Deidra Greenleaf Allan: THE STONES OF WICKLOW

The car stops so I can get out. Crossing the black belt of highway that girdles these moors, I step onto the bog, whose thick moss pelt gives way beneath me as I climb. On the summit I find them, sitting atop a boulder, looking east over the low-breasted hills toward Mullaghcleevaun Mountain. The sky is bleak and ceremonial. Clouds cling to the crests as if unable to tear themselves away. In the eerie silence, only my labored breath and stumbling footsteps. Despite the commotion, their granite faces remain fixed on the horizon. I long to ask them what is theirs alone to know, to touch their old, grey lichened faces, but I am afraid to put my human scent upon them.

On this hilltop
no sound but the distant
car radio.

by Deidra Lyngard
Flourtown, Pennsylvania

Gina: AROUND TOWN

I hesitate.

Stepping sideways through the unfamiliar door, I shuffle between sagging, purpose-built shelves, moving slowly to give my eyes time to adjust. A spill of cracked spines, piled one on top of the other bulging floor-to-ceiling marked by the occasional cock-eyed, hand-written sign, a promise of some kind of order.

shadows
curtain the alcove—
a beard coughs

Sections run into each other; Literature, Do-It-Yourself, History, Cooking is separated from Self Help turning a corner

You will find Tasmania along a wall down the hallway, past a sprawling jumble of random miscellany and comics. There is nothing here for me. I head for the street.

Fantasy
by the disappearing staircase
I hesitate.

by Gina
Launceton, Tasmania, Australia
first published in Moonset, May 2008

Ruth Holzer: PROSPER STREET, NEW BRUNSWICK

I had a summer job at the psych lab, feeding white rats and cleaning cages, and managed to find a place in the most desirable student residence in town: a spacious four-story house, with a yard, external staircases, odd corners, porches front and back, side entrances, and basement rooms. A crowd of people lived there, coming and going without getting in each other’s way. We might have appeared to be average, some of us even below; but out of that house came artists, actors, and a philosophy professor.

from my cubicle
a view
of the parking lot

by Ruth Holzer
Herndon, Virginia

Deidra Greenleaf Allan: CAPE MAY

The fuschia and lavender facades of the Victorian B & Bs stare out across Beach Avenue, porches salt grizzled and blown with snow. From my window, nothing but cloud-packed sky and empty avenues. Even the seagulls hang in the sky as if painted. The whole town holds itself, like Hokusai’s wave, in frozen anticipation.

My pen
on the table
full of ink

by Deidra Lyngard
Flourtown, Pennsylvania

Ken Jones: THE PROJECT

Rising eight hundred feet from the sheep-scattered pastures, oak, ash and birch, how skeletal and delicate they look, under rolling clouds, and framed in the study window.

Pink multi file
the worn elastic
snapped

Dog-eared foolscap of eleven sections. For a paper man a cardboard grave. Still filled with the previous project, a workshop on the Three Heavenly Messengers of Sickness, Old Age, & Death. What a jolly group that was—all things considered. The paper for recycling, but the leftover paper clips into the “Cough Lozenges” tin. After nearly eighty years what a relief to stick on a new label and to write, with the bold flourish of self-deception: “END GAME”.

Long corridor
the shadow
shackled to each foot

A lifetime muffled in projects. At age ten, a plan and elevation for a toy fort. The battleship grey filing cabinet stuffed full. And so many “gone away; return to sender”:

The last address book—
spread across dead friends
blankets of correction fluid

Bulldog clips grasp Co-op cheque stubs, and, in a marbled box, certificates, diplomas and degrees in imitation parchment. Old passport photos portray a sinister-looking succession, each pleading his lifelong lawsuit against reality.

Yellow telegram
the pasted strips of text
my father’s death

I laugh at my own funeral oration, so solemnly intoned and recorded when a precocious forty year old. Poking charred diaries. A lifetime of stories told to myself, one as good as another. Knock, knock. Is there anyone there?

