Bold new signs

bold new signs
at the nursing home
about guns—
I look for glimmers of life
behind the glass doors

—Ripples in the Sand, 2016 Tanka Society of America Members' Anthology

How light; futile to try

how light

can resculpt a face

… if for one day

I could be everyone

I've been loath to like




—Ribbons (runner-up, Tanka Café, "Changing the World"), Fall 2015


Thanks to poet James Chessing for his insightful comments in the Tanka Café feature of the Winter 2016 issue of Ribbons, the Tanka Society of America journal. The above poem is mine. But congratulations to Joyce S. Greene for her winning Café poem, included below with her permission. FYI, for each issue of Ribbons, members are invited to submit tanka on a specific new theme. The winner from the previous issue makes the selections.

futile to try
to change the world
I can't change myself
all my vows to worry less
and chuckle more, forgotten

~Joyce S. Greene
—Ribbons (winner, Tanka Café, "Changing the World"), Fall 2015

Tanka Prose

Happy this tanka+prose piece was picked up for reprint in the current issue of red lights. I assumed I had posted "Circa" to twigs&stones earlier (two or three years ago), but I guess I didn't. So here it is:

Circa 1830

For me, it's the most memorable of all the cultural artifacts in the mission's collection. The lacy, shawled garment has a flamenco flavor to it. Sequins, which would have been expensive in that day, further adorn it.

no flash allowed

inside this museum

the blackness

of a widow's wedding gown

preserved behind glass

I read the small sign posted nearby and learn that, according to Spanish social custom, white wasn't an option for widows who remarried. (In fact, I later determine that widows were to wear black for the rest of their lives.) I can't help wondering if there were any particular dictates for widowers.

—first published in Haibun Today, December 2013

What's ours; a new rock

what's ours

isn't really ours …

we stare at plans

for a bullet train

through the neighborhood

a new rock, 

plastiglomerate *

litters the shore—

will the words I leave behind

also survive the seas?

* melted plastic trash mixed with beach sediment and debris

—both of these—red lights, June 2015

The future

the future

soon becomes the past—

who knows

how many years

Big Brother's been watching

—Ribbons, Tanka Café ("novels" theme), spring/summer 2015, vol. 11, no. 2

The novel I'm referencing is of course Orwell's 1984.

Whistling Dixie

whistling Dixie

in a land of cotton—

songs we learned

in grammar school

when all we knew was white

—A Hundred Gourds, March 2013

I set out to write a post here about the evolution of the above tanka. But after a sentence or two, it appeared my words might be giving birth to a tanka prose piece instead. So, I'll keep working on that and see where it takes me. 

Can any of your relate to my poem, I wonder? Naive, strange times; though, really, all times may be strange, especially when looking back on them. I still have vague recollections of being on a stage, preparing for some sort of elementary school pageant during which we surely sang the "Dixie" song (also named "I Wish I Was in Dixie," etc.), no doubt with gusto and lack of understanding. The song has a complex history, certain details disputable, including authorship and intention; there have been many variations of its lyrics. Through my reading, I've learned of Dixie's immense popularity in both the South and the North; it was a favorite of President Lincoln's. A catchy tune, but I think I can leave it in the past. The possible origins of the nickname "Dixie" (with respect to region) also are worth reading about.

Winter sky

This tanka of mine was published at Haiku News recently (week of March 4), paired with the following headline:

Polarized Politics at Heart of US Budget Impasse

winter sky
blanketed by clouds—
it’s not the gray
that distresses me
but the black-and-white

Mock election

mock election—
my first-grade niece explains
the debt crisis

—Haiku News, week Nov. 12, 2012

And she and a fellow classmate succeeded in getting another classmate to switch her vote. Way to go, A.!