Bright Stars An Organic Tanka Anthology
Volume 1
M. Kei, Editor Yancy Carpentier, Editorial Assistant
Keibooks, Perryville, Maryland, USA KEIBOOKS P O Box 516 Perryville, Maryland, USA 21903 AtlasPoetica.org [email protected]
Bright Stars An Organic Tanka Anthology, Volume 1 Edited by M. Kei
Bright Stars is a serial anthology published on no fixed schedule. During 2014 it will publish as many volumes as can be filled with tanka, waka, kyoka, gogyoshi, and related forms that embodies our editorial vision. For guidelines, see: http://atlaspoetica.org/?p=952.
Copyright © 2014 by Keibooks
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers and scholars who may quote brief passages. Individual rights remain with the authors. See our EDUCATIONAL USE NOTICE.
Cover Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.
ISBN: 978-1493752607 (Print) Table of Contents
Editorial Joy McCall ...... 45, 85 Educational Use Notice ...... 4 Julie Bloss Kelsey ...... 50 Welcome to Bright Stars, M. Kei ...... 5 Kath Abela Wilson ...... 29, 51 Bright Stars Submission Guidelines ...... 97 Kathy Uyen Nguyen ...... 55 Keitha Keyes ...... 56 Contributors Kristen Lindbeck ...... 57 Alan Summers ...... 7 Laurence Stacey ...... 58 Alexander Jankiewicz ...... 7 Liam Wilkinson ...... 59 Alexis Rotella ...... 7 Luís Enrique Méndez Angulo ...... 60 Amelia Fielden ...... 10 Lynne Leach ...... 60 André Surridge ...... 75 M. Kei ...... 5, 61 Angelo Ancheta ...... 11 Marianne Paul ...... 64 Autumn Noelle Hall ...... 12 Marie Lecrivain ...... 65 Belinda Broughton ...... 12 Marilyn Morgan ...... 66 Bell Chevigny ...... 13 Matsukaze ...... 67 Bob Lucky ...... 14 Michael McClintock ...... 71 Brendan Slater ...... 15 Michael Seese ...... 71 Britton Gildersleeve ...... 16 Mike Montreuil ...... 72 Bruce D. Reed ...... 15 Nu Quang ...... 72 Carol Raisfeld ...... 17 Nilufer Y. Mistry ...... 73 Carole Harrison ...... 17 Pat Geyer ...... 74 Carole Johnston ...... 18 Patricia Prime ...... 75 Chen-ou Liu ...... 19 Peter Fiore ...... 76 Clive Oseman ...... 20 Polona Oblak ...... 77 Christina Nguyen ...... 21 Pravat Kumar Padhy ...... 77 Dave Read ...... 22 Ramesh Anand ...... 78 David Rice ...... 60 Richard St. Clair ...... 78 Dawn Bruce ...... 25 Roary Williams ...... 79 Debbie Strange ...... 25 Ruth Y. Nott ...... 80 Devin Walter Harrison ...... 29 S. M. Abeles ...... 80 Eamonn O’Neill ...... 30 Sandy Pray ...... 81 Elle M ...... 31 Sanford Goldstein ...... 82 Ernesto P. Santiago ...... 32 Sergio Ortiz ...... 85 Eve Castle ...... 32 Sondra J. Byrnes ...... 88 Frank Watson ...... 33 Stephanie Brennan ...... 88 Gary Blankenship ...... 34 Susan Constable ...... 90 gennepher ...... 35 Terri Simon ...... 91 Gerry Jacobson ...... 38, 49 Toki ...... 91 Grunge ...... 39 Tracy Davidson ...... 94 Hank Archer ...... 41 Tzod Earf ...... 95 Jade Pandora ...... 41 William Hart ...... 96 Jeffrey Harpeng ...... 43 Johannes S. H. Bjerg ...... 44
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 3 Educational Use Notice
Keibooks of Perryville, Maryland, USA, publisher of Bright Stars : An Organic Tanka Anthology, is dedicated to tanka education in schools and colleges, at every level. It is our intention and our policy to facilitate the use of Bright Stars and related materials to the maximum extent feasible by educators at every level of school and university studies. Educators, without individually seeking permission from the publisher, may use Bright Stars : An Organic Tanka Anthology’s online, digital, and print editions as primary or ancillary teaching resources. Copyright law “Fair Use” guidelines and doctrine should be interpreted very liberally with respect to Bright Stars precisely on the basis of our explicitly stated intention herein. This statement may be cited as an effective permission to use Bright Stars as a text or resource for studies. Proper attribution of any excerpt to Bright Stars is required. This statement applies equally to digital resources and print copies of the anthology. Individual copyrights of poets, authors, artists, etc., published in Bright Stars are their own property and are not meant to be compromised in any way by the journal’s liberal policy on “Fair Use.” Any educator seeking clarification of our policy for a particular use may email the Publisher of Bright Stars at [email protected]. We welcome innovative uses of our resources for tanka education.
Bright Stars Keibooks P O Box 516 Perryville, MD 21903
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 4 Welcome to Bright Stars, An simple to reduce the hours spent in preparation and to facilitate conversion to ebook. This allows Organic Tanka Anthology an inexpensive cover price in the hope that increased sales will offset production costs. Bright Stars focuses on the Japanese aesthetic It’s also a gamble. Poetry books in general, of ‘akarui’—bright, light, illuminated, brilliant, including tanka books, don’t sell very well. For shiny, brassy, active, energetic, noisy, loud, that reason, small presses have to set their prices happy, drunk, passionate, wild, playful, vivid, and high enough to cover expenses with only a small boundless. That doesn’t mean there is no volume of sales. Financially, Bright Stars is a risk, darkness—black is a color too, but our dark but after careful calculations, Keibooks is poems are actively dark, not a sighing shade of committed to the project for one year. Bright grey. Stars will publish as many volumes of bright new Bright Stars is devoted to five line poetry— work as is submitted by the September 30, 2014, tanka, waka, kyoka, gogyoshi, shaped tanka, deadline. We hope readers will gift copies of tanka sequence, tanka prose, collaborative tanka Bright Stars to schools and libraries to reach the —any form based on the short, lyrical, five part greatest range of readers. Our Educational Use poem originally from Japan. We welcome Notice gives permission for Bright Stars to be experimentation and variation—there are other used in educational projects at any level. venues that publish traditional tanka, but Bright We encourage anyone to submit to Bright Stars dreams of the future, not the past. Stars with any sort of subject matter or approach. In pursuit of that goal, we have a special We like new, previously unpublished poems, but emphasis on new and emerging poets. Two-thirds we will also accept socially published tanka, and, of the poets contained herein have rarely or never with certain restrictions, reprints of other been published in a tanka venue before. Many of electronically published work. (See our them publish on Twitter, a remarkably ephemeral guidelines at the back of the book.) Also be sure means of publication for these brief poems. Many and visit AtlasPoetica.org for more information of the poets learned about tanka by following the about tanka, free Special Features online, and #tanka hashtag on Twitter and have been moved tanka resources. to try their own tanka. Some are experienced Articles, book reviews, book notes, and poets who are new to tanka, but some have never announcements should be sent to our sister written poetry before. They have found that publication, Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of poetry need not be the murky, inaccessible Place in Contemporary Tanka a t hierophant’s art they encountered in school, but [email protected]. Complete ATPO can be the down to earth communication of guidelines are on the website. ordinary people who are moved by their Without further ado, we present the poets of experiences in this mortal world. Like the poets Bright Stars. of ancient Japan, they have discovered that poetry begins with seeds in the heart that must either M. Kei flourish forth or wither. Wedded to the notion of publishing new Editor, Bright Stars, An Organic Tanka poets and fresh perspectives is the idea that tanka Anthology ought to be available to as many people as possible. For that reason, the large format is the most economical means of publication. In addition, the internal layout and cover design are
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 5
Alan Summers Alexis Rotella a cat picking Cat wrapped around at discarded fast food my ankles— this night without you why would I ever filling with the hum want to leave of regular rain this chair?
Alan Summers is a Japan Times award-winning writer What is she, based in Bradford on Avon, England, who runs With Words which provides courses as well as literature and really— literacy projects. but a mouse trap purring on my chest.
His chin at rest on my shoe— whoever is ringing will have to Cancer call back.
Alexander Jankiewicz A paw pat on my foot and then another— It’s getting dark as gray clouds move in: She’s what’s for lunch, sitting on the kitchen floor and talking on the herring with cream? phone to the nurse from the doctor’s office. I stare at her and wait for a sign. I then notice the rain pelting the kitchen windows. I turn my head Your nap is over back toward her. She looks at me and gives a I tap the cat thumbs down. on her head with a pestle her smile I need my mortar back. washed from her face raindrops leaving streams The cat’s cacophony on the windows to my soul on my pots and metal spoons— Alexander Jankiewicz was born and raised in a pity he’ll never Chicago, Illinois. He currently resides in the UAE with his wife and two daughters. attend Juilliard.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 7 On her cushion Here kitty kitty Her Highness waits my husband calls for dinner to the black beret to be served— the wind blew under crème anglaise? our car.
Our guest Shrouded in fog in a hurry the Bay Bridge to leave and moving through it the cat sits a five-mile long inside her suitcase. strand of sparkling diamonds.
Sssshhhhh Under my raincoat Her Highness a baguette is watching Julia fresh from the oven swing soon to warm a chicken. your heart.
What this house needs Three days is a ruler— in the City of Light the orange stray’s long train and we too brings with him his name— have become Sir Rufus. snail eaters.
In appreciation End of the day of the new cat door I recline she brings me on my mat a baby screech owl— and let winter my power animal? slide into my veins.
Did she grow bored Early morning with me— came the flower thieves the cat to whom with their sharp tiny scissors– I dedicate creamy gardenias these tears. and the one bold anthurium gone.
The cat A singles dance looks at me for the older crowd— in that cat way a man scans the offerings, when I’m sitting someone to cook for comfortably in his chair. his daughters and him.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 8 She said Ninety-one year old she was tired Capricorn of deferring to my illness— her favorite Christmas gift now she has the red stapler one of her own. from Office Depot.
Plucking New Year’s Eve: the turkey’s feathers the color of sunset for relatives and friends my evening dress who will pluck and shoes my nerves. the shade of stone.
From far and wide On the train they travel to get to from Turin to Milan the turkey dinner— a man offers me a light relatives yet each one though neither of us in their own world. smokes.
Day after Thanksgiving Kudos I sit on the stoop going to the poet the sun warming my back who plagiarized a little breeze my poems to keep me company. and so many others.
No one left here Old woman who knows me in the elevator the place one fart then another in these hills how to keep I once called home. a straight face?
Husband and I What are sip morning coffee these bones, in our easy chairs— this skin, not one more carol but the luggage can we take. I carry around.
A December sky The caravan brought down of electrical trucks to earth— heading this way tiny blinking and it hasn’t even Christmas lights. stormed yet.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 9 All this talk There we are about haiku– in a photograph just show me my mother with child the poems I with a nameless doll and walk away. and my father on crutches.
Mystical sex— Christmas Eve that’s what it’s called my mother he with his boy toy no longer with us she and her old the wings of an angel married spouse. left behind in the snow.
JFK Alexis Rotella is a licensed acupuncturist in Arnold, Md. fifty years today She has been writing Japanese forms in English since her late 20s and has been published in many major anthologies my mascara running around the world. Her most recent book of tanka, Black for my boyfriend Jack Judy and the Crisco Kids, was published by MET who joined the Navy. Press.
