Haibun

Wishing Well

A woman I know leaves her husband of over 50 years, a man who’s needed leaving for at least that long. I offer congratulations and support, tell her I always thought we might have been friends, if not for him. It’s as though she’s woken from a long enchantment. For the first time, I feel her unique presence, one not defined by deflecting his outbursts and cleaning up his messes.

This is my dream for her, made manifest in the wishing well of night.

She’ll never wake up.

nonstick skillet
scraping by
with chemistry

Cynthia Anderson, USA



“malice aforethought” it was titled

Thinking back to that screenplay my father laboriously drafted after he divorced my mom, based on a newspaper article he’d clipped and carefully preserved, about an attorney whose marriage sours so he proceeds to hire a hitman who kills his wife . . . Never read too much into that before, but in light of current events and new developments, I now have to wonder about the wunscherfüllung one ascribes to dreams. He rewrote draft after draft, even hired a script doctor at some expense, but never could manage to get the ending quite right, luckily, and ultimately abandoned the project.

buried gas line
semi’s persistent
turn signal 

Jerome Berglund, USA



Ignominy

Summer holiday, hooking grass on the hospital grounds and rounding up peacocks when they decide to roost on matron’s stoop. It’s hard work but working the wards are trainee nurses, visiting from Sweden. What more could a young guy want?

Bent low, I chop my sickle through a clump of grass and an angry mouse sinks its teeth into my wrist. Better get a tetanus shot. Arriving in ER, I’m confronted by a formidable Irish nursing Sister who may well have served in the casualty tents of WWII.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Got bitten by a mouse!”

“Well, that’s a first! I’ll give you a shot.”

By now a few of my Swedish girlfriends have gathered for the fun.

“Okay, I’ll roll up my sleeve.”

“Oh no you won’t,” says Sister. “Drop ߴem!”

Red-faced, I oblige, trying my best at a manual fig-leaf. Much giggling from the gallery.

Sister steps back and hurls that needle in like a pub darts champion. I grimace in pain to squeals of laughter.

“Well now, m’lad, you’d best hitch ߴem up and get back to work.”

My summer love life hasn’t quite been the same after that, what with quips like, “No thanks, I’ve seen what you’ve got to offer!” Perhaps that’s what Sister had in mind all along.

beneath her habit
a rosary
and a wicked way

Bryan D. Cook, Canada



Sentient Beings

A stink bug crawls slowly up my small, bronze figure of Guanyin, over her knee, pauses a while on the water vase, crosses the willow branch in her left hand and, finally, rests on the crown of her head.

I haven’t the heart to kill it.

alternate nostril breathing
a gnat clears
my 7th chakra 

Terri L. French, USA



Sheer Nonsense

Do women even wear them anymore? My mother’s pantyhose came out of the package with the perfect Betty Grable shaped legs. As they were prone to snags and runs, clear finger-nail polish was a staple in every woman’s pocketbook. Nail polish and pantyhose manufacturers must have been in cahoots.

As a teenager I couldn’t wait to shave my legs and wear pantyhose. Unfortunately, my mother saw fit to allow me to do the latter first, which was a bit unsightly and not at all the look I was going for. My first pair of pantyhose came in an egg purchased at the drug store, because everyone knows, like chicken, pantyhose are hatched. I wore size A, which supposedly fit women from 4’10” to 5’7” and from 85 to 150 lbs (give or take a couple inches and pounds). They came in six shades—suntan (perfect for summer), nude (for winter or particularly pasty women), taupe (a pink/brown color not seen on any human being other than nurses), coffee (for women of color or those prone to spilling their morning brew), navy (I have no explanation for that one) and off-black (reserved for cocktail parties and funerals). 

Mothers taught their daughters the delicate art of putting on pantyhose. First, make sure you lotion your hands. Rough hands and pantyhose are not friends. Then, delicately gather one leg up and place your foot (which has also been lotioned—why is this bringing to mind a scene from Silence of the Lambs? I digress—into the reinforced toe of the stocking, gently shimmying it up the leg; repeat with the other leg. Now, re-lotion the hands and smoothly run your palms up each leg, tugging ever so slightly at the top of the thigh to ensure there’s no loathsome crotch sag. 

And the waistband? Forget about it. You suffered with it. Additionally, the seam from waist to what mother called “your privates,” left behind a squiggly line resembling a surgical scar. But hey, I suppose even the restricting “control top” pantyhose were better than wearing a girdle.

So, again I ask, does any woman wear these things anymore, and if so why? Burn those pantyhose and the eggs they rolled in on . . . in . . . ( whatever!)  We’ve come a long way, baby.

1974
Joe Namath
cross-dresses

Terri L. French, USA

*Joe Namath Hanes “Beautymist” pantyhose ad.