Old summer house
settling out of true
to how it needs to be

Finally, the sending out of invitations to the Graceful Exit Party. From that celebratory wake I alone shall depart sober. And, on the back door, hammer the bottom line of a closed book:

Winter twilight
cutting timber by the Rheidol
all there is to know

by Ken Jones
Aberystwyth, Wales

from the forthcoming haibun collection, Stone Leeks (2009)

Dawn Bruce: ‘ALONE’

It should have been a grey wintry day of low clouds, a time for comfort in mohair jackets and the smell of wood fires … if it had to be a day. Night would’ve been better, a shawl of twilight, softer than gossamer lace, a tenderness to send him into and away.

But it is a sharp sunlit morning, all bustle and billowing with the cheerfulness of bird chirpings and the fresh scent of water from next door’s hosing.

Thud thud thud … the boots of the men as they carry him downstairs. I stay where I am, let the others see him off, out the door for the last time, past the lavender bushes and rosemary, down the broken tiled path.

When I hear the van drive off I go upstairs, into our room and pull back the curtains. Light invades every corner.

bedside table
the glint then blur
of his spectacles

As morning slips into afternoon, shadows smudge the edge of sunshine to dull. I close the door and walk downstairs.

There are things to do, I’m told, but first they give me a cup of tea and make soothing noises.

tea leaves . . .

in the courtyard a rising
of white butterflies

by Dawn Bruce
Sydney, Australia
first published in Yellow Moon 20 (Summer 2006)

Review of FOUR TELLINGS

Four Tellings: A Trans-Tasman Haibun-Renga by Owen Bullock, Joanna Preston, Jeffrey Harpeng and Beverley George. Post Pressed, Queensland, Australia. 2008
.

Reviewed by Patricia Prime

.
It has been an experience to read the haibun-renga Four Tellings, which comes on the heels of Quartet, also directed by Jeffrey Harpeng and published by Post Pressed. Cover image, book design and layout are also by Harpeng as they were in the previous publication.

The difference here is that the four poets are from the Southern Hemisphere. The collection came into being as a result of the Haiku Aotearoa 2008 Conference in Christchurch, New Zealand, where the four poets represented met. Two of them, Owen Bullock and Joanna Preston, live and work in New Zealand and two reside in Australia. The poets are of different backgrounds. They are of different ages. They do different jobs. But there are similarities in their writing. They have a background of writing Japanese short forms of poetry; their technique is very similar and their subjects, and what is made of them, echo each other.

Jeffrey Harpeng’s selection makes up an intriguing, moving and impressive body of work. The language is informal and prosaic, often conversational. Harpeng writes flexible prose and haiku with lines that vary between two or three lines. Most of his haibun contain two or three short paragraphs followed by a single haiku. The speaker is predominantly a reflective, conversational one, mulling over memories of saying goodbye to a loved one, writing about a depressed woman, signing the word ‘flower’ for a deaf person and playing with a granddaughter.

Indeed, Harpeng’s haibun are often anecdotes of family life, dealing with relatives and friends. Incidents are recalled, reflected on and brooded over by an intelligent and urbane speaker, full of sympathy with those he speaks of, still involved with them, part of their world. “A sigh full or roses” is an example of this kind of poem. It is an account of a hearing person communicating the sign for flower to a hearing impaired person. Presenting the point of view of a particular figure in a particular world dominates Harpeng’s poems and, the reader assumes, this is Harpeng himself. “Liberation,” for example, is spoken by a man attempting, by reading the prayer on a mani stone, to connect with someone he said goodbye to five years previously. In “Heart Offering” a woman suffering from nervous strain and whose house stands in the grounds of an aged care home, is treated by a doctor with an injection of B12 who hopes “that soon she can cope with public places again.” “Horse Tale” looks into the mind of a grandfather playing with his small granddaughter:

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.