From the pile drops a photo of my mother her smile reaching deep into my heart. Amelia Fielden It’s still pretty my mother’s ring the diamonds and sapphires let’s quickly drink I imagined this New Year’s pink champagne zirconium. for we might not die tomorrow but then again we might My mother is dead I keep telling myself he would say this but there she is in a photograph is a perfect afternoon her hand at rest for sailing, on my happy head. and I’d shake my head— the power of veto
How like elephants waking early we humans are— surrounded by love revisiting I regret the bones neither your urgent hands of our beloved dead. nor our dogs’ joyful greetings
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 10 luncheon break: Angelo Ancheta several poets confess they’re composing, switched off from the speakers at this staid conference spaced out in a traffic jam outside the window lolling street urchins unminding on her wooly back the scorch of the sun the white poodle seduces the master of her new family bright lights inside this train full of passengers your desires oblivious to the bustling are my desires city below a new moon no longer— so what now will we call our ‘many-splendored thing’? trickling rain at high noon in the busy district north-west summer a barefoot beggar light lingering till late counting spare coins on their deck the sweetness of children and cherry ice cream in a shopping mall an old Christmas carol I have long forgotten mid July what season is right the lavender suburbs for renewing ties on vacation— plucking flower heads the child says “smell my hands” broken bulb shards beneath my shoe should I bother to know Amelia Fielden is an Australian who holds a Master of Arts who calls the anger degree in Japanese Literature. She is a professional of the tempest Japanese translator, an internationally published and awarded poet, and an editor. Amelia has translated, or co- translated, 19 collections of Japanese poetry to date. She Angelo B. Ancheta works as a freelance software has also produced 7 books of her own work and programmer. He lives in Taytay, Rizal, Philippines. His collaborated with other Australian poets on 5 volumes of haiku and other poems as well as short fiction and essays responsive tanka. have appeared in various publications in print and online.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 11 Sipapu Belinda Broughton
Autumn Noelle Hall of beauty that winter the masseur says I crawl across the ice actually of the waterfall we’re all the same slide through her granite womb —light to rebirth myself climb after breaking rains up the canted stair-step slope a half-forgotten lightness hand over fist of being to sit on the ridge racemes of wild orchids beneath the bent Prayer Tree in the crooks of trees release all grief for a mother lost—aye ya spiralling upwards a father lost pulled by my heart strings and find myself in the arms when I get of Mother Earth, Father Sky to outer space I’ll find you there the Lion’s eye a perfect sphere of amber sap drops into my hand on the moth as if to say hold on such a funny to this good day to die furry face the improbability the flame in the sky of being here at all burns no brighter than that in your breast lit from within, I turn East in red dust country honor the Four Directions above lichen blackened rocks the old man paperbark I am Spirit where I swung my legs the center of the hoop and dreamed like Raven scorched for bringing man fire I, too, wear my black shadow charcoal eraser, more charcoal Autumn Noelle Hall lives in Green Mountain Falls, the line finds Colorado, shadowed by mountain lions, ravens, and a predatory urge to write. Her Asian Short Form poetry and the solidity of her body nature photography have been featured online and in the shape of her curves journals worldwide. She is delighted to be joined by her fellow poet and life partner, Gary James Foster.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 12 just beyond sight fresh rained-on pavement the horned man reeks of its secret past leaves after all these years a rush of green this corner recalls and a hoof print you coming round in the crotch still shy we rode our bikes of branches to a new part of town labium you said that he carves someone we don’t know with tenderness knows each crack in this walk
Belinda Broughton is a poet and artist living in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia. She has poetry published in journals gallant tugboat and anthologies on the web and in print. Her first full-length breasting the current collection, The Sparrow, will be released early 2014. pushing a hillock of lacy foam my life buoy
she steps gaily in front of her new man falls suddenly backward to test the reflexes of love
the fog horn reminds us the city is an island Bell Chevigny reading your letter I see the barge a shifting reef of light May Day at Harlem Meer a black fisherman spreads his bait Bell Chevigny taught literature at colleges in the New York blue gill on new green grass area for 34 years and has lived in Manhattan, N.Y, for 52 the great white egret years. Her books include The Woman and the Myth: flies by for a look Margaret Fulle’s Life and Writings, Chloe and Olivia (a novel), and Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing, A PEN Prize Anthology. She has published short fiction, essays, articles widely; tanka is her old age genre. city bus an angry dame a man with a tic a girl on her guy’s lap both faces drained like me fighting a great battle
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 13 Bob Lucky squatting to tighten the bike tire the squeak in my knees all the kites louder every year riding the wind— I float through life deep into the book looking up I realize I’m wasting my time— the only way out the moon is to get to the end pulls the tide of beer to our table— we argue who was hotter another attempt Mary Ann or Ginger to socialize our dog ends in snarls— later I tell my wife is it better too bad the dogs got on to speed up or slow down towards the end what if there’s no light I say at the end of the tunnel to a fly: wait when I’m dead lost again in César Aira I’ll be more to your taste I bump into Borges, who claims not to know me whenever I hear Bach’s cello suites played well I want to die— ten years of course I really want to die twenty when they’re played badly or more hungry for memories I may eat this poem starry night around the campfire telling stories something between us goes up in smoke
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 14 Roman Holiday Sedoka
Bob Lucky Brendan Slater the older I get my newborn the less I care wrapped-up tight about ruins— against the wind: all the marble penises Criccieth beach lopped off on New Year’s Eve morning I swallow my reflux the sounds of a commuter tram Brendan Slater is a father from Stoke-on-Trent, England. and my wife’s breathing— He has been writing tanka since early 2010. the name of this wine different every time I drink it looking out on the Spanish Steps from Keats’s room so glad to be this old and still able to suffer Bruce D. Reed
alone in the cold Bob Lucky teaches at the International Community School mainframe control center of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including Atlas Poetica, Modern Haiku, New Year’s Eve and The Prose-Poem Project. He is co-author of the I send the crew home early chapbook my favorite thing. because of falling bullets
alone, New Years Eve in the twenty million dollar computer center I confirm the change of year then light a cigarette
January first I write notes to a woman in Moscow a week ago she was in Siberia—how things change
Bruce D. Reed is a Poet, Writer, Musician, Hooligan, Audience Guy, Protector of Stupid Princesses.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 15 Britton Gildersleeve Weeds
Britton Gildersleeve against the night sky the graffiti of stars write obscene beauty almost legible who taught me to weed? in silver knife light in dreams Aunt Bonnie sits guides my hands we unravel nutgrass sign at the state line in truth I don’t remember speeds enforced by aircraft overhead weightless blue the dark silhouettes weeding is handwork of buzzards circling fine articulation fingers tug roots know how deep beneath downtown Wednesday surfaces they must dig night drops like a stripper’s veil corner musician plays that funky music the mid palmar space white boys come downtown to play fleshy delta centred between trapezoid and trapezium a five-line portrait triangle of deep ache or song or thought or image a five-hair brush painting in measured strokes is a wire swing something too large to capture high above muscle memory my student crochets loop pull through loop pull through at morning’s edge to stop thinking remembering coffee lays a fragrant path pale steam rising darkness held in a cup I weed grateful, I cross over but my mother claims me my hands are hers Dr. Britton Gildersleeve teaches creative writing to adults at fingers curl inward like thoughts the University of Tulsa & serves on the board of the Oklahoma Humanities Council. Gildersleeve spent her around the roots of things childhood and adolescence in Southeast Asia, which she thinks explains a lot. Her work has appeared in New Millennium Writings, Nimrod, Passager, Atlas Poetica, and still not knowing Futures Trading, among other publications. She has three what must be undone chapbooks, and blogs at http://blog.beliefnet.com// from beneath beginnersheart/. what is on the surface which is which
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 16 Carol Raisfeld Carole Harrison girl’s night out; I watch storks not wanting to brag on the edge of sight or anything spiralling but I can still fit into on thermals my high school earrings of warm memory
a red heart cloud like sisters rolls over the hill we share a pot of tea suffocating sitting close this day caught in my throat we talk about lovers words, unspoken blossoms hers, mine and ours in our park of summer memories stop light— searching cleavage and red stilettos for young love’s eyes in the crosswalk in every gnarled face whistles of appreciation from the dump truck in the stillness beyond raindrops a crystal call a perfect day of red rosella with family and friends— reshaping the day partners married by a pastor who understands a heron cry the call to love one another at the edge of darkness . . . carrying me silent wingbeats before dinner to a moonlit dreamscape the spider and a fly share the sunset . . . in a tall ship tonight a tiny new star to a land down under shines in the heavens unknowing I now walk across her bones her dreams in my soul Carol Raisfeld lives in Atlantic Beach, New York, US. She is Director of WHChaikumultimedia, has served as Multimedia Editor for World Haiku Review, moderator for a sunbird WHClovehaiku, Associate Editor and Haiga Editor for on the edge of dawn Simply Haiku and a member of the editorial board of hovering Modern Haiga. Carol’s poetry, art and photography unreachable, nascent appear worldwide in print, online journals and anthologies. thoughts beyond words Website: www.Haikubuds.com Twitter: @carol_red.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 17 sharing the bed Carole Johnston my green beanness and your flamboyant spice— this spectrum of differences we tried to fold a salad song of love a thousand paper cranes but we never in my dream healed the world I find lost words not even ourselves and a face unknown fragments whispering dawn and dusk from a toybox the light in my city green lanterns just school kids glow deep in the trees pedalling the wind how can I leave? over our hill free wheeling into adulthood— that night the view bigger, we smaller I wandered to the top of the mesa flowing beneath a billion stars on and on through tubes alone and exploding of dark hope a blood tsunami that hitch hiker dreaming him tomorrow on the reservation desert walker inside me the Arizona heat a glass piano— rising from his skin fragile the stillness of water I drive before the storm into a eucharist of rain suspended purified by torrents in a uterine vastness the city transforms of lost space my silent scream this road on the map thin grey line to nowhere I am I am I am I’m fasting on dust Colorado Mountain lost Carole Harrison combines her love of photography, long wide open ‘big sky mind’ distance walking and short form poetry. Her work has been published in Eucalypt, Atlas Poetica, plus other anthologies today on and on-line pages. She lives in country Australia with her bluegrass backroads husband, surrounded by rainforest, a dairy farm and lots of local birds. the first blue chicory waves in the rain I get lost but not found
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 18 searching Chen-ou Liu for Irish grandmothers long lost I create them old wild women Thanksgiving night . . . her father dozing on the sofa searching through with a bottle of wine hundred year old photos in his veiny hand for grandmothers conjuring crows teacups and Jesus coming home after a long day of work her portrait still there we say awkwardly hummingbird necklace gong xi fa cai! hollow as her eyes with the fish for only two enter the rain dark house The Chinese phrase, “gong xi fa cai!,” means wishing you a speak to her ghost prosperous new year! that cigarette the woman hanging from her lips with an eagle feather smeared red sitting alone sometimes the ghost before the armed police . . . of smoke haunts me sparrows in flight
for Idle No More activists writers workshop at the Waffle House a waitress muses who are these crones reflections with paper and pens? (1) in her children’s eyes tongues of fire (1) Previously appeared in The Bamboo Hut, Volume 1, licking at the bottom 2013. of her bungalow
Carole Johnston is a poet and novelist who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. She writes haiku and tanka every a sparrow day, posting on Twitter @morganabag. on the window sill the woman tied to a bed spreadeagled
Grand Valley Institution for Women, Kitchener, Canada
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 19 an old man stands Clive Oseman on a street corner shouting at the white sports car Oh, these Chinese F-words! For Katie Webb at times shattered suns demons of distance on the country road do their deeds Jesus dangles my mind drifts to the summer from the rear-view mirror of space adorned by you on an old Ford pick-up seeing Chen-ou Liu lives in Ajax, Ontario, Canada. He is the your reasoning author of four books, including Following the Moon to the in the piercing sun Maple Land (First Prize Winner of the 2011 Haiku Pix those wrong turns down such shadowed lanes Chapbook Contest). His tanka and haiku have been honored with many awards. strike home
heading home with this unexpected diagnosis squinting in the brilliance of winter sun
like looking for a lorikeet in London words of description so elusive
is it your beauty or my own flawed needs calling me? the colour of shadows paints the gaps in between
Clive Oseman is a British poet who writes in several genres but usually turns to tanka and other five line forms as his preferred choice. His work has been published in several well respected journals.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 20 Christina Nguyen falling down getting back up falling down I live these days the stillness as a mother of Sunday night standing in the middle of the road watching the girls in the depth of frogsong run across the labyrinth please God let these moments kissing last backward through the door why do these damn boots sitting have so many laces?(1) at the soft moist edge of a hurricane his hand raised already perfect before her face falling in love with a dharma brat you could use letting a hand a little improvement slip over my breast I turn off (after Shunryu Suzuki) the pornography of bad news washing machine on the final spin cycle snow on snow my legs under the Cold Moon wrapped tight we say goodbye around his to the old year to our old selves the clack clack of his jeans in the dryer (1) Originally appeared on Aubrie Cox’s “Yay Words!” hot rivets blog on March 18, 2013. pressed hard against my thigh Christina Nguyen is a Minnesota copywriter, poet, and mom. She likes to play around in Facebook groups, the catwalk especially Tanka Poets on Site, NaHaiWriMo, and Senryu and Photoshop & Kyoka. She is also fond of tweeting as @TinaNguyen. modern fairy tales that make us hate ourselves
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 21 Dave Read he was flat tire drunk pulling towards i couldn’t determine if the gutter they’d been fighting or loving these twisted sheets he set out to map fresh from the dryer the geography of the mind but never made it we could hear back home the rough draft of her goodbye note all the way to cleanse her down the street of anger I’ve learned to use he leans the delicate cycle against the wind his shirt a rippling writing this poem flag at half-mast was like squeezing the last pearl of toothpaste underdressed from a flattened tube and shivering I envy the smoker the heat his refusal to believe of his cigarette in a country called Turkey kept me from mentioning Chile he walked along or the Sandwich Islands quiet routes seeking the peace he never found in a journey other people of 1000 miles begins with my son’s I fold their new pedometer pamphlets into airplanes their message his poems were like drifts away the tobacco he spat filthy little puddles people stepped around
