Plastikfetzen. Ich kann hingehen und mich davon überzeugen. Hin und wieder mache ich das sogar. Und die Bänder, spulte ich sie ab, dürften noch irgendein Rauschen von sich geben. Das zumindest bilde ich mir gern ein. Schön wäre, der Wind spielte das Seine darüber: Murmelklicken, eine schlagende Amsel.

Die Frau wird tatsächlich dagewesen sein, wenn auch nichts darauf hindeutet. Ob sie die Straße denn gar nicht richtig berührt hat? Vielleicht ist sie ja schlicht durch ihre Welt gegangen, wirklich sichtbar nur für die, die ebenfalls verloren sind.

Zeigt mir

den Stinkefinger,

so'n Typ

den's ja nur gibt

in einem Graffiti

Hingeweht

zum Buswartehäuschen:

mehr Blätter

und die verblassenden

Schlagzeilen von gestern

Herbstfäden

kleben mir im Gesicht—

müde

gebe ich mich

einem Ohrwurm hin

by Ingrid Kunschke

Porta Westfalica, Germany

Ingrid Kunschke: FORGET-ME-NOTS

.

I've discovered something that makes it easier for me to run my errands on busy Saturdays: of late there's been a flower lady in a deep doorway between the upper and lower city. Her eyes are the color of water. Her skin is translucent; her hair, a bob, almost white. She doesn't need a stall; she's only got this one bunch of flowers anyway. Coming from above, you won't notice her, neither from below—she's standing too far in the niche. That's why I walk slowly uphill across the marketplace until, in her shy way, she moves closer at last. Without a word she then shows me her flowers. Just for a moment though, so that I won't try to take them.

blue flowers
tied with a ribbon, softer
than a sigh—
.........without you blue hours
.........will never go by

So today it's a sighing little bunch. The last one, with the anemones, had been dreaming. At times the old lady weaves in some brighter flowers; even so her bouquets always remind me of bruises. She never talks. And I don't buy it; she's not standing by her post for such a petty sale. She just wants her flowers to be seen, and I come to catch a glimpse of them before immersing myself in the restless city.

.

.

translated from the German by Ingrid Kunschke

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.

Vergißmeinnicht

.

Ich habe etwas entdeckt, das es mir erleichtert, im samstäglichen Getummel Besorgungen zu machen: In einem tiefen Hauseingang zwischen Ober- und Unterstadt steht neuerdings eine Blumenfrau. Ihre Augen sind wasserfarben. Ihre Haut ist durchscheinend, das Haar, ein Bubikopf, nahezu weiß. Einen Stand braucht sie nicht; sie hat ja nur das eine Sträußchen dabei. Kommt man von oben heran, sieht man sie nicht, und auch von unten her kaum—sie steht zu weit in der Türnische drin. Deshalb gehe ich langsam vom Markt her hinauf, bis sie in ihrer scheuen Art doch weiter hervortritt. Still hält sie mir dann ihr Sträußchen entgegen. Aber nur kurz, damit ich's ihr nicht etwa nehme.

Um Vergißmeinnicht

ein Band gewunden, zarter

als ein Flehen—

........die vielen blauen Stunden

........die ohne Dich vergehen

Heute ist's also ein seufzendes Sträußchen. Das vorige, mit den Waldanemonen, hat geträumt. Ein andermal waren kräftigere Blumen mit hineingewirkt; die Gebinde erinnern trotzdem immer an blaue Flecken. Die Frau spricht niemanden an. Und ich nehme ihr nicht ab, daß sie dort stundenlang ausharrt, um einen so kleinen Handel zu treiben. Nein, sie will ihre Blumen nur zeigen, und mir genügt ein kurzer Blick. Jetzt bin ich gerüstet für meinen Gang durch die rastlos summende Stadt.

.

by Ingrid Kunschke

Porta Westfalica, Germany
first published in Haiku heute, September 2006

Editorial: TANKA PROSE AND HAIBUN TODAY

Attentive readers of Haibun Today, noting recent references to tanka prose, may well ask, “What is tanka prose? Does it differ from haibun?” The short answer is relatively simple. Tanka prose is the marriage of prose and tanka. This distinguishes our subject from haibun, the marriage of prose and haiku.

Isn’t that a rather superficial distinction that serves only to multiply categories arbitrarily? Both combine prose with verse. Why not simply call both haibun?

Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova (1295 M.E.) employs such poetic forms as the canzone and sonnet in its prose commentary. One model for Dante’s Italian achievement was that of the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius (524 M.E.), a meditative Latin prose tract that is illustrated by various classical meters like the elegiac couplet or the Catullan hendecasyllable. Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (1230 M.E.) is only one of many Old Norse-Icelandic sagas that join alliterative meters, such as drôttkvætt, to prose narrative. While these compositions all wed prose to differing verse forms, I doubt that the average reader of Haibun Today would seriously advance such famous works of world literature as examples of haibun.

The anonymous Tales of Ise compiles many discrete prose episodes, each accompanied by one or more tanka, while Ki no Tsurayuki’s Tosa Diary is a travelogue in diary form with many tanka. Both of these works date from the 10th century in Japan. Such writings qualify as early masterpieces of tanka prose. But if Tales of Ise incorporates tanka while haibun incorporates haiku—tanka and haiku being closely related Japanese verse forms—again, someone will ask, why not simply name both haibun?