Owen Bullock contributes four haibun: “Silence,” “Relief,” “Shortest Day” and “Hello, Waihi, I’m home” which centre on personal matters. These are minimalist haibun containing one or two short prose paragraphs followed by a single haiku of two or three lines. “Silence” allows Bullock to evoke and speculate on a relationship for a brief time, but it is something one feels he doesn’t want to peer at too closely. I quote the haibun in its entirety:

I didn’t ask what your perceptions were when we started out, but crowded you with mine. It’s easy to get upset, to feed the smouldering of a self-involved habit.

Today, I feel like beginning again, but don’t know how. Familiar things are attractive and empty.

.

barometer
on the post
creepers

.

The haibun has in common with others by Bullock a sense of the suggestiveness, the transcendent implications of particular experiences. “Relief” is another poem about a relationship. In it, Bullock says, “I write that you are my finest teacher. You’re more than that: lover and friend. I can consult with you because I trust you.” “Shortest Day” looks wittily at how the speaker enjoys silence, but only certain kinds of silence: “ . . . something I can’t name, that results in peace.” A memory, as in “Hello, Waihi, I’m Home,” prompts reflections on moving to a new home in an area lived in before and, perhaps forming a new relationship, although the speaker is adamant “I long so much to be alone.” The recorded experiences are simply themselves, presented without amplification, but rich in some kind of ambiguous significance.

Moving, domesticity and memories are suitable subjects for Joanna Preston’s haibun, which are one paragraph, one haiku in form. Memories and moving, by their nature, are liable to be elusive, for Preston is fascinated by the transient. She writes of the last day in a house (“Leaving”), the simple act of dishwashing (Meditation”), a memory of growing up on a farm (“Winter”) and her childhood bedroom (“Nylon summer”). Preston’s canvas is unashamedly small scale: moving, rural life, washing up, memories of childhood on a farm. Here is a passage from “Winter”:

Running barefoot across the frost. Reaching the barn, scrambling over the gate. The cuffs of my track pants glittering with crystals of ice, like stars. Like embers. Cobs of dried corn piled high in the back of the barn.

However she points explicitly beyond these limits to a wider world, as we see in “Leaving”:

This new life will be exciting. New country, new chances. An adventure. So why the hell is the sight of the old spare bed – wrapped in plastic and paper, ready to be put in storage – a bed I’ve never even slept I, for christ’s sake – why is its presence in the room making me feel so small? Why am I crying?

Her central concerns may be of transience, but the beauty and pity of things are already of great substance.

Beverley George paints on a larger canvas. While two of her haibun “Ribbons” and “Brown bread and honey” concentrate on family relationships, “Autumn Oaks” is based on a conference she attended and “Matsuyama Footprints” is about a trip to Japan where she also attended a conference. One poem that well represents George’s art is “Autumn Oaks.” We note her largely informal language, the three pithy prose paragraphs, the figure who guides her, the local ambience, the universals, the idea that there’s no money in poetry:

There’s no money in poetry, she says above my rumbling wheels, not a liveable wage anyway. Think I’ll go back to my old job, life model, part-time.”

“Ribbons” employs a similar conversational tone. It also uses the moment, the individual discrete experience of death, the child’s way of dealing with grief to point the way people cope with tragedy. “Matsuyama Footprints” focuses on foreign travel. The Asian landscape is deftly woven into the text: pavilion, sculptures, tatami mat, cheery blossom, pathside vendors. The speaker describes the discomfort of the Westerners in the meeting room with her usual wit and wisdom:

They sink down gracefully on cushions on tatami at low tables around four walls. As Westerners from diverse countries, we do our best to emulate them, divert our attention.

“Brown bread and honey” offers a picture of the poet as a child visiting her grandparents on their farm. It is a remarkable evocation of childhood, the love of and for grandparents, and finally, the death of her grandmother. The poem is utterly contemporary and utterly traditional at the same time. George shows herself to be truly perspicacious in her vision of the complexity and diversity of human relationships and coming to terms with grief.