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 22 his ninja alarm clock sharing stories of slips through the night exorbitant wealth silently preparing made him for a morning feel richer strike in the telling our first TV saddened to see had 13 channels the waste of my life and on-demand meant she looks away as it was Dad’s I take out turn to watch hockey the garbage she maintained a river of the element of surprise red lights by never knowing ripple in her next move the flow herself of morning traffic with his first practice without you my son’s path I’m a hollow to fulfilling morning my NBA dream of coffee begins and no breakfast the arguments everything had been about his ride their prime was vintage engagement especially since the wedding the rust so stunned she missed I left early enough a chance to to beat traffic correct me but not so early I started to think I’d have to help I might’ve been right with supper we differ on he takes my hand the extent and I squeeze tight we consider knowing your critique he will constructive soon let go
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 23 she carefully sweeps his desire the dust of to write was my mistakes reignited into a pile to by the bright show me sparks of tiny poems there was anger then with a new understanding and poems were not of democracy words to savor he starts to rebel but slivers against its absence ripped from our tongues in our house metaphors are after whittling away the false nose the potato’s deep bruise and glasses I decide poets wear it’s a good in a crowd night for french fries my poetic street cred they believe hinges on the fact in geology I can end having lived a poem through their own like a motherfucker continental drift of everything unsure if you’ve ever told me, it’s my windshield that you aren’t perfect or eyes was perhaps fogging over the least revealing this morning he carried over late the weight of evening coffee her they discuss pregnancy their recent forward struggles with sleep whatever beauty Dave Read is a Canadian poet living in Calgary, Canada. one sees in winter His work has previously appeared in Poetry Nook and on the Jar of Stars website. You can find his tanka and micro- ends at poetry on Twitter @AsSlimAsImBeing. the sidewalk I’m going to shovel
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 24 Dawn Bruce Debbie Strange she tends black and bitter a forest of bonsai the crow I have tasted every day upon my feathered tongue her bed-sit alive the caw-caw cacophony with bird calls of all my murdered words first hearing aid at the moment in the new cacophony her twin sister died of the clubhouse she felt I look out a closed window their connection break to the silence of gum trees into the static of stones in the subway fence posts clear high notes wearing prairie crows of a flutist and dust shrouds the flash of cold silver we strum the rutted road against his ragged red coat with barbed wire fingers almost leafless a fishing tree the branches in golden glow cast its hand into night from his cap and caught a man gathers up coins, the white-bellied moon heads for the warmth of the pub on hooked fingers
Dawn Bruce is an Australian poet, living in Sydney. She hollow eyes leads creative writing classes, has three poetry collections, ‘Stinging the Silence’, ‘Tangible Shadows’ and ‘Sketching look backward Light’ published by Ginninderra Press. Dawn is the as the walls convenor of Ozku haiku group and the Moonrise tanka you built group. become dust
you watch me with flaming eyes my skin sizzles I am ashes in your hands
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 25 the telegram tamarack and aspen advised he was a P.O.W. the mountain called our names but she saw him before your spark return in a waking dream became my flame (he never ate turnips again) we laid our bodies down in the library my glacier heart we avert our eyes from receded the homeless when you shed expanding minds over your avalanche skin into the matter of shrinking bellies the blue moan of echoing sky time waltzing drips from my fingertips on the rotting dance floor slowly our father built in the honeyed moments in the ash grove he planted of a thousand bees between rows of aching years every poem holds my breath she sets sail until I exhale winged words through oceans of grain into cupped hands anchored to her father and release them trailing fingers in his wake into the open book of sky untangling beards of barley
I am driftwood after the divorce curves undulating we sisters in the back worn smooth of a pickup truck my windswept bones vagabond wind stealing tears the flute of tides from homeward-looking eyes with a raven’s feather my grandfather I wrote my shame on snow broke earth’s crust then rolled the words scattering into a crystal ball stone crumbs and flung them at the sun behind his plough padlocked to history last night our skeleton key is lost shadows in the yard in this life’s dwelling rooms this morning we are water-stained only stems remain with secret sorrow in my deer-proof garden
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 26 I see her sad piano lightning flash plays an argument though anger’s red curtain my eyes are closed billows out the window and I am barely breathing not everything is black or white messages on sagebrush prairie in broken bottles the whirring grasshoppers all those words and trilling larks you didn’t say sing a lamentation hymn glinting in the sun for my sister’s stone ears (1)
I carried those silent your stone heart bones of words in my beak that mean goodbye until I lost the distance between us the will to fly further than the crow flies (2) floating etched against on my back the star-stamped sky in sky arthritic branches my hair in clouds scrawl the naked poetry my hands in fire of old-growth forests (2) she picks snow geese at the blanket scribe an ancient mystery her food and skin across the moon she picks at threads of memory their soft murmurs forgets how to pick flowers catching winter’s breath (2) she is a dried rose migration in an empty vase the last loon on the lake and I an untouched bed-tray ululating a ghost our echoes vanish in that no one visits sad impermanence of air (2) at the funeral they called us wearing a neon pink dress to collect her things I made in school not knowing a conspicuous parrot what to do with her teeth keeping the company of crows we left her smile in the trash (3)
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 27 sky cauldron Elemental roiling with funnel clouds and rooks we take shelter in a crowd Debbie Strange of broken shadows (4)
I am ignited by you in shadowland !(my paper to your fire) where mist wraiths nestle between hollows I am polished by you a phantom owl spills my name !(my stone to your water) into the broken glass of night (5) I am nourished by you ! (my seed to your earth) a busker plays cello at the market I am lifted by you his little dog (my feather to your air) wears a sign “will play for dog food” (6) we are e l e m e n t a l (1) Previously appeared in Notes from the Gean, forged by August 2013. fire, water, earth and air we soften into ourselves (2) Previously appeared in Lyrical Passion for Poetry, August 2013.
(3) Previously appeared in Lyrical for Passion Poetry, 2013 World Tanka Competition, Honorable Mention.
(4) Previously appeared in Chrysanthemum, 14, October 2013. Wandering
(5) Previously appeared in Atlas Poetica Special Feature, All Hallow’s Evening : Supernatural Debbie Strange Tanka, September 2013. Kneeling beside the looking glass lake, we (6) Previously appeared in Atlas Poetica Special see ourselves reaching for the other side of Feature, The Garage, Not the Garden, October knowing. We set our lantern boats afloat in the 2013. midnight sky and wait for the wind to show us the long way home.
we are homeless clouds w a n d e r i n g a cardboard sky begging bowls filled with stars
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 28 The Detritus of Dust Flashbacks
Debbie Strange Devin Walter Harrison & Kath Abela Wilson
You are gone, and I am left with nothing but the bittersweet need to excavate the architecture at nine years of your past. Layer after layer of your thick life has a violin been peeled away—exposed, excised, and under my chin exhibited for my perverse pleasure and pain. I a goiter thought I knew the very you of you, but I mistook aptitude deficiency your first mask for someone else’s face. Even now, though my ruthless wrecking ball has demolished your facade and the sunlight has a second childhood faded your untrue colours, I still yearn for your my skill a charm fingerprints to cover me in the sparkling detritus of your dust. I gave lessons in what in my hope chest I didn’t know a box of disillusions the dust of love letters it’s not the song that never meant for me holds my attention but the silence Debbie Strange is a member of the Writers’ Collective of of rain clouds Manitoba and the United Haiku and Tanka Society. Her gathering in the western sky writing has received awards, and has been published both in print and on-line by numerous journals. Debbie is also a singer/songwriter and an avid photographer. Her photographs have been published and were recently after the storm featured in an abstract exhibition. She is currently working colored lights on a collection of haiga and tankart. a closed eye Kath Abela Wilson is the creator and leader of Poets on precision wrung Site in Pasadena, California. Closely related to poetry of from dream place, this group performs on the sites of their common inspiration. She loves the vitality and experimental micropoetic qualities of twitter (@kathabela) and publishes dreams that in many print and online journals, as well as anthologies by Poets on Site. weigh on me like a winter quilt After years of writing and publishing regular poetry, Devin the details sewn Harrison has recently started writing tanka, senryu and into each block haiku, and is thoroughly enamored with the process. Recent and forthcoming publications include: Skylark, The Bamboo Hut, Red Light, Prune Juice, Tamarind, Everyday Poems and the Haiku Foundation’s Per Diem.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 29 Eamonn O’Neill looking at a banana I wonder would it be nicer looking back if it were straight this falling leaf a rising moon so much was there blinded but I had no time by this Autumn beauty a park so much the aftermath so softly of an anarchy of angels these autumn colours blend as if butterflies knowing their time rushing one last hurrah for my mother’s last breath she was still warm but dead dark November her last word unspoken the month of souls my mother never liked this month this dark night all 95 of them christ the deepness of it darker again I’m bringing the silhouette of a tree the seaside home my granddaughter said her pockets enveloped by greyness full of shells I notice some leaves are older a vortex than others all the leaves appear black I wonder if lost souls ignoring are ever found the profound the metaphysical shit I acknowledge redbreasts looking at a photo of me feed on crumbs when I was 2 smiling Eamonn O’Neill is now retired after working almost 30 unaware that my elder brother years in the Airline Industry. He has travelled widely both was born dead in America and Europe. While recovering from surgery early in 2013 he was introduced to the many facets of Japanese poetry. Tanka is now his favourite style. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 30 Elle M outside the liquor store no spare change or cheers decorating Christmas— for the singing cowboy I think of the sparkle lined pocketing small stones landfill on the beach I don’t want to take he wore his more than my share jacket inside out to protect the heart one day, on his sleeve you’ll remember who you are my sister was I said a teen beauty queen, to the mirror I was a competitive swimmer with green hair and chlorine cologne inside his mind a brilliant painting water coloured fantasies “life is short have an affair” of a Chagall dreamscape, her inbox where people fly email spam— she twirls the gold on her ring finger glancing out the window at the face a poem tucked looking in into an empty vase we both turn away fresh cut wildflowers Elle M lives on the north shore of Lake Ontario. She is an soaking in the rain barrel artist, writes poetry, captures photographs and collects vintage postcards. She grew up in ‘big sky country’ in Alberta, Canada, draws inspiration from long walks and before you wherever the wind carries her. open your eyes at dawn remember to remember your dreams
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 31 Ernesto P. Santiago Eve Castle sultry evening, all her treasures I wake up again boxed up in spare bedroom too hot in bed Fort Nostalgia he doesn’t accept elliptical machine guard being “second child” sound of thunder and rain solstice— waves on the beach further and further grains of sand beneath feet the world staring at my toes of tweets, my hunger a pink seashell reflects sun and my reality forever seems so short a spring bud What can poets change his woman clutches in such a small period of time her belly, armed with only rhyme? not really meant for Oh, to be a glacier of ice! collectors’ items A waterfall upon the stones! striking a chord today I will study with wet winter rain a single leaf from an elm this old guitar I will watch a passing cloud and my soul chilling the world’s ugliness out to handmade strings bobbing in my periphery when we were the poet’s muse kids, we could not afford can be a slight tremor straw sandals a voice from the past now, me and my feet walk the flavor of a fig without broken spirits lavender in bloom
Ernesto P. Santiago enjoys exploring the poetic myth of his the train roared past senses and has recently become interested in the study of haiku and its related forms. He is Filipino and lives in and left me here long ago Athens, Greece. an ancient rail tie calmly quiet in the dust warm sun above
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 32 mortality Frank Watson you feel it in your gut gnawing winter is crouching in the middle of the room in this desert of sand and wind I am neither man dearest mother nor spirit I still listen for you between the worlds autumn leaves the wind whistling woman of raisins winter comes early and molasses cinnamon-toasted lips I taste midnight with every lick holding hands in the dark one of us asleep desert woman the world is quiet of the sand the storm has passed your shadow touches an outstretched hand drenched wet spray from car tires the phantom tossed coffee cup of a rose ache of old bones has bled through grey hair of a day my unwilling heart: the shame has gone
I started writing short stories and poetry at twelve, became a a string mom at twenty and a single parent at twenty-two. I have a of butterflies day job that pays my mortgage, a husband, a dog . . . shapes the air Average! I’m a member of Gabe’s Poets, a Dallas-based with every flutter poet group and have been published in Illya’s Honey and Barbaric Yawp. of their kiss
full-bodied woman, drunk of the moon devil, prisoner to your kiss: I’m doomed
green path sky blue girl in orange pink kiss red red red
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 33 the crow squawked Gary Blankenship but the scarecrow stood his ground some take criticism well black feathers scattered along the driveway mouth sealed a crow eyes closed who lost a battle with cats hair flows or went beak to beak with a mate’s mate you speak a shadow wind I hear them patient, aged woman scurry down the canyon trails —Exhibit A— two does aware her only wish of dogs baying in the hunt was for the doctors more afraid of me than them to learn her name in the thicket today is not of her voice a day for beauty but for weeds the nails dug as much deep into as I admire butterflies and lilies my parched skin the dandelion still owns my heart she will fling my ashes to the sea pink butterfly as a cool wind blows flutters from phlox to foxglove and I shall return to nature in search a spirit, a child free of winds that help her dance to fields of dandelions gauze silk, a wisp of wind I see a hint Gary Blankenship is a retired federal empoyee whose of skin avocation is poetry. He is author of The River Wang, the in her shadow river transformed, Santiam Publishing (Lulu). He was editor of the poetry pages of Writer’s Hood; and publisher of MindFire, an ezine, and its companion, FireWeed. He led astray served as a staff critic for several forums. Currently, Gary is by the waning moon assisting Kathabela Wilson with TPOS. that sly devil with her sweet, misleading tune
Frank Watson’s books include Fragments, One Hundred Leaves, and The dVerse Anthology and the journal, Poetry Nook. His work appears in Rosebud, Bora, Prune Juice and the upcoming Tarot Poetry anthology. Frank shares his work on his blog (www.followtheblueflute.com) and on Twitter (@FollowBlueFlute).