Not Another Fish Story

One day last summer, after hearing that schools of bluefish were running close to shore, I decided to take my saltwater fly fishing outfit down to the beach. Over the years, I’ve done pretty well fishing from shore with my spinning rod, but fly fishing is still a bit of a mystery to me. As I was, yet again, untangling another wind knot from my leader, I noticed off in the distance a pair of large birds circling over the shoreline. At first glance, they looked like black-backed gulls, but as they moved closer, I could clearly discern the ruffled wing tips and wedged tails of raptors. When they were almost directly overhead, one of the birds suddenly dropped from the sky and splashed down about ten feet from where I was standing. A few seconds later, he emerged from the roiling water gripping a bluefish in his talons. The other bird, his mate, I presumed, greeted him with a piercing cry, and the pair flew off into the tree line at the top of the dunes.

Shortly after witnessing this incredible scene, I packed up my gear and headed home. My heartbeat was still racing when I walked in the door. My wife was puttering around the kitchen as I excitedly related my tale about being treated to an up-close view of the unbroken circle of life. When my story was done, she turned to me and said,  “But did you catch any fish?” 

searching
for the right word
summer kigo

Rick Jackofsky, USA



New World

The once rural rim of this coastal city may well tumble into the sea one day. But the slew of glass and concrete monsters that have arisen here over the last decade look set to prove the climate-change police paranoid.

All around, like so many growing tentacles, are roads teeming with shops, eateries, schools, hotels, and apartments. Wedged between them are hostels. Hundreds of them, for men and women from all over the country who oil the gargantuan wheels of this “happening” part of the city.

I slip into the grease, too, trying to find a few square feet of space.
“No single room, madam. Only three-, four-, or five-sharing.”

I step out of yet more cramped quarters into the setting sunlight. Backpacking young women are everywhere, talking into their cell phones, ID cards hanging from their necks. The young men are bunched around tea stalls smoking or munching on pakoras, crowding the narrow roads with their parked bikes.

Picking my way around potholes, and past a warm shawarma blast from a corner stall, I approach the next hostel on my list.

under the tossings
of a million wavelets
pearl oyster

Anju Kishore, India



50 years since her last protest

People with badges, waving banners. Mothers with strollers, nannas, retirees, dreadlocked students, office workers. Gathering to demonstrate against banks funding a foreign conglomerate to dig giant coal mines. We move off, led by a grey-bearded guitarist and a tambourinist, singing a jaunty tune: “Leave the coal in the ground.” Two blocks away, we form two ragged lines, flanking the main entrance to the “People’s Bank.” A lawyer with a megaphone speaks about class actions being taken by children in the United States to sue for the destruction of their future. We sing again. A passing car honks. Two sour-faced security guys pull down metal shutters. Bank’s closed. Our motley crew is a threat to civilized society. Slowly, we trickle away.

a little wind
in the plane trees
just enough power

Marietta McGregor, Australia



Karma Police*

Not to mention malevolent, but haven’t I done more than enough benevolent collateral damage by now? Yes, I believe it’s so. Purpose and meaning of life? Hell if I know. That whole “bucket list” crap is for the birds. I’ve kicked over as many buckets as I’ve filled—zero sum game, the pluses and minuses tally close enough for me—why kvetch? So now I’m old, my gluons are slowly disengaging, bones weary, creaking, cataracts ahoy. No big deal. Anyhow, the scenery around here is a drab gray at best, of little consequence. But there must be wildfire somewhere in the canyons ahead; I can smell the acrid smoke.

magnum opus
I smush a stink bug
well, just because

Mark Meyer, USA

*title of a song by Radiohead



REPLY LETTER (a coalesku*)

dear universe,

i wanna be small • a smile in the morning, creased and sought • the bum of a bumblebeebee in apple blossom • or a talk about • how every thing and every one deserves • respect • at the kitchen table • afterdinner • i wanna be • behind the stage • and rearrange the mise-en-scène • so loud to marvel at taking a breath after • and listen, think and feel • then walk • with every step boards may slightly  • yield  • or take refuge • from hunting down the next,    the next,         the next  • in the shell of a walnut • a squirrel lost • last autumn • as if bedtime stories over time become • fertile • i wanna be the pause and echoing • then die • some day some small teal eggshell

            in a garden

                                             picked up

Kati Mohr, Germany

*Poet’s Note: Coalesku is a “mixed media” haibun which blurs the (visual) separation of prose and haiku/monoku/senryu. Though these elements can be read separately, they should blend together, with the haiku portion floating into the lyrical prose.