There is plenty of drama inherent in both the narrative and settings of these haibun. Many elements and ideas will resonate with readers. Despite the tension created by the poems, the most memorable moments are when the speakers reveal their vulnerability and humanity. This haibun-renga is representative of a kind of strong poetry that is both contemporary and traditional, a personal lyric that can light up the material and emotional world, and give it a powerful resonance.

by Patricia Prime
Auckland, New Zealand

Jeffrey Woodward: SOBERANES POINT

the smooth white belly
of a washed-up shark
exposed and torn
the light of this day peels back
and ebbs away with the tide

the very rocks
that shouldered
froth and spray
loom above the water they
and their jagged shadows

ripples everywhere
in the fine sand
repeated ripples
that echo a last
wave’s retreat

on the saw-like
teeth of the shark
on the gaping mouth
without smile or grimace
a little lingering light

going barefoot going ghostly over the sand after the heat of yet another brittle day the dark draws near cool and clinging in one whispered breath the Pacific’s burden of brine is brooding but familiar and on the winding coast road headlights behind us now and then a beach bonfire before that undertow where no one floats a flame tended by anonymous faces smudged anonymous hands erased by that glow and by the occasional dry spittle of sparks

by Jeffrey Woodward

Detroit, Michigan

Patricia Prime: THE CARDBOARD SUITCASE

Click of the Box Brownie. In the photo I clutch Mum with one hand; my other holds a toy dog on wheels.

.

As if it were yesterday, I see Dad in his khaki uniform, shouldering his kit bag as he waves and turns the corner. Mum, back in the kitchen, dissolves in tears when she discovers his sugar ration lying on the table.

.

She's waving goodbye to us a short time later. We're on the train with hundreds of other children for evacuation to the Midlands for the duration of the bombing. In my hands a cardboard suitcase and gas mask . . .

out of the dark
the mournful sound
of a train whistle—
the smell of black smoke
permeates the carriage

the suddenness
of being alone
and no-one to care
a guard comforts me
with a sticky toffee

standing
over a puddle
rainbowed with oil
I make a wish
to see mum again

by Patricia Prime

Auckland, New Zealand
first published in Kokako 9, Sept. 2008

Stanley Pelter: ‘THUNDERGUY’—ISLE OF ARRAN

a moon
even in shadow
her wet eyes

Grey and more
Drizzle
Clouds drift, pull lower over Meall Biorach
Fall into heather at Doire Fhionn Lochan

some deep
others near the surface
so many pitfalls

Town clothes, town shoes, town socks
Drag of heavy waves
As sea-served crags fix
And trees in Coirein Lochain diffract
Drizzle and more

wet rocks
they reflect
his going

Elevation hurts
Unlaundered landscape
So raw it tangles
As it straggles down

path bumps uphill
parallel streams churn stones
on the way down

Mud slides upwards
Disappears in twists of a downturn
Illusions spill in clots like sour milk
Drizzle………………………Alone

once he came
now she takes his pain
on her own


by Stanley Pelter
Claypole, Lincolnshire, England
first published in insideoutside (2008)

Ray Rasmussen: TWICE IN THE GARDEN

I cross an arched bridge over a pond to reach Kurimoto Garden’s bell gazebo. It’s there I’ll escape the hot sun and the noisy crowd. Sitting next to the cast iron bell, I read Buson:
.

resting
on a one ton temple bell
moon moth

Eyes closed, my hand becomes the moth, fingers antennae, exploring the bell’s cool decorated surface . . . settling . . . resting . . .

Footsteps, a child's voice, Mom, can I? A rattle of chains as the massive wooden clapper is pulled back and released. A low pitched “goooooong” fills my chest, sings in me. The Moon Moth stirs, flutters out into the garden . . .

stone lantern
in the clouds
drifting
.

.
Note: the Buson haiku is my rendition of a translation by X.J. Kennedy
.

.

by Ray Rasmussen
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Linda Papanicolaou: LOCKDOWN

The excitement of sitting under the desks has begun to wane. "Quit shoving," someone complains.