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 34 gennepher Dental Tanka
gennepher once he held a horse’s history between his knees the blacksmith recited here sells fancy ironwork goods in this twitter stream and pendulums on a green cord is a true tale of events one evening in my life the old oak’s spring leaves tremble in the sunlight I have an appointment workmen are building a terrace in hospital chiselling and tapping to have a tooth out I arrive in the dark in a place I do not know screeching and whining to a halt the song of the shredder at a deserted a white flower victorian hospital of curled chrysanthemum petals I search for the entrance “this way,” the signs say I follow them
through an archway into a quadrangle in pitch black darkness I search for an entrance
in a lit doorway the hospital sign says “main entrance” I park my car and enter
narrow and deserted gloomy white tiled arched corridors with every door closed I follow the signs “this way”
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 35 each door I try a sign on the wall is firmly locked says “dental dept” and when I reach the end of the corridor I enter a lift to the noise opens of a wailing no one there two gents in wheelchairs in the empty lit lift their translucent white skins the empty corridor heads lolled back the empty hospital pointed tongues I turn round searching the air above
I run I go to reception out of stephen king’s nightmare tell the lady into the deserted courtyard about the stephen king corridors of pitch she says, “that’s the old hospital black it’s been decommissioned” only a few cars “you weren’t supposed parked here in the dark to go in the old hospital,” no indication she says where and bursts into their occupants are peals of laughter
I get in my car I take my seat and lock the doors among the rising I drive around crescendo of wails my headlights searching these toothless men for my destination in a dental waiting room all the while looking around the portacabin I am half thinking at cracks on the walls has someone played a joke on me cracks on the ceiling sending me here stains of brown spreading in this dark of night (this is a dental hospital?)
I drive round as the toothless gents this maze of begin their whimpering again darkened portacabins I wonder suddenly I see a glimmer is the dark of night a lit doorway the only time they can leave their crypt
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 36 a face suddenly shoves itself she pulls and pulls into mine at my tooth and says my name twisting and pulling I say “yes” the nurse she says “follow me” holds my head
I enter a room triumphant she yells with antiquated equipment “I have it sit on the antiquated dental chair I have your tooth” I look “here you are” she said at the stains on the walls “put it under your pillow”
“I will pull I hand my tooth back to her your tooth out today” “no thank you” the dentist says she insists, “it WILL come out in one go, “you have to put your wisdom tooth I’ll be embarrassed if it doesn’t” under the pillow for the fairies.”
“this is a job I’m 64 years old I would normally give to my students” and I am thinking she continues in the dead of night “if they made a mess who on earth is going to visit me it can be easily rectified” to claim my wisdom tooth? lying I declined yet again on the dental chair and handed the pieces I’ve one foot on the floor of my wisdom tooth she injects my gum several times back to the dentist then pokes it with a sharp instrument and left the room
“you are ready” outside the dentist announces I got into my car “this WILL come out in one go” but could not find my way she yanks and yanks and yanks out of this darkened maze my tooth breaks off of portacabins
“not to worry” she says I drove over grass “it’s all in hand” I drove over gravel as I watch the door I drove over raised mounds half expecting a headless scientist but wherever I drove in that darkness or frankenstein’s monster a brick wall faced me
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 37 finally The Mulberry Tree I took a turn round the old victorian hospital I saw my escape Gerry Jacobson a road lit with streetlamps
Forty years. Since we sought refuge. With my foot two toddlers and a third on the way. Came round down on my accelerator the corner with the estate agent. And fell in love I drove hard with the tall trees. Hill Corner. OMG are we still all renovating that cottage? And still trying to tame the way home the wild garden behind it? Kids long gone. It’s quiet here now. sitting in bed that night melting tanked up on painkillers into your softness witch hazel on my face God is there I wonder listening who has my broken tooth? in the mulberry tree
Gerry Jacobson lives in Canberra, Australia and is one of we are now at the end the Friday Writers (http://FridayWriters.com) and also one of this tanka sequence of the Limestone Tanka Poets. He has published tanka and and any sympathy for me tanka prose in journals. will be gratefully received
Living in North Wales gennepher writes poetry on Twitter as @gennepher. She writes haiku, tanka and micropoetry which she publishes on her blogs,
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 38 Grunge at the soup kitchen and i realise that they’re keeping the food hostage till the cat circles the sermon ends to find just the right spot— usually the one 4am where he began and the cupboards are bare— eyeing the catfood like a dragon too intently she hoards aluminum cans in a rickety “i’m not gonna shopping trolley babysit you,” says her CO as she tells him garbage cans full she was raped of euthanised pets behind the shelter— that tabby looks he may fight for too much like my own truth, justice and the American way, but Superman’s still his life no longer an illegal immigrant measured by a pulse but now the constant whirring of machine at heart a motorised heart and that’s just the thing that keeps me from in a polluted wasteland being one that was once her father’s thriving farm the girl dreams in a child drawing every color but green bright noon suns on the metal body of the robot that weeds thriving cares for her in cracked cement as defiant as those humans who constant cravings tread upon them for cigarettes and companionship and his leg cut off just above the knee
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 39 maybe gregor samsa the spider with could always fly inch long fangs but never thought lets me pick her up, to unfurl stroke her his vermin wings soft copper fur frustration licking his claws as my words to wash his face flow easily till chitin shines like water my scorpion up a hill thinks he’s a cat my desk: she gives up finally clear the rest of of all its clutter her identity my cat: to express finally uninterested her gender my tarantula how frail places a dead bug into he looks now the plastic venus flytrap: as he speaks maternal instinct or of running rum sacrifice to hungry gods? as a young man he’s angry again i try to escape— for Joy McCall the bitter taste of hate in my mouth i find it shameful is a lot like blood to cry at poems, but that’s of no concern to my love of my stinging tears the unlovable things that creep, crawl, Grunge is a gay Indo-American blog writer with an interest never able to in bugs, body modifications, and the end of the world. be requited my childhood in the rusting junkpile pretending to be Mad Max; not once a tetanus shot
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 40 Hank Archer Jade Pandora plants and hallways late afternoon, from 70’s sitcoms where a cold overcast from the bay— love is funny and winter, men like me only stumble like a lover I’ve grown tired of for the laugh track who is loath to leave can’t spread fast enough this slow and heavy ink; after dinner, your thighs the taste of take-out kisses, like soft stones the hush stolen from the hearth of new spring showers— winter founders out to sea a young shirtless man asks for nutrition advice— teacups gently “First thing,” I offer rattle on the nightstand “is stop taking your meals as we turn in unison, from shaker cups in the change room” leaving new rings in the light of a half-moon this winter river beneath a sheet of ice anniversary— burning burning; last spring, I couldn’t walk come to me darling and now dancing atop the frost the day so fair, yet a gull flies inland lost count the times she tapped her never to meet ripened thighs; the same cloud twice again I fail in a lifetime, at doing nothing they never acquire names the way a strong wind might even with the freezer door open— too hot locked in a mausoleum, to concentrate its tiled floors or make love perfect for a tango— Hank Archer is a journalist who has only recently begun Valentino’s crypt beckons writing poetry. He takes inspiration from every aspect of the human experience. He plays in a rockabilly band, drinks coffee, and lives in Canada.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 41 white caps, sand and sky— solstice moon— dolphins swim beyond I stand at where I sit perched, watching the ocean’s edge crabs scuttle bleached coral and wonder near the tide pools which stone is mine the lanterns of boats moving through evening mist become fireflies moving through evening mist like the lanterns of boats Children Play the hope of Jade Pandora summer rain vanishes leaving a neighbor’s dog children play to water the roses under the lifeguard tower and mistake the sleeping dog a cloud of gnats for kelp follows a child’s sno-cone through two lifeguards the petting zoo toss a lime-green Frisbee old seadog while the dog bites with his mutt at sand fleas scans the boardwalk for smokes Jade Pandora from California, U.S.A., is the 2010 recipient at the crack of dawn of the Matthew Rocca Poetry Award, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. She has studied and written Japanese short form poetry since 2007. A published poet, before dawn she can be found online at deviantART. seasick tourists below deck, the day boat bound for Catalina
I don’t wear a slip but if I did it would shimmer, the way you make me tremble
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 42 Lovers and Their Touch This Little Piggy
Jade Pandora Jeffrey Harpeng lovers and their touch— this little piggy incoming waves went to market gets a grin spent and a wriggle against the curves she pulls back then pushes of shoreline her foot in to my hand lovers and their whispers— this little piggy foam washes into an stayed home is where the heart abandoned conch, we are making holding is an aura to dwell in and their secrets a lawn to run tippy toe lovers and their passion— this little piggy sea lions had roast beef “from a moo” call to each other I tell her nodding— as swells roll in from knowing that I am saying deep waters over and over, love, love, love lovers and their song— this little piggy floating above sunrise, gull cries echo had none is what she wants again and again “wata!”—half a cup into sunset is all she drinks, to say, it seems, I know there’s more lovers and their dreams— midnight ocean calm, and there is and a shooting star meets this little piggy went wee another wee, wee, all the way shooting star home “again” she says “again, again again”
Jeffrey Harpeng works for a pittance, finds hope in food growing and babysitting his grandchildren, cooks without really caring for it (chickpea lasagna tonight?), writes tanka, tanka prose, haibun & now & then a hunchbacked haiku wherever he catches the faint thread of language that tugs him into the poetic labyrinth.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 43 Johannes S. H. Bjerg after the storm silence roars in competition with my tinnitus I lay my voice to sleep “I want by fallen headstones another kind of life” she says over the phone— in the background politicians talk “it’s all an illusion” about fencing in Europe he says “you’re an illusion too” “you might be right” I said at the crossing and asked for imaginary painkillers the bells are now digital— I gave up looking Johannes Bjerg was born in 1957 in Denmark, which for authenticity long ago he still calls home. He writes, however, in both Danish and English, which is an important element of his work—mainly haiku and related forms. He is a founder and co-editor of Bones, a journal for contemporary haiku in a monologue
I’m sure the moon doesn’t care ‘bout Miles I enter a room full of its light and it leaves me cold
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 44 Joy McCall old folks at the village Home are given hens not for the eggs tonight but for the company my room is so cold my head aches I dream of thick quilts once again and fire-logs, burning, shifting dancing with death a slow waltz the great storm I leave the dance-floor arrives from the west before the music ends at dawn I watch the wind and rain tear up the trees I learn a brand-new word how dreck strangely quiet dirt, trash, excrement the road today from the old High German no rush-hour traffic fallen trees block the way low voices the young girl in the next room here to nurse me come and go overnight I lose track of the time in the morning says she had the days, the nights the best night’s sleep in months the west wind twisting pains howling around the house drilling into my muscles rattling the doors and my joints unsettled spirits I hold onto the sheets beat at the windows while the room spins the west wind blowing hard all night mist swirls dies at dawn white and cold around me it turns to the east I hear voices following the sunrise far away, down the hall rising, falling, fading night noises how hard it is to sleep this bonfire night he retreats fireworks explode, the city to the back of the cave is lit with a thousand bonfires taking a break from the outside world and the million words