V

The vocal ability of the Andalusian wall lizard is well known and much commented upon. Historically, the Podarcis choir of Cordoba were already well-known in the time of the Caliphate and, across the Iberian Peninsula today, most villages have either a squamate choir or folk group. A long-standing bitter factional rivalry has, however, recently turned violent, culminating in the deaths of two young ladder snakes and a horse-shoe snake; each descended from a long line of singers. All three were noted sopranos. Worryingly, new sectarian divisions are emerging. Chanting the now familiar slogan—Death to the legless— vigilante groups have, in the last few weeks, begun to take matters into their own hands. Lución, a well-respected tenor with a long recording career, was recently shot and killed near the mouth of his cave. Iberian worm lizards are taking up arms, and war, it appears, is now unavoidable.

foreign field*—
chipped wood under
rows of saplings

Alan Peat, UK

*From Rupert Brooke’s poem “The Soldier” (1914)



Escape Velocity

Like all the times before, my fourth-graders quickly and quietly sit with their backs to the cinderblock wall, waiting for an end to the all-school lockdown. Sometimes minutes. Sometimes hours. These street-tough kids look for stability and comfort in times like this, so after 30 minutes, I take a quick peek out of my second-story classroom window. Hoping to see nothing. Hoping to tell the kids that all is clear and we can all go back to work soon. But instead, a few houses down, I see a body lying in the street. 

graduation day
the man in the moon
never looking back

Bryan Rickert, USA



Resilience, Guts, and Supper

It takes a special kind of woman (Grandmother) who can strain the sunny day from all the sheer ungratefulness on earth and then turn it into rich, shiny gravy over meatballs while talking softly—nearly in silence—to Jesus. 

But once, while she was fetching potatoes, the open cellar door crashed back down on her head, smashing her to the cold bottom so torn, scraped, and bruised. 

She only brushed it off. Brushed herself off. And then made Cornish pasties in the same warm light that her favorite son swam through—right after he’d drowned trying to save the neighbors’ daughter—on his way to our heavenly home.

flea market . . . 
a skeleton-key necklace
among a few agates

Andrew Riutta, USA



dead cert!   

. . . yea, no I mean it is a church looks like a redfrigginbrickugly box with steel shutters over them ohmygawdywindows—and there was a service going just a few old crumblies and fifty-pence-nige’s twin bruno . . . he’s the thick one . . . and fifty-pence-nige ain’t no pub quiz contestant—bruno is there to kidnap this guide dog—he loves dogs—he reckons it’s easy money the old dear will definitely pay up—bruno thick as, had the ransom note ready, so he grabs pooch, drops the note and tries to leg it—but the old gal’s wrapped the dog lead round her ankle so she gets pulled off her bench skittles a few oldies, the dog barks and bites a chunk out of bruno, and to top it all she can’t read his ransom note because she’s friggin’ blind! . . . so he brings the dog back like he’s just found it—the old dear was well happy—anyway suddenly they’re all singing and chanting the alleluias and pretending to drink blood, well cold tea—wine and sherry get nicked here—and BOOM the church doors fly open—and in storm those two tough old bill you know the rockhardcrew, them new ones who went through shane’s windows and dragged him out by his…yeah, them no he’s still not right—they rush in,  all blood splattered—not a word—they tear off their body armour and chuck it at the font—water sloshes everywhere—with a thud they drop their weapons—side handle batons bounce on concrete—barging through chairs they walk straight at the vicar who starts making cross signs and he’s tearing up…then ambulances start arriving at the thing outside . . . you know the rest . . . . . .

broken bricks                 soothsayer crows 
                                                              snowdrops rise

batons clatter . . . half life of echoes

sacred glass shutters the moonlight comes and goes

Tim Roberts, USA



On the AI-generated Beer Commercial, “Synthetic Summer”

Not even Hieronymous Bosch could have imagined a hellscape such as this. All throats frantically gulping with a Charybdis-thirst that can only be satisfied with infinite swill. The faces of mankind contorted with the agony of perpetual consumption, in which there is no division between the consumer and the consumed. In a parody of pleasure, the organs of sense are engorged and multiplied as if more fingers could take greater delight in coolness or larger lips in lusciousness. This is the world turned up to 11. An earworm cancers over all other voices to become the soundtrack of the Apocalypse. All communication is reduced to a clanging klaxon of everything-everywhere-right-now-all-at-once. As this final Bacchanal frenzies to its climax, pagan priests gather around the iron altar to light the sacred fire. A cookie cutter reveals the sound of a bland pop band, which begins chanting “sic transit gloria mundi” on an endless loop. The priests become clanking replicators, gathering in all creation, and, in an ecstasy of ecophagy, burn all of nature on the altar, a sacrifice of everything to annihilation.

Bud Lite can not with a bang but a whimper*

Joshua St. Claire, USA

Source: “Synthetic Summer”

*From T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” (1925)

Gembun

They say man is the only creature who knows he’s alone.

icehouse moon—
the first A.I. therapist
turns suicidal

Susan Burch, USA

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