Muffled giggles.

"Can I get a drink of water?"

Shh!

The floor is cold and there's a crick in my neck. How long till the all-clear signal? It's a drill, I remind myself: Inhale, exhale—try not to think of that training video with the S.W.A.T team sweeping a school.

beyond
the barricade
—silence

by Linda Papanicolaou
Palo Alto, California

Tish Davis: HIGH TEA

Every season my father changes the color of mom’s place mat, but our monthly dinners are always the same. We sit in the kitchen not far from her obituary still pinned to the board on the door; his eyes wander to the only colored square without a plate.

Today the mat on the table is gone. The tea is ready, but instead of pouring from the copper kettle, he is brewing it in my mother’s Aynsley pot—Cottage Garden. I carry it into the dining room where the sugar bowl and creamer are carefully arranged on white. For the first time I notice the delicate swirls in the pattern and when the doorbell rings, the third cup not far from his.

under a porch light
the first buds
of spring
.

.

by Tish Davis
Dublin, Ohio
first published in Simply Haiku V6, N4 (Winter 2008)

Katherine Samuelowicz: STEP BY STEP

this is my new beautiful neighbourhood hilly with roads that follow the contour of the land that climb descend and scramble down to the water roads lined with old trees with their leaves now yellow and yellowish-brown and red brittle under my feet or swirling in the air in their descent to the ground forming mounds against curbs and marking parking spaces houses cascading down to the Harbour more and more visible through trees now denuded of leaves old well-established houses at ease with the landscape neglected ones like well-aged women once beautiful graceful and desired once restored to their original beauty show their age now turned into memories of time past from the paved spine of the hills steps leading to the wharfs lookouts parks children’s playgrounds into the bays of the Harbour blue grey misty cloudy clear

step by step
I take possession
of my new neighbourhood
and find in your absence
your constant presence
.

.

by Katherine Samuelowicz
Brisbane, Qld., Australia

Ed Higgins: IDA’S PARMESAN CHEESE

The recipe, Ida says, goes like this: You first talk to the goats and pat their udders coaxing out flavors only goats know about. And you must feed only excellent quality hay, alfalfa is best but first-cut clover or timothy will do. Ida takes out some of the colostrum, essential for the new-borns, and mixes bits of, yes, hay or straw in a teaspoon or two of her own saved grated parmesan. She ties this up in a cheesecloth sack letting it hang to dry as a starter. After about three months it is lardish and spreadable. This way the cheese is incredible.

hand milking
white foam
flecking her pail

Ida then pours nine to ten quarts of warm goat’s milk straight into a black spatterware kettle and stirs in two teaspoons of her special concoction, mixing thoroughly. The curd sets in about half an hour. Ida cuts the curd and pours it into cheesecloth draped carefully over a large blue bowl. Naturally she saves the whey for ricotta later. Next morning she scoops out the drained curds pressing them lightly into an old wooden mold. After draining again over night Ida presses more curd into her wooden mold, pushing down firmly. Then the mold is set to drain over the large blue bowl for eight or nine days.

When the cheese loosens from the mold Ida rubs salt all over the round and hangs it in a string-net bag for six months to cure. Parmesan, she says, will last and stay delicious for four to five years. But Ida’s parmesan cheese couldn’t possibly last that long.

the tongue’s memory
lingers
lightly

by Ed Higgins
Newberg, Oregon

Jeffrey Winke: IN A SLURRED-WORD STATE

Deep evening. I pretend it’s the wind flowing through the shed’s saw-tooth roof rather than her raspy voice. She’s nagging. This time for him to drive the half-dozen blocks to buy a pack of Chesterfields from the Shell station. She smoked the last one while frying up the pork chops and onions that they ate with enough beer to keep them in a slurred-word state. The brandy bottle’s seal is broken. The night will eventually end when they both pass out or exhaust themselves from the yelling and him sobbing “why did you have to do it with him—with all the men out there—why with him?”

same high ledge
same nightmare depth
same fall

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Ray Rasmussen: AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Eratosthenes, a Greek astronomer, determined that the earth was a sphere and calculated its rough circumference in the third century BC. By the 15th century, most educated people in Europe had abandoned the notion that the Earth is flat.