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 45 sun-haloed the farmer the great goddess moves the pig huts of Japan to higher ground rises above the mountains they spend their brief lives white cranes flying round her head jumping on the bronze-age hillock ill in bed the dark mouth for so many days of the cave when I’m well closed the first thing I will do with white webs is hold, hold, the dark wand the spider sleeps my neighbour’s lights the pain burns shine in my window not the fire in the belly long past midnight that love brings an old woman, she needs but the sharp current flashing less sleep than I do through torn wires in the end the tempest will there be freedom dropped me hard from these scars in the chalk-pit or will I carry the brokenness I’m slowly crawling into forever? back to the green fields
weary my hair and snappy with my man whiter and longer I apologise curls, unkempt he smiles and says I neglect my appearance I didn’t notice busy writing poems
the rosebuds pale mist in the garden rising off the marshes have frozen fox in the headlights how beautiful, how false easy to imagine lost souls the scarlet petals haunting this old road
chrysanthemums amber eyes a hundred thin petals in the roadside reeds start to fall watching the voice of Ryokan I am afraid to stop and see says turn the page what kind of creature waits there
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 46 herring gulls hollow
Joy McCall Joy McCall at the end in the woods of my bed, a woman a small child cries in shadow somewhere near I hear her breathing it is growing dark slow and shallow I go searching her fingers I find her pick at the quilt in a hollow tree scratching she is tiny I can’t see her eyes too small to be in woods but she is watching me at night, alone sleepy I say I pinch myself come out with me to stay awake but she will not I do not trust she says, I must wait what the woman might do for my brown-haired mother she begins so I sit to hum the boat song close beside her a sea shanty all night long more like a lullaby the sky fills with stars I drift to sleep the woods fill with noises all night towards dawn I dream of waves she starts singing and seaspray and I sleep and herring gulls screaming when I wake she is gone diving, pecking at my eyes and I cry, calling, oh, child
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 47 journey root-bound
Joy McCall Joy McCall for Barry my dark sister come out from the roots of the black tree it was his idea it is no place to load up with opiates for a brown woman and travel over land and sea come with me to the Himalayas climbing at sunrise up the green hill dance for me the drugs until day is done for the certain pain of the journey come, bathe the boat, the train, in the cold salt sea the mules, the mad climb as the tide ebbs and dry in the winds that howl in the dune-grass I wonder how he will push the chair at moonrise up the mountain the broken bough he says I am Sisyphus for the fire it is my destiny samphire in the pot mead in the cup then let us sleep not raise the white sails root-bound, my lady weigh the anchor my dark one sling the hammocks the brown holy ground and check the wind calls you to bed for the witch on the moors travelling Joy McCall has been writing tanka and other kinds of with disabilities poetry for 50 years. She lived mostly in Canada and the is easy States but has now returned to her place of birth, Norwich, for poets and dreamers England. Her tanka collection, ‘circling smoke, scattered with unfettered souls bones,’ has recently been published by Keibooks.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 48 spinning take me home
Joy McCall & Gerry Jacobson Joy McCall and Gerry Jacobson
I sit waiting on the riverbank where throwing stones do I belong? to the other side where is home? mostly, they fall short the closest I get is sand and soil and rain hey John Ferryman— cowpats a shot of brandy in some corner before of an english field we all board dew damp sleeping bag your wobbly boat forever gerry
curled up the dark man in a derelict shack stands in the battered prow sleeping watching the water the sleep of the dead, my head spins, drunk, motorbike leaking oil waiting for the splash greyness descends deepening into night today’s news north wind that turns my world sways the treetops upside down listening to rain on roof my genes go spinning through the generations small dark things crouched in the bare branches watching— seafarers in my twilight sleep from northern lands I beg—take me home all my kin their tales are of great storms Gerry Jacobson lives in Canberra, Australia and is one of and good friends lost at sea the Friday Writers (http://FridayWriters.com) and also one of the Limestone Tanka Poets. He has published tanka and tanka prose in journals.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 49 Julie Bloss Kelsey December wind your false smile breezing by my temper rising on the front door with the moon magnetic word tiles in disarray— my son’s poems first sonogram are better than mine so excited to see you we didn’t notice your missing heartbeat beneath the mattress the silence seven hundred dollars in a sealed envelope— she never once told me Julie Bloss Kelsey discovered her love of short-form poetry her secrets in 2009, after the birth of her third child. Her haiku and scifaiku have appeared in Modern Haiku, Notes from the Gean, Scifaikuest, Eye to the Telescope, and other journals. This is her first tanka publication. three months since you’ve moved— your old front door freshly painted the wrong color scraping away layer upon layer of brokenness underneath lies a child’s room hands on the rims of his wheelchair he deftly maneuvers the unexpected turns in his life remembering the attack of the nutcracker, his hands stained black walnut
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 50 Kath Abela Wilson entrance bench red blooms through the slats let roses grow inside the egg between my bones a tap against the shell measures what it means certain scents to be a bird kiwi and passionfruit on my walk where do we come from the questions same old question I would say yes to the storks back and forth finally believe me to touch them all your words for the love not yet said of the impossible as if my reflection I strive could break the glass to bring down the moon put it in your pocket what I offer last of the windstorm pink on pink my morning walk alone slipped down I hear trees cry to show as I climb over my vulnerability to you the bodies of ancients a different kind of sigh still the queen under the old bridge of vulnerability as if time cracked a smile she’s wooed when we kissed by the fragile lacy tops the cobblestones of forever past corners by waterfalls beneath the bridge her held back hair at night the swoon rooted in the dark of starlings side of the moon you the scented air I reach inside for those days on the shore I collected madly driftwood eyes sometimes I wait by I knew I would be gone the old wall where we spoke and now I am all the grass holds the pink crumpled crepe myrtle and lilies not yet sprung
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 51 a cautionary note eleutherodactylus to the ones I love coqui this darkly freighted world your poem wants a spell cast longer than your body my shadow on your lilies I am tree no ordinary place as if to me where I go but not to search really for a word it’s your mate for you you sing over the low curve I feel it of the old wall in my female bark moon viewing bridge I’m pads wide open eyes your sticky fingers covered with pink lilies write on
I reach deep on the 101 in thought underwater to Santa Barbara through the moon my mom’s 93rd to find this word for you: oh let her be 101 numinous with the same sweet grace all night one quiet boat in her ear he whispers wild radish grows into it birdsong by the fire and just before dawn the night we read aloud his translations you wove flowers in my hair soap bubbles one evening wash and seed when bamboo turned blue his sleep with hers you were a metaphor he dreams do you still paint somewhere it’s snowing dandelions and do I still write? someday I’ll trace them beach side parking lot against the sky behind my flowery hat these hills for you an important kiss the curve of my hand the rest is history against my heart of an important kind his eyes and so you left light scattering data I the handmaiden and dark collapses then annoyed you remembering said until the end your heat “we’re islands” my heat of a different kind
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 52 How She Changed Her Reverie
Kath Abela Wilson Kath Abela Wilson
She watched fascinated, his bare feet It seemed to come to her in a dream. The adhering to the ceiling, as he walked toward the body of the hawk was covered with hieroglyphics. beautiful white door with its high doorknob. He White against auburn, they glistened in the glided along easily and floated in, naked lit with sunlight that filtered through the trees to the golden light. After he closed the door, she bathed branch over the creek. They reminded her of a in the glow that streamed from the gap above to favorite stone she had found in the sand months where she lay sideways on her bed, her chin ago. At that moment she gazed into the eyes of tipped upwards. With dreamlike precision she the hawk: still, intense, patient. knew nothing would ever be the same. she was floating her hair untangled in a deep canyon her world red-brown walls turned upside down were covered with rows what if forever of fine white markings was something else exhilarated as she moved one long breath through the air slowly across and down
Signs began to resemble faces: long and noble, and each had a mouth that was a door made of interesting old wood with metal fixtures, each felt inviting as she passed.
mouths like doors as if to enter any one of them would be to answer some question
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 53 Her History lists that please her to be earth to fall head first Kath Abela Wilson where the rest fall into her own hands in time her book becomes a mirror her days drop dark slabs into a dark river that were the night one by one she was etched out of it she retrieves them full of holes diamond dust scattered on her body Suzhou rocks she steps unique to Lake Tai into her dream tons of them alphabet made of stars arrive into her future on lit barges her mind unfolds in both directions accordions on her head the ends are alive she plays without looking in the beginning Grecian urns with wings she was the sea tightrope walkers carry quill pens her thoughts are circles she shapes navels her own alphabet that become from the body faces of her work the bodies of her friends she proposes (to live) as Kath Abela Wilson is the creator and leader of Poets on Site in Pasadena, California. Closely related to poetry of a bread machine place, this group performs on the sites of their common a vegetable inspiration. She loves the vitality and experimental a garden a gift micropoetic qualities of twitter (@kathabela) and publishes in many print and online journals, as well as anthologies by Poets on Site. from her hand umbilical exquisite the darlings that make inscriptions
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 54 Kathy Uyen Nguyen you left a kiss on my cheek in the parking lot— startled even days afterward now and then I become like a dog in heat my thoughts return to the lake —such shadows of myself eroded I am no match by what-ifs to you, woodpecker— all the songs you carve deep within alzheimer’s— the throat of trees she gives her grandmother another kiss to replace the one the knot hasn’t been tied, already forgotten yet as I nap on this couch your kisses on my forehead another day still warmer than my fever of half-written drafts . . . outside my window the ease of dawn penned bamboo dawn by a sparrow’s breast I wake to the sound of my name stirring somewhere deep along Ithaca Street with the starlight of your voice the palm tree still greying all those years I left behind the child in me you lay in those cardboard boxes both of your paws in my lap— together we’ve seen the world how to forget in each other’s faces post-war Vietnam and pirates somewhere in this sea foam world beer cans replaced letting you go my father’s grief in roses six-feet deep— this fragrance of words the sizzle of as my tears fill these pages garlic, ginger and lemongrass over the gas stove mother and I divide portions the splinter of dreams of our melting silence from this morning’s rain . . . was it only yesterday that a woodpecker tapped out what my heart really wanted?