First, Matsuo Bashō is the earliest poet to place haiku in a prose composition, thereby inventing haibun. Bashō lived in the 17th century—seven centuries after the masterpieces of tanka prose that we mention above and many centuries after the various European prose and verse works that we cite. For the poets who wrote Tales of Ise and Tosa Diary, the terms haiku and haibun quite simply did not exist.

Second, if we compare prose writings that include many tanka as against prose writings that include other types of verse, we discover that the presence of a specific verse form is not without influence on its immediate prose environment. Compare Bashō’s Knapsack Notebook to Dante’s La Vita Nuova. Bashō’s haiku and Dante’s canzoni will not sanction similar prose styles. Now compare the prose in Knapsack Notebook to that of the Diary of Izumi Shikibu (circa 1003 M.E.); the contrast in gender and social milieu answers for some of the difference between these two poets, yes, but the nearly 150 tanka in the court lady’s diary suffuse the whole with a very elegant, urbane and intelligent lyricism that lies quite outside of the rusticity and self-denial, whether real or feigned, of Bashō’s haikai.

Why is Haibun Today then engaged in publishing and otherwise promoting the genre of tanka prose? What right does tanka prose have to a place in a journal that is devoted to haibun?

I started publishing tanka prose in Haibun Today in late 2007. I’d recently published an essay on the subject in Modern English Tanka and had been writing tanka prose myself for some months prior. I began a private correspondence with a handful of other poets who shared my interest and we worked quietly together. No journal regularly published tanka prose at that time, so Haibun Today established itself as “tanka prose central”—by default. Since then, and partly as a result of the same small group of poets directing their submissions to other venues, Modern English Tanka, Contemporary Haibun Online, Lynx and Atlas Poetica now also publish tanka prose regularly.

The curious reader may well inquire, “Does tanka prose offer something haibun cannot? And, for that matter, does tanka prose promise something that tanka alone does not?”

For reasons not entirely clear to me, tanka more easily adhere to other tanka than one haiku to another; tanka more readily join together in sequences or sets than do haiku. Compare the classical norms for tanka and haiku—31 and 17 syllables respectively—and one sees that a tanka is roughly double the length of haiku. Tanka is at once more expansive and more lyrical. This is not to say that one form is superior necessarily but to recognize that tanka and haiku have differing properties.

Modern haibun in which numerous haiku occur uninterrupted by prose are quite rare. Even examples where two or three haiku follow in succession are infrequent. Jim Norton offered a haibun with haiku sequence entitled “Sandscript” in Pilgrim Foxes (2001). Ken Jones did something similar in “Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made Of” in The Parsley Bed (2006). Ruth Franke, as translated from the German by David Cobb, recently wrote the same in “Summit Ice.” Even in the classical haibun of Matsuo Bashō, haiku in sequence are found only in Kashima Journal and Sarashina Journal. The reader will often sense in these works that the haiku are fused together by an act of the poet’s will, that the haibun on close examination demonstrates the poet’s ingenuity and constitutes a tour de force.

What of tanka prose then? Because tanka do combine readily, because tanka are more expansive (and dramatically more so in sequence), the prose component can better sustain an elevated or poetic diction in response to the verse’s call. This kind of heightened prose must be very abbreviated in haibun, for the bare haiku will not support such tension for long. So this is one quality that tanka prose offers that haibun cannot.

Because tanka do join together so successfully, in the classical and medieval periods, the Japanese court established the series of 100 tanka as a kind of standard and one that poets often achieved alone or in collaboration. Modern tanka sequences of commensurable length are not unheard of. Since this is so, what can prose – or, more pointedly, tanka prose—offer that tanka alone cannot? One striking property of tanka prose is the counterpoint of the two modes, verse and prose. Another noteworthy property is the qualitative difference in the transition from prose to tanka (or vice versa) as against the transition from tanka to tanka within a tanka set.

Since tanka prose straddles two literary disciplines, that of haibun and tanka, does it lay a special claim upon the allegiance of both haibuneers and tanka poets?

I believe it does. Specifically, writers of haibun can learn a great deal by reading tanka prose and comparing its best examples to the best haibun. The number and placement of tanka in relation to the prose is critical in the composition of tanka prose, a matter that forces itself upon the practitioner rather early on. Haibun, I am sorry to say, is far too often written by communal habit to the proven formula of one brief paragraph, one haiku, fini. Because this is so, haibuneers rarely examine the possibilities of varying the placement or number of the haiku.

But what claim does tanka prose have upon the practicing tanka poet? I’ve mentioned already what it offers, from the standpoint of form, that tanka alone does not. It broadens the formal possibilities of the tanka genre, in brief. Beyond that opportunity, however, tanka prose promises to reclaim tanka’s venerable past, for tanka came to maturity with its prose accompaniment, whether in the form of a memoir or a romance, a poem-tale or a military chronicle.

And what of haibun then? If tanka prose is all that I say, what will become of haibun? Haibun and tanka prose share a common identity as Japanese hybrids that wed prose and verse. Their respective preferences for haiku and tanka lend not only the relevant verse’s name to the hybrid form but some quality or spirit of that verse as well. I once spoke of haibun as “terra incognita—vast and only marginally explored.” I might apply the same description to tanka prose. Both forms are relatively new in English practice—less than 50 years old! Each form has strengths; each has limitations. I’m confident that both will be here for a rather long stay, indeed.

by Jeffrey Woodward
Detroit, Michigan