Enlightenment on the matter only came to me this week when I purchased a silver bicycle with narrow tires that had the look of being very fast. But nothing, as it turns out, in my prairie city is flat. Even small inclines constrain my speed to just above a slow walk.

I can't be blamed for not knowing. Mostly I've viewed my city through the windows of airplanes and cars, whereas many ancients lived near an ocean where they could see the tall ships approaching, the mast top appearing first.

On today's ride, two kids zip past on an uphill, gleefully sounding their warning bells and yelling "You're almost there!"

downhill race—

neck to neck

with a jackrabbit
.

.

by Ray Rasmussen
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
first published in Blithe Spirit 18:1, March 2008

Cherie Hunter Day: THE CABINETMAKER’S WISH

The old mahogany chest of drawers responds to the lemon oil-soaked scrap of flannel. Stroke by stroke the wood surrenders its grime, restoring the gleam to the grain of the veneer panel on the front of each drawer. The darkened portion of the rag is turned inward to refresh the next area.

heirloom dresser

every scrap from the ragbag

a different story

Inside the drawer the texture changes, its surface is unvarnished; its roughness tugs the cloth. The cabinetmaker's hand cut joints fastened the sides to the drawer. Not the typical dovetails, but peg like, placed far apart, showing uneven cuts. The width and depth vary only slightly, but unmistakably unique to each joining. Pencil marks are still evident on the wood where he had numbered the back of each drawer. A corresponding number in the dresser body, just above the glide for each drawer, tells the order of the drawers from top to bottom. The drawers are out of sequence. How many years has it been this way?

pressed into soft wood

at the back of each drawer

his handwriting

At the swipe of the cleaning rag, a rope of cobwebs rolls off the back of the drawer. Something shakes free from a joint at the back of one drawer and rattles to the bottom: a blue-black wire bent in the shape of a long U, a shape that I haven't seen in decades. It is a hairpin from a time when women carefully wrapped and twisted and pinioned their hair into place on top of their heads. I finger my own short-cropped hair.

Outwardly this chest of drawers has always had a masculine appeal. Even the knobs are blunt and unadorned. During my years growing up, the dresser was relegated to an unused corner of the unheated guest bedroom to hold bed linen, an old feather pillow, and a moth-eaten blanket. But in a former life, instead of crude muslin, it held ribbons and lace. Had the cabinetmaker made this dresser for his bride? There is no way to tell; that legacy is erased. I carefully replace the drawers in the pencil-numbered order of the cabinetmaker.

candle glow—

he untangles the cascade

of her scented hair

by Cherie Hunter Day
San Diego, California
first published in Stone Frog: American Haibun & Haiga Vol. 2 (2001)

Colin Stewart Jones: A PRIORI

.
verbatim………………………..word for word
vox Dei vivat…………………..the voice of God lives
vis vitae………………………….an energy (a living force)
via, veritas, vita………………the way, the truth, the life
verbum sat sapienti…………a word is enough for a wise man

Years ago my Latin teacher told me that river and rival have the same root. Now as I look across the Euphrates I see my cousin and must hate him because he is descended from Ishmael and I don't care for his religion. "At least we can worship any god we choose." Mutatis mutandis.

They are Legion—for they are many.

Ah! But we have the Classical Tradition. Plato was an ideas man, true, but is that worth dying for? So we have landed classes and political oligarchies that will fight to maintain our liberty. "They're all terrorists and treat their women like shit." Ex uno disce omnes.

We are Idealists—not ideologues.

"You've never fought in a war." Even so, many have won the freedom for me not to impose my will upon another. Nevertheless, the Lion still follows the Eagle into battle. Dum spiro, spero.