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 55 on your fingertip Voices you held my teardrop, this combat veteran who became the poet Keitha Keyes of my heart
My life in the city today is so different from the the sketch freedom of the farm where I grew up. Our nearest of your hums neighbours were over ten miles away. There was deep within the blooms . . . no need for blinds or drapes. And we sisters could again all those nights searching be as silly and noisy as we wanted to be. for the right reason to love we yearn to sing out loud the blind chase just like we did as kids of something stifled now beneath your paws . . . in the hush of the city tell me, old friend, how it’s done in summer dreams Keitha Keyes has spent most of her life in Sydney but her heart is still in the Australian bush where she grew up. While she has dabbled in free verse she is now addicted to the sky scrawls tanka and related genres, revelling in the friendship and of a pine branch— generosity of this writing community. Her work appears in today a cardinal’s song Eucalypt, Kokako, Moonbathing, Simply Haiku, GUSTS, revisits a forgotten part Ribbons, red lights, A Hundred Gourds, Take Five, Atlas Poetica, Lynx and several anthologies. of my journal swan song where we left last winter . . . the same wish on different snowflakes
Kathy Uyen Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American poet, artist, and yogi and has worked professionally in the healthcare world. Her work has appeared in various print and online publications such as Pay Attention: A River of Stones, Catzilla! Tanka, Kyoka, and Gogyoshi About Cats, Take 5: Best Contemporary Tanka (Vol. 3), Four and Twenty, Seven by Twenty, Lishanu, Qaartsiluni, and Lynx. Her recent and archived poetry can be found at
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 56 Kristen Lindbeck swatting at a stinging fly I look down to see the shadow of a clover flower deerfly not swatted: on my bare foot spotted wings tiger stripes reciting Hopkins and faceted green eyes to my father beauty in a breath of grace even with his wandering wits he knows a light clapping of wings “there’s nothing like it” and the little flock whirls up late taking out the trash sparrows to the bush I found a morning moon doves to the rafters floating in the arms the wind of a rainbow will never recognize my face prompted sweat cools in the breeze by an old man before thunder comes outside the drugstore a panhandler recites I couldn’t tell you “The Lord is my shepherd . . .” why I’m crying today I put out my tongue caterpillars gone like a child the milkweed grows new leaves to taste the salt red flowers in bud: in our middle age workday morning our hearts are like that above a flat suburban street yellow butterflies sunrise by sunrise spiral higher subtropical autumn into a landscape of cloud shifts to spring the mourning doves’ nursing home garden— sweet lonely call again the lop-eared cat comes and goes Good Friday through the bars the smell of the gate of lilies wilting coming home in the supermarket I sit watching from the car high summer the tremor one bird of a single bamboo leaf chases his mate shivering in the wind into the heart of a flowering tree
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 57 I hold my breath Laurence Stacey as the butterfly passes over the fence between two spider webs to reach the jasmine falling darkness with no one around, I enter the orchestra of insects
crows picking at an unknown lump I too trying to salvage Floating this life
Kristen Lindbeck latest report of another school shooting, As I recover from a year-long flare up of my somewhere rheumatoid arthritis, I dream some nights of a field mouse is born running or climbing, although I may never again run very far or climb at all. My daily bike ride to work is the only way I qigong practice have to make a breeze blow on my face when the from deep in the gut day is calm, but I rarely dream I’m riding. an owl Three nights ago, I stopped my bicycle and exhaling tried to capture the sunset on my cell phone. The the darkness light was already too low, so instead I drew it in my heart as best I could. The past three days, I have held that sunset quietly in my mind’s eye, within this world especially when drifting off to sleep, trying for a of poverty and murder poem that would be worthy of it. a brown bat licking behind a screen her newborn of rose-pink cirrus clouds the sickle moon I dreamed that as I danced Laurence Stacey resides in Marietta, Georgia, and is an English Instructor and tutor at Reinhardt University. I floated from the earth Laurence’s educational background includes an MA in Professional Writing, with an emphasis on poetry. Kris Lindbeck has been writing Japanese short form poetry Laurence’s poetry has been featured in Prune Juice, Simply since 2009. She can be found on Twitter and tumblr and Haiku, Tinywords, Heron’s Nest, and several other has published in Atlas Poetica, Prune Juice, and Skylark journals. He is also the coeditor of Haiku News, a journal Tanka. She is also working on a book of poems about dedicated to engaging sociopolitical events through haiku, biblical women. tanka, and senryu poetry.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 58 Liam Wilkinson like a wind off the hills I rush right through you when you speak your mind down to the sea you get bits of brain all over my shoes so many new shoes room 119 yet this same old you where noon light falls on fresh linen I unpack my case night of anxiety tar-black and bleeding onto the tiles that once held our dance grey sky rouged that once heard our song and ready for a night on the town the Grand Hotel done with himself in her sequin gown he took the elevator to the top of his skull and through a hatch emerged the old seaside town dressed as a bird throws itself at my hotel window gust and gull I let the past know I’m still here loose change and lights by shouting into a vase and the silence that’s returned lets me know plucking lint those times are gone from an old laugh the man who would one day I pour my heart into a glass be me and let her take a sip instead she dips in her finger this year was and plays a note on the rim a potent pilfering wind . . . rung around the Auld Lang Syne the prints our ever decreasing circle of your thumbs pressed into my poems and all I can do Liam Wilkinson lives in York, England. He has served is offer you more as editor of micropoetry journals 3LIGHTS, Prune Juice and Modern Haiga. Find him on Twitter @ldwilkinson.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 59 What—? A Little Glitter
Luís Enrique Méndez Angulo Lynne Leach & David Rice
By the old Springfield, a cold grey day in the weeds and swamp, we laughed about stripping bare the Christmas tree this whole zombie thing. of all that shines Grandma, and me, had two pistols though it’s only tinsel and a pike; we set-up a moat— I’ll miss glitter in my life
Killed the infected beach walk then we calmed down. Night came, early picking up sea-smoothed stones spring, full of fireflies. I keep a heart-shaped one We drank hot cocoa, that sparkles in the sun steaks in the plane jet engine we salvaged. We begged a new calendar the Gods for peace. We were safe for each page tells me what to do now. . . . out in the world today I must light a lamp Grandma was dying of breast cancer. in a dark corner somewhere
home late Luís Enrique Méndez Angulo has appeared in The Hartford Courant and The New Britain Herald newspapers in the leftovers for dinner United States. He has served as assistant editor on the Helix before bed Magazine at Central Connecticut State University and has we switch the radio been published therein. His goal is to write in a common from jazz to classic rock style that talks to the issues relevant to an urban, immigrant society. He has completed his Post Graduate from the University of Manchester’s Center for a New Writing. “here comes the sun”— the early Beatles song brings to mind David Rice is the current editor of Ribbons, the Tanka my first lover — Society of America’s tri-annual journal. He has a special dazzling with little warmth interest in responsive tanka and, with Cherie Hunter Day, self-published A Kindle of Green in 2008. a blackbird flies Lynne Leach emigrated from England to California but is under a waning moon still a Londoner at heart. A designer, gardener and quilt into the dusk artist, she finds poetry the sustaining element of her life. They have been writing responsive tanka together since we keep our embers glowing 1998. by taking turns
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 60 M. Kei the city whirls around us faster and faster the only stillness not so long ago at the center of our love I was young, but now the man in the mirror autumn evening is showing his weary age the cricket section of the insect symphony plays a serenade wandering just for me the Paseo del Río, breathing the green, green walls shirtless of memory in the evening cool the morning’s sweat a memory younger now on the skin than I ever was before, starting my adventure of a lifetime August afternoon with a $900 car ladders of light climb up to stormclouds ropes of rain neo-natal descend into the countryside intensive care staring through the glass a famous actress says: trying to guess which I am not a sideshow bassinet is mine attraction! —at least, not anymore! neo-natal intensive care my baby doll it drops on him sleeps through the alarms like a grand piano at the next bassinet from the third floor, this sudden crush on the elevator girl it’s fifteen miles to Perryville, we have half a tank of gas and a bag of Skittles; male model it’s dark, in an American flag and we’re wearing sunglasses jockstrap— run it up the pole and see who salutes
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 61 as soon as I a few more poems figure out how to in the last hours of mail a spanking, October, yours is before the ghouls on the way and memories arrive
In memory of Captain John Monk if there were a few more moments a true sailor, left in this October, they buried him I might write in a cask of rum something decent his feet never to touch dry land if I were a poet, perhaps I could describe little blue crab, the grace of dawn you’re much too small to eat! after a bitter so I fling you autumn night back into the briny sea and wish you well on this autumn night I wish for a voice other than my sister’s, if the government calling out her grief had its way, in the long cold season brains would be a controlled substance almost dawn in another state all the courthouse bells an immortal pharaoh have chimed steps out of the stone wall my sister sleeps at last forever frozen in an act of defiance still refusing to die the courthouse bells reach her as I could not— does she know soon I was sitting up with her, the holidays will come waiting for her emails? and with them, the anniversaries of their deaths harvesting nearly done, farmers work their fields late into the dark, the fields newly mowed all trimmed up for winter
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 62 in this dark hour, a picture is worth farmers laboring late a thousand words, in their fields, but the real you my sister laboring is worth late in her grief so much more trains rattle winter— my sister’s town, the loblolly pine stopping neither thinly dressed, here nor there dawn showing through this winter day threadbare branches
Poole Island Light . . . two men how small and yet brave in a dawn field, standing alone their breath at the corner of a mist the wilderness in the autumn air even after two months a dead cat in the hospital, on the side of mother’s wooden floors the road, shone like sun how brown that autumn day the fields
a New Year lost among and an old winter; the German Americans, one last skipjack their food and their music, dredges for oysters I yearn for homemade chili in a dying bay and Spanish voices
a torn open blister autumn afternoon and the rawness of a nibble before we go a winter wind, to the Octoberfest we labor in the short days my son excited about after Christmas two for one bratwurst
slender wading deeper as a purse strap, into autumn, she wears damp-barked trees a cloche of skepticism shed their inhibitions on a green wool day and go stark
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 63 The Five Elements Mother YouTube
M. Kei Marianne Paul
everything first, i didn’t learn I discovered earth, from my mother my tent i now learn from deep amid the trees mother youtube and stillness how to cut a watermelon next, how to roll out I discovered water, pie dough between sailing two pieces wooden hulls by starlight of plastic wrap how to cook a turkey breast third, so tender I began to long so moist for air, an open cockpit, it falls and escape from gravity off the bone as easily as words as easily as after that, regret perhaps it will be fire as easily that consumes me as wishes held and leaves my ashes to the feathered breast of birds and pulled apart ultimately, the Void will claim me by children’s fingers as it claims the feast long over all who dream only the carcass left of escaping mortal limits to pick clean for the cat’s scraps M. Kei is a tall ship sailor and award-winning poet who lives on Maryland’s Eastern shore. He is the editor-in-chief of Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, and editor of and the soup Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in i never learned to make Contemporary Tanka. His most recent collection of poetry is at my mother’s January, A Tanka Diary (October, 2013). He can be apron strings followed on Twitter @kujakupoet, or visit AtlasPoetica.org. too busy living
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 64 in my head Marie Lecrivain even as a child to value mother-ish wisdoms your scent inside the rose I close my eyes and breathe in your love
wisteria blossoms Lightning spill over the sides of the local pub Marianne Paul a seductive lure ensnares my senses at the altar faded bloodstains of our imagined on the counterpane rebellion my faulty grail the heady incense could not contain of protest the miracle that was you we were lightning the summer skies opened for us alone and we danced in the rain of our perfect youth Whatever Happened to Roxy drenched Jewel? you towel-dried your hair tugged on a pair Marie Lecrivain of my brother’s torn jeans Among old book stacks, I found a small white you wore that tear dusty journal labeled Grandmother’s Memories. with such holy reverence For the price of a dollar, I’ve gained access to the my brother in prison bare bones tale of Roxy Jewel Rush, a Midwestern and all of us girl born in 1909, on a farm in Lipton, OK, an so very innocent obscure community embedded in the early 20th century American landscape.
Marianne Paul is a Canadian poet and novelist. She is the a new voice author of the poetry collection Above and Below the emerges Waterline and the novel Tending Memory, published by BookLand Press. Her tanka have also appeared in The among blue skies Bamboo Hut. For more about Marianne and her work, visit & amber waves www.mariannepaul.com. of grain
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 65 In careful schoolgirl handwriting, Roxy elected to give up the journal. Perhaps the silence defined the narrow parameters of her childhood. of her grandmother was too much to bear. She was the only daughter in a family, who, in typical biblical fashion, rewarded her younger what truths brother with an allowance, as well as greater can be read freedom. At 13, Roxy met her future husband, between the lines Floyd, while he was plowing the field next door. of bitterness At 17, Floyd seemed “terribly serious and grown- & tears up,” but that didn’t stop him from starting their courtship two years later. Their romance allowed Roxy, for a brief time, leave behind the strictures Marie Lecrivain is the executive editor-publisher of her family had placed upon her. poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, photographer, and a writer in residence at her apartment. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including: Edgar after movies Allan Poetry Journal, The Los Angeles Review, The Poetry & ball games Salzburg Review, A New Ulster, and others. She is also the under starry skies editor of several anthologies, including the upcoming Near furtive coupling Kin: Words and Art inspired by Octavia E. Butler (© 2014 Sybaritic Press). at the midnight hour
Two days after her 18th birthday, Roxy and Floyd quietly wed at the local preacher’s house. Later that day, they moved into a small one bedroom farmhouse, along with Floyd’s father and two brothers. There was no reception, no Marilyn Morgan honeymoon, no gifts.