I am Poet . . .

crescent moon—
tonight the man
is beheaded

Translations:

Mutatis mutandis: with the necessary changes
Ex uno disce omnes: from one judge of the rest
Dum spiro, spero: while I breathe, I hope

by Colin Stewart Jones
Aberdeen, Scotland

Jeffrey Winke: I HAD SAID WHAT YOU HAD SAID

.

There wasn’t much that could be said that hasn’t been said, he said. She said, What should have been said wasn’t said. I said what I thought had to be said, he said. But you could have said what needed to be said, she said. He said, I thought I had said what you had said I should have said. No you said what I hadn’t expected to be said, she said. But I said I was sorry, he said. But you could have said you were sorry well before you said what you said, she said. But I said, I’m sorry, he said. But it was said too late, she said.

sneezing fit
she tries to tell her lover
she can’t come

by Jeffrey Winke
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Bob Lucky: A TWINGE OF PAIN WITH A HINT OF MELODRAMA

doctors and patients,
we’re all dying—
this afternoon
I’ve lain in bed thinking
of a world without us

the nurse shaves me
in places
not shorn before—
the expression on her face
neither awe nor derision

outside surgery
my wife’s face receding
upside-down—
having washed his hands
the surgeon won’t shake mine

I hear the anesthesiologist tell the surgeon that I should try to get from the gurney to the bed on my own. I must have done so, for there is a sense of relief in the room. My wife kisses me on the forehead, someone squeezes my right foot, and the surgeon puts a sand bag on my groin and tells me to keep it there for twenty-four hours. Outside my window the well-lit skyscrapers of Shanghai jab their lightning rods into a hazy sky.

the night is erased,
scratched out—
sleep
at thirty-minute intervals
someone asks me to pee

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China

Announcement: MODERN HAIBUN & TANKA PROSE: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

.

Call for Submissions

.
Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose

.
Issue 1. Summer 2009
.

You are invited to submit haibun and tanka prose for the Summer 2009 premiere issue of Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose. The submission deadline is March 31, 2009. Submissions will NOT close earlier than the deadline.

Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose is a biannual journal-a print literary journal, a PDF ebook, and a digital online magazine-dedicated to the publication and promotion of fine English haibun and tanka prose. We seek traditional and innovative haibun and tanka prose of high quality and desire to assimilate the best of these Japanese genres into a continuously evolving English tradition. In addition to haibun and tanka prose, we publish articles, essays, book reviews and interviews pertinent to these same genres.

Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose specializes in fine haibun and tanka prose. All selection decisions will be made at the sole discretion of the editor.

Previously unpublished work, not on offer elsewhere, is solicited.

Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose, Baltimore, Maryland USA. Website:

.

http://www.modernhaibunandtankaprose.com/

.

Editor: Jeffrey Woodward. Email up to five haibun, five tanka prose, and five short works to the Editor at MHTP(dot)EDITOR(at)GMAIL(dot)COM . Before submitting, please read the detailed submission guidelines and haibun and tanka prose selection criteria on the website at www.modernhaibunandtankaprose.com/submit.html.

.

Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose looks for top quality haibun and tanka prose in natural, modern English idiom. No payment for publication. No contributor copies. Publishes a print edition (6" x 9" trade paperback), a PDF ebook, and an online digital edition.

Thank you for sharing this call widely.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Woodward, Editor, Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose http://www.modernhaibunandtankaprose.com/

Colin Stewart Jones: WINDFALL

Surprising how a little windfall can change things. Five years of walking the walk can soon become a stagger. Not that I am complaining, for as sobriety and celibacy go hand in hand so does a beer and a good woman. Oh well, I can repent again tomorrow. Can't I?

hailstones—
mother's voice
in my ear

by Colin Stewart Jones
Aberdeen, Scotland

Patricia Prime: LIVE FROM DOWNUNDER

.