in a shower of rice nestled & good wishes in white satin the new bride an uncle is transformed I never knew into a wife except dead
Roxy was expected to cook meals for Floyd’s family, who liked to play pranks. One day, Roxy sometimes made biscuits for a lunch for Floyd’s aunt and I see you uncle, who, when she wasn’t looking, put salt in along the road the flour. When the biscuits came out of the oven, a hand full of flowers they were ruined. They blamed her for spoiling while a pie bakes in the oven lunch, and declared her a bad cook. Only years later did they admit their prank. At this point, Roxy’s story stops. The rest of the pages are coming home blank. after the funeral Roxy dedicated the book to her silence falls granddaughter, Tracy, who, for whatever reason, like moonlight on winter nights
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 66 phantom lover Matsukaze come for me in darkness crickets are singing across the bed ‘*alte laute’ of silence and more silence— in the old this may be record store the last tanka of today you flip through *German: old sounds the 30’s and 40’s he’s weak for the full baritone across the river of an unattached rising up black brother— mountains of clouds the scrape of dead branches my hiking boots sit by the door the future for me: a creole voodooienne you’ll always with fiery temperament . . . be fifty-eight a cajun mansion driving beneath mulatto skies your hot red convertible early before dawn you’ll never in bed reading old Ryokan walk down a hall —outside near the fence clasping a walker a brief rain approaches drool dripping onto your shoes an Ashkenazi mural— overhead mallard in the distance and his woman the cry waddle across the yard of a muezzin she ruffles her feathers while he waits (1) a sudden rain from the Gulf (1) Previously appeared in Inner Art, Spring, 2013. standing there with the man Marilyn Morgan is a retired English teacher. She lives and i become writes in New Hartford, New York, USA. Her poems have anciently-young in his palm been published in Atlas Poetica, red lights and Inner Art.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 67 on this seemingly understandably, impure morning there’s a patch the vermilion rinse of night of twilight and a high-heeled harlot across these bare words in the veins of my right arm
I did nothing much there’s poetry just picked up in everything, even a handful of leaves in the deserted street and somewhere or this great American this morning earth shakes climate keeping heater you after the separation in a cerulean between my lady day dress and I . . . moving around the house meeting a cellist at the joint autumn in your steps who tends to my ‘blues’ bowl pastor’s mother of fragrant devilwood— a self-made dowager, rumble of thunder piling up dusk in the east, and her past bitternesses . . . you arrive a bit fatigued the air smells pungent my hymn, i am plainchant . . . determined a brisk wind not to live a life mingles full of regrets with the silence crossing this bridge of bones in dense darkness out beneath bleached bones of his sweaty palms we expel a blooming angry breath— nightshade just as amazing a midnight moth rises as lies from his mouth in the cathedral of earth waking up— in the sky-ceiling arising against sounds of a Schubert lieder performance choristers on television; among high weeds autumn pours from the mezzo’s mouth
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 68 temperature’s dropped— barefoot, having bundled up the fringes of the madwoman’s my creole self, day dress swaying i bustle around the house listening east of the sanitarium, to Isolde’s ‘*Liebestod’ a patch of belladonna *German: Lovedeath
your left hand this morning exploring my fingers behind another silent desk one by one— eating duplex cookies . . . that Tuesday morning sex ‘*Verklärung!’ seemed forbidden the puce curtains DO look red *German: ‘coming to clarity’ digging through the rust around 5pm of my soul, a phone call from Maestro Weber— my brown fingers i’ve been asked uncover the secret of America to welcome autumn in Vienna with Mahler’s ‘*Kindertotenlieder’ hydrangea darkness— *German: Children’s death songs refusing to peer into my past with on this bald eyes cold November afternoon tightening this thin jacket ’round my neck, cluster i sink into *Nukada’s blood of scarlet mushrooms— *Japanese Heian court poet between thighs her birth cries stretch into tall tree darkness spilled a couple of ‘october blues’ on my back from the window in a bed peering out of afternoon silence into this darkness, the ripe glow of the crimson streetlights old black man pacing the silent streets this cold morning he soon becomes fell into a mass of paper cranes the deep silence of *Saito Fumi’s tanka *A contemporary woman tankaist
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 69 this morning, with these arms listening to Mahler’s ‘*Der Abschied,’ i will embrace i remember it’s been weeks the dense darkness since i’ve spoken you’ve carried to mother from over seas in your thigh *’The Farewell’
full bloom again in the forest’s genitals my young-self footsteps barely tap-dancing leaving imprints on this blackness in the house aloof leaves while cleaning
beyond tabula rasa, after dusk in the quiet house stepped outside kneeling in a corner stood in the moonspill prayers for the Philippines and collected my tears drench the silence in a coconut husk
dense evening— our hands somehow i do not believe were chandeliers my son returned beneath a soprano sky— from Iraq . . . I am limited as my son in my speech
arriving morning worship a little after 5am, among the gladiolas the morning cook a lingering leans across to tell me the latest hymn— *subito piano God is listening *Suddenly Quiet (musical dynamic marking)
. . . courtyard afternoon ritual— of the Iranian embassy occasionally i awaken my sister and i not really sure where I am twirl around in circles our voices singing or anything else Jewish *Berakah for a few minutes anyways *Benedictions, Blessings
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 70 my womanhood Michael Seese a wide forest for your man-ness to meander— you an apostle of green touches when the fogs lift the eyes come alive the people in November’s Boudoir i once knew though behind a desk return in my mind i am trailing the scent of bending cosmos flowers a blanket of blackness descends quiet calm the people not at all ominous wear traces of to children lodged in their dreams a typhoon’s savagery . . . what will the congress of nations do? when we open our hearts our hearths Matsukaze is a classical/opera singer and actor. He began our minds writing haiku and tanka around the latter part of 2004; no guest is unwelcomed early part of 2005. At that time he focused solely on writing Haiku, penning tanka sporadically. In March of 2013 he decided to specialize primarily in the composition of tanka. He resides in Houston, Texas dividing his time between too enmeshed there and Louisiana. in the fabric of city he sees a meteor shower and thinks of headlights on the expressway
Michael Seese is an information security professional by Michael McClintock day. Or, as his son could say even at age three, “Daddy keeps people’s money safe.” He has published four books: The Secret World Of Gustave Eiffel, Haunting Valley, I say I’m sorry Scrappy Business Contingency Planning, and Scrappy to the woman who doesn’t glow Information Security, not to mention a lot of flash fiction, who sucks the light short stories, and poems. Other than that, he spends his out of every person and thing spare time rasslin’ with three young’uns. Visit www.MichaelSeese.com to laugh with him or at him. she stands next to
Michael McClintock resides in Clovis, California. He edited The Tanka Anthology (Red Moon Press, 2003) and was Contributing Editor to Modern English Tanka (MET Press, Baltimore, Maryland). He is currently president of the United Haiku and Tanka Society (UHTS).
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 71 Mike Montreuil Nu Quang
downtown lunchtime feeling safe a cop on horseback at the coffee shop— amid the crowds a SWAT team I listen to the news drinking lattes and coffee from my iPhone and small talk reading Odyssey on the bus home a safe spot glancing up the barista meets I have already reached a young man my stop for the first time by the espresso machine Shanghai’s skyline looks similar to that of Los Angeles . . . first day after would Mao frown my first day or say “Hooray” at the gym did someone get hospital ward the truck’s license plate he reads to me a love poem by Li Shangyin . . . his soothing voice brings noon-time sunlight to my bed at the mall high-school girls a neighbor discussing preparing his RV “I got a problem” we rearrange the basement where I imagine cruising to Bermuda Mike Montreuil lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with his family and their cats. His English and French haiku, tanka, and haibun have been published online or in print. In New York subway January 2014, he and Maxianne Berger will be launching takes us to places fast the first online French tanka journal, Cirrus. I feel like time traveling back and forth
Nu Quang, a naturalized U. S. citizen, grew up in a predominantly ethnic Chinese society in Cholon, Vietnam, and lived under Communist rule after Saigon fell. Her work has appeared in A Hundred Gourds, Atlas Poetica, Bottle Rockets, Eucalypt, Gusts, Lynx, Moonbathing, Red Lights, Ribbons, Fire Pearls 2, Now This: Contemporary Poems of Beginnings, Renewals, and Firsts. She is a winner of Jerry Kilbride Memorial 2012 Haibun Contest. She holds an MFA in English and playwriting.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 72 Nilufer Y. Mistry her life unlived . . . unlit loveless, she turns to a listless sun life begging for crumbs peels back slowly like dry leaves it browns . . . curls at the edges a hum of tiny wings comes away from its core set alight in a w h i r of sunlight smaller than my thumb a fragile stir humming bird of steamy earl-grey . . . her bracelet clinks bone-china the salt air the colour of sky the sound of waves behind the dunes before the view rattling over this o p e n ocean the old steel bridge blowing puffs of smoke she skirts shimmering . . . the c u r v e of river this trickle of silver as starlight strains through the frost a colander-sky that covers the stillness the chill the dawn that seeps through stone just a strand of light . . . now, a glimmer that settles into trees the constant thunder like the flutter of waking wings. of the ocean wild & wanton waves find their way just us into the secret heart of caves star-gazers & moonlight lights the hush . . . our autumn breath the p a u s e before the push before the rush of autumn wet-paving reflections through the forest-trees streetlights & neons b l u r buzzing under the drizzle the dribble of monotonous rain
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 73 autumn-emptiness Pat Geyer of an abandoned nest desolate hollow-sorrow as it sits vacant, slightly askew among the yellowing reeds land with no rain . . . this drought-afflicted place where prickly pears a frost-bit morning pierce my senses with mem’ries & roof-shingles sparkle of sweet tasting liquid caught in sunlight as a bright blue sky bends over our backyard fence in this winter sky the river of ocean flows frost crusts too faint over the brittle-broken to be seen fallen-shaken rusted magnolia leaves like salt on wounds my mind wanders; no passers by on this empty street holding hands yet I hear the coos we listen to the river pigeons pass overhead watch the sunrise lend its light to running water upside and down wearing rose colored glasses I emerge . . . Nilufer Y. Mistry was born and brought up in Calcutta, once half empty and blue India. She now resides in British Columbia, Canada, along I am now half full and Rosé with her family. She is an artist. She discovered micropoetry on Twitter in 2011 and is an avid member of this virtual community ever since @NiluferYM. Her micropoems Pat Geyer lives in East Brunswick, NJ, USA. A usually reflect Nature but also document everyday-life as photographer and nature lover, her Haiku and Tanka have they unfold around her. appeared in Mijikai Haiku, Moonbathing and The Bamboo Hut.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 74 Awareness up & up it soared our dragon’s head kite red tongue Patricia Prime & Andre Surridge glowing in the sunlight long tail trailing through cloud walking the seawall the gulls crafting the blue was it a mountain there is a moment wavering on the rim of sky where you realise the waves or only air have crashed for a billion years shaken like a flame across the desert plateau
breathing lost in the rhythm of waves tonight & dip of oars the stars seem brighter bringing ancestors their light to this land of plenty takes so long to reach us some no longer exist I had never seen a ship before, nor the sea— Patricia Prime lives, writes and works in Auckland, New 1947 and mum’s friends Zealand. She has a BA in English and a Diploma of depart for Australia Education. Her poetry has been widely published. She is the co-author of Kokako, reviews/interviews editor of Haibun amid the bunting and flags Today and writes reviews for Atlas Poetica, Takahe and other journals. She recently edited, with Amelia Fielden and Beverley George, the tanka anthology, 100 Tanka by 100 fog drifted Poets of Australia & New Zealand and is currently one of the editors for the World Haiku Anthology, A Vast Sky. across the harbour the band played Andre Surridge lives in Hamilton, New Zealand. He has a “We’ll Meet Again” life-long interest in poetry and has won several national and & loved ones disappeared international awards. the land envelops us with its rolling blankets of trees and hills the sky lifts itself into staggered blue distances
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 75 Peter Fiore although your heart is unknowable the rose I bring you this summer afternoon flinging the curtains open is still a rose you ask still raining? as the maids roll their carts by quarters for the parking meter and smile while we drink wine and plan you never know a vagrant future what might happen next we know can never happen Christmas cactus blooming the first yellow flowers on 111th Street for the World Series hanging over the wall like last year East Village Café and we’re still together sitting in April sunshine breathing in, breathing out leaning into each other nothing need be said a blare of trumpets on 163rd Street only parting is certain a flute answers from Central Park piano player on Wall Street begins to comp once at Birdland the bass stalks Brooklyn after Coltrane’s solo, Miles said drummer shattering glass all over the city hey man, why you play so long and Trane said cause it took that long to play when I got busted police rode me to the station when he shows off handcuffed in the back seat his new Porsche with a cop who whistled she paces around it and goes “My Melancholy Baby” “just remember Giovanni you can’t fuck the car” even sparrows and squirrels once the afterglow live the good life fades on the grass when I can no longer smell you at the West Side Tennis Club comes creation blues Peter Fiore lives and writes in Mahopac, New York, USA, located on the north side of New York City. His poems have leaves falling into glowing light been published in American Poetry Review, Poetry Now, you’re breaking my heart Red Cedar Review, Atlas Poetica, red lights, among others. leaf In 2009, Peter published text messages, the first volume of by American poetry totally devoted to Gogyohka. leaf
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 76 Polona Oblak Pravat Kumar Padhy
the earthen pot what broken by untimely storm went wrong between us— the twilight quietly darkened the hope leaving a blackbird sings thick blood on the floor in winter twilight audience listens the melodious song year’s first day mother murmurs clouds begin to break with her finger language at sunset to her deaf daughter side by side two collared doves cross the reddening sky bird unfolds the wings of freedom the lone statue Polona Oblak is a widely published author of short form scripts from the slum poems living and working in Ljubljana, Slovenia. the alphabet of hope
village road leading to the metro the dignitary’s visit ends with full of dust eclipsing the sky with hopes
with open wings butterfly kisses the flower breezy morning beggars share their warmth embracing the beauty of nature
an old tree veterans from nearby places get together sharing memories with smiles under the shadow of twilight
Pravat Kumar Padhy, Scientist and Poet, lives in India, author of Songs of Love—A Celebration, 2012. His poetry appears in Lynx, Notes from the Gean, Ambrosia, Sketchbook, Atlas Poetica, Simply Haiku, Kokako, Red lights, Lilliput Review, Haigaonline, Chrysanthemum, Shamrock, A Hundred Gourds, Magnapoets, Bottle Rockets, Ribbons, Fire Pearls 2, The Dance of the Peacock : An Anthology of English Poetry from India, 2013.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 77 Ramesh Anand Richard St. Clair
humid evening my wife and i in the Bowery share a long kiss . . . the runaway teen gazing at us and our child separates us her new breasts with her hands munching on cheetos I stop and look my maid always as fog lifts asks for extra money from the buddha’s week after week chiselled face she comes back doubled with her broken smile one more day of Indian Summer a late life crush holding tight I can’t fight off to the hand of my child after years on the iPad my mother talks and talks he survived of returning roles (1) the Japanese on Saipan now he’s losing i hold my cheek to Alzheimer’s to my wife’s cheek my infant after a gale pushes her cheek the neighbors’ leaves in between ours (2) on our lawn their empty barrel on our porch (1) Appeared in Kernels Online, Vol 1:2, 2013.