The Note-taking Habit

Assistant Editor: Patricia Prime

I have been turning the pages of a thick octavo notebook tied with rubber bands and stuffed with photos, rail tickets and other odds and ends. I wrote in it nearly twenty years ago. I was then on a trip to China and Tibet for six weeks with a friend. At one end of the book are notes on various sites we visited: some of these were off the beaten tourist track. My friend and I were both early childhood teachers and our interests lay in seeing various places of education from pre-school to university. At the other end of the book are haiku.

When we returned from our trip my friend published a book of haiku called Caterpillar. I submitted several of my haiku to various journals. The notes lay dormant for several years until we decided to form our notes into haibun which we self-published in booklet form, together with tanka and haiku.

It is only now that I have re-read the notes for the haibun that follows. Had the notes been written last week I would rewrite them now to make the account less clumsy, stilted and repetitive. But since it was written long ago and in order to safeguard the immediacy of the record, I write it word-for-word with all its infelicities.
.
.

Escape

.
We are caught for a moment on this narrow rim of road overlooking the Li River. The sheer karst peaks are sewn with saplings, slender roots and half-grown bushes. Weathered cliff faces and rock surfaces are striated in various shades of colour. The wide green waterway idles below.

It is so still, you say, so still—the only moving thing a fisherman’s boat way down there; yet seeing straight away how far from true this is: everything moves, trapped with the two of us in a ripe giddiness of heat which shakes the mountains until they cheat reality. They threaten to collapse and in their downfall fling themselves upon their images floating in the Li—for it already holds them in its sway, rooted in the current.

reflecting river—
mountains shiver
In broad sunlight

And look, see how the river even now will not allow these ancient rocks one moment of repose as our guide tells us the legendary stories behind them. Most are magical and love stories. They have imaginative names that he translates as Elephant Trunk Hill, Pagoda Hill, The Emperor’s Seat and The Three Princesses.

The fisherman releases his cormorant into the water where it dives for fish. When the bird catches a fish it returns to the boat and the fisherman removes the fish from its throat. The secret is that the fisherman places a cord around the bird’s neck to keep the bird from swallowing the fish. When the fisherman stoops to release the fish, the vast pink-veined karst shudders and shakes in the silent river.

the long shadow
of a cormorant’s neck
among reeds

.

.

Once these jottings have begun to find their way into sentences, no matter how crude, the mind can find a purchase and trace patterns that gather shape. There’s a long way from the words in a notebook to the shaping of a poem, and thinking about them brings a perception that emerges involuntarily, despite the conscious effort to bring them to completion. They emerge from the untidy notebook where so many images have been stored until they reach the finality of the poem.

The words do not take me back to the reason I made the entry, but back to the felt experience, whatever it was. This is important, for I imagine the significance of the event. It is the instant I catch in a notebook, not the comment, not the thoughts. And this is what I hope to achieve in writing haibun, whether these are of childhood memories, travel experiences, nature, looking at paintings, meeting unusual people or writing about relationships.

by Patricia Prime
Auckland, New Zealand

Bob Lucky: STITCHES

I have a friend write a note in Chinese explaining that eight days ago I had hernia surgery and the stitches need to be removed. Rather than go back to Shanghai, where I had the surgery, or trek an hour across town to the nearest hospital, I decide to check out a local health clinic.

sodden moonbeams
the smeared arc of dust
on the windshield

My wife and I pull up outside a clinic near a popular restaurant. I’m soon flat on my back behind a small partition, my shirt pulled up under my chin. There’s a video in English with Chinese subtitles about abortion playing on the other side, where two men on IV drips cough weakly and occasionally moan.

winter chill
the ping of stitches
in a metal pan

Within ten minutes, and for less than five dollars, I’m ready for dinner. The pharmacist, who also functions as nurse and cashier, laughs at my Chinese name and tells me to take it easy. The doctor waves goodbye with a pair of scissors.

the waiter’s gaze—
removing fish bones
with chopsticks

by Bob Lucky
Hangzhou, China