(2) Appeared in Inner Art Journal, Vol 6:15:13, 2013. frost on the birch from over night Ramesh Anand authored Newborn Smiles, a book of haiku our aging dog poetry published by Cyberwit.Net Press. His haiku has deciphers appeared in many publications, across 14 countries, a week-old message including Bottle Rockets Press, ACORN, Magnapoets, The Heron’s Nest and Frogpond. His haiku has been translated Richard St. Clair was born in North Dakota in 1946. A in German, Serbian, Japanese, Croatian, Romanian, graduate of Harvard, he is an established international Chinese, Telugu and Tamil. His tanka has been published composer of contemporary classical music and a retired in Tinywords, Kernels Online and Bamboo Hut. It is also concert pianist. His poetic creations include tanka, haiku forthcoming in many print journals. He blogs at Ramesh- and renku as well as sonnets and other western shorter inflame.blogspot.com. forms. His work has appeared in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Mariposa, A Hundred Gourds, Shamrock and other print and online venues. He is also a history buff and a science enthusiast.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 78 Roary Williams Bourbon Street the night we kissed so passionately and Mardi Gras beads three am night sky fell from snow clouds God’s face big as life then back to clouds translucent before I could the way you change ask him anything back and forth between ghost my brother and I and memory cross the big road and listen to an old black man all the mornings slide steel strings and sing I spent in the jungle like broken glass on the back of the Fruit Loops box November snowstorm when my father was sleeping summer butterflies still chasing flowers the field of weeds on the strings of down an old dirt road my neighbor’s windchimes where no one could hurt me and the clouds whispered walking downtown what a good boy I was at four in the morning so quiet I can hear after the fight the Christmas lights I go outside to eat clicking and buzzing some crow (and he complains five in the morning the whole time) no one on the road but me I sit at a light portrait of a sunset and watch it change colors unsigned and like a Christmas tree hanging over the roof frost of the gallery on the inside of the window I tell a sparrow I write “Peace” with my finger it’s New Years Day backwards but he ignores me and sings his fool head off how handsome like it’s April seventeenth and delicious you are covered in icing Roary Williams lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is and sparkles . . . fifty-five years old and has been writing micropoetry in the gingerbread man Japanese forms for almost five years, writing almost exclusively on Twitter as @CoyoteSings. He studies zen, loves animals, and keeps several ferrets.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 79 Ruth Y. Nott in a land with no gardens we find ways to grow our own beneath the buttons the ball drops of her blouse and spirits rise blooming roses to meet the new year shivering at the beach in anticipation it’s easy to believe Ruth Nott is 71, retired and living in Chiefland, FL, with in something near perfection her husband and two dogs. Her poetry reflects her faith and in waves, in my daughter’s eyes values and a deep love for God and family. Her work whitecaps appears Poetry Canada magazine, The Quilter magazine, The Joy of Living Poetry Collection, Sea Oats Review, and along hometown roads other venues, as well as her own ten books of poetry. Ruth’s bricks hard packed with website is at http://www.creativewordspoetry.com. an old theme song screaming for release, a beat to my amble
paradise on a pitcher’s mound S. M. Abeles where Dante’s angel fell I release hell’s fury the train rolls on and the rains in its tiresome way everyone else hard rain figured I’d be at the truck stop further along by now I’m willing to believe the juke box hero in tree rings used to be Jim Morrison I see my legacy too my little girl can’t remember the last time comes to me the flame blew so bright eyes rimmed with darkness gasoline alley I walk in the footsteps on the way to the joint of killers I pluck one more poem for you my peach, in the gas lamp district something juicy to enjoy theatre people drift at the after-party into the night my neon shadow yogis line the path is the whole damn show of the city green I crunch my apple S. M. Abeles is just a simple poet. His work may be found in and stroll various short form journals and books, and at his website, into the hallelujah sunrise The Empty Sky, emptyskypoetry.blogspot.com.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 80 Sandi Pray autumn chill to be a butterfly gently used without the fragrance towards town of yellow blossoms blossoms of fireworks surprise the night waiting for your touch i believed them i hold my breath when they called me a star— two ducks move calmly bathing among swans in moonlit water these many years i’ve flowered myself a bench into a garden among the ferns as night sets lightly the star, my lover night wind already there wandering empty streets my footsteps and the skittering mountain wren of fallen leaves where every trail becomes the sky— who listens for me how easy but you? to give up everything until it’s gone what the willow knows changing time of an autumn wind as if a mockingbird will care whether i rise or not marsh hawk . . . before the sun how would it be to fly i wonder? beyond anyone’s touch midnight just far enough the sound of moonlight in a pine my breath turns windows broken glass to fire and ice shards of moonlight and roses the path i wander grey with autumn of petals and blood a willow leans closer to the pond i, too, still quiver at a raindrop’s touch
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 81 a distant bird Sanford Goldstein and all the stars without a name this person i’ve become who sings to wind where is there a niche to slide into for relief? i never meant I scan the decades of my life to be a recluse and find myself more desolate in deepest winter moss always finds the sun there must be something to talk about at supper, before sunrise I lift a fork and knife, my scarred body I carry on my own silent monologue is beautiful faraway a white sail follows the moon again I have no dream to chase, wildflowers again I rush down a gift of love blind alleys with rough walls from long ago now i rest my pen in a vase of bones bombarded by health info and sexual aids on the idiot box, mountain evening— blessed NHK of Japan i watch my shadow without a single ad touch your cheek as a few finches rattle what’s left of summer I watch my granddaughter as a waitress at Bob Evans, Sandi Pray is a retired high school media specialist living in I worry about the bearded loner, the wilds of the North Carolina mountains and forest his endless waiting, endless watching marshes of North Florida. Living a vegan life, she is an avid hiker and lover of all critters. Inspired by the haiku masters and a Twitter ‘Band of Poets’ she began writing two years ago. Recently she has begun exploring the tanka form with if tanka encouragement from wonderful poet friends. abandons me, what then? life has boiled down to the bottom of the pot
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 82 it seems another morning more aged of returning to exercises each day, I long abandoned, this yearning face will my walking improve? in the morning mirror will my dizzy mind stay put? each day encourage me, I walk some precipice muse of my tanka world, preparing to fall, stick with me, even an order of hotcakes how long will this pen makes me worry about finality hold out in whirling fives? so obese he came long ago the man two tables away my daughter’s husband-to-be at McDonald’s, wrapped in bandages, he makes the sign of the cross they were a tell-tale symbol and I feel happy for him of what his life was to be seldom Keats these last ten years and his “Ode to a Nightingale” a quiet dream, come back to me, what am I rushing to? yes, how pleasant the thought whose are these confused faces? to cease upon the midnight with no pain on tv the poem I see a father I thought of on going with a gun, to bed, he insists he has to protect this morning it no longer the daughter he’s pushing higher on a swing shines in my memory knowing forlorn, my time in this world lost in the realm is short, of desire, sometimes I search what’s happened to the platonic for the nearest exit felt so much this past year? how strange, many more times my life turns lonelier will I blunder? at eighty-seven, a cold November day what shall I do with my evenings’ and I misplace my glasses, my poems long solitary interludes
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 83 the old woman almost leaving the coffee shop ready to plunge in stops at the door, the dagger, after her husband died, she says, I hesitate and today he received a medal from someone I am at my tanka cafe she wants so bereaved to call our next string by his elderly mother’s “Loneliness,” death, I feel the sentimental he stands by a distant tree creeping into her lines to avoid seeing the casket go down when so surprised I leave this to find an African American world, opera singer on Twitter, what single vision will be he says he’s been writing in my one eye that is not blind? a Goldsteinian tanka while in bed so painful from my tv couch my back from computer I watch floods, tornadoes, sitting, avalanches, or is it, I wonder, that it happens only to others from something deep and hidden? is starting to leave my mind a foreigner the foreign teacher in Japan I seem to always bowed to by a colleague call myself, urinating on the road, how long I studied, she thinks she has to be polite how age makes me forget and bows to a telephone pole will I enter Sanford Goldstein has been writing tanka for more the elegant home care than fifty years. In addition, he has co-translated many Japanese writers—those in poetry, to cite a few, at Ohio’s Stone Gardens? are Akiko Yosano, Mokichi Saitō, Shiki Masaoka, and I have not been used to luxury, Takuboku Ishikawa. It is to Takuboku that Goldstein I am not used to paying high rent feels most indebted. Takuboku believed that tanka is a poem involving the emotional life of the poet. Sad Toys really affected Goldstein. Takuboku stressed his sad no whispers life in his three-line tanka. Goldstein’s poems focus on reach my left ear what he has experienced, suddenly seen, suddenly reflected on—they are not imagined. or right, and no splendid visions in my blind right eye
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 84 forgetfulness Sergio Ortiz
Sanford Goldstein / Joy McCall a heron bluer than the lips of Lazarus he goes awakens to the cry to butter his toast of a jealous sea and returns— the cup of coffee he left there, had he drunk it to the last drop? cold air fills the city— spring is at the end I too forget of a line where lovers search the simplest of things for joy like peacocks these busy days— I ask a passerby: ‘what day is this?’ blue mirror . . . white river face turns black writing when night seeps letters to friends and relatives into your bed about his new tanka book, each time he has to turn on the internet to help him remember the book’s title my mother passed away that March— a loon follows me down no one else the curving river road forgets his books they sit in rows on hundreds of shelves in Fiji tattered from many readings our bodies bronzed like gods . . . two boats marooned so many addresses by a waterfall in his notebook where his friends are kept, he has to go through three times where I live to find out where his best friend lives life is on its own chase the hunger ends when I begin turning love into symmetry
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 85 Coming Out Tegucigalpa, 1974
Sergio Ortiz Sergio Ortiz shrouded in mist I dance on my heart I wear a torn place when stars are spaced on my sleeve— so far apart turning like a mirror that doors opened to lovers on a string close around them like a book
I was twenty-six when I met Carlos. His pale a key white face contrasted sharply with his deep black in a lock, eyes. After a heated discussion in the middle of I have the street, he invited me to get on his motorcycle. no more tongue It was late, public transportation was no longer than a wound available, and I was tired. I accepted.
I don’t know if it was the wind, or the fact that beads I had my hands wrapped around him, but for the of an abacus— first time in years, I felt safe. When we got home, the shed skin he asked if he could stay. I mentioned there was of a snake remembers only one bed and we had just met. He said he what it once held wasn’t thinking about sex, he was more interested in “love.” I laughed and invited him to spend the night. calculating all the ways I numbed myself He went to sleep with his clothes on; I went casting minute over every single word he had spoken, examined after minute into the wind every inch of his face until the sun rose. taking off the mask watching him sleep in long alleys over a wild solitude I assumed I had discovered the secret of life
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 86 A Poem for Uganda In Memory
Sergio Ortiz Sergio Ortiz
It is now illegal to be a homosexual in we have not seen Uganda. We went underground to escape the Mandela mist of colonialism. I take off your shirt to tattoo a in the wordless prism, a machine gun, and a dove dripping blood flight of birds from its heart. his broken silence
be a rainbow in the gale of life oh the sea is cold free gulls wing across the bay of heavily-lidded eyes through burning water on the battlefield he touched our veins with ice and the prison faded “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”* Do not answer that middle-of-the- earth night-knocking at your door without resistance. shivers with grief We are no longer children of the half-light. we are all floating islands artless fog counterweight to the stars man-on-man smithereens in a moment Sergio Ortiz is an educator. Flutter Press released his debut black-on-black blemish chapbook, At the Tail End of Dusk (2009), and his second without a purpose chapbook, Bedbugs in My Mattress (2010). He is a three- time nominee for the 2010, 2011 Sundress Best of the Web *John F. Kennedy Anthology, and a 2010 Pushcart nominee.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 87 Sondra J. Byrnes Stephanie Brennan rain sweeps in the museum a dark vacant lot Degas’ ballet dancers i find myself politely pirouette in the space he left behind me a woman whispers before he left I can do that
a single wild rose parsing still blooms the roar of traffic pink . . . like the cheeks from the wind of children i look for intention caught in a lie between the lines his inspiration is Miles Davis sirens hers is cut the night John Coltrane open— all the stars align i imagine disaster for everyone but me no problem that’s what they say in place of you’re welcome the crescent moon but I remain elbows between buildings unconvinced casting silver for that moment by the sink dreamless sleep clean wine glasses upside down lying in wait after the fight for the pierce of a cork he tries to smooth things— she sweeps uncontaminated her hand down by city lights each lock on the door I see things in the night sky that weren’t there before Sondra J. Byrnes lives in Indiana, USA. the all clear sign we move out of our rooms into the light safe from the missionaries
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 88 in the market The White Feral Cat, a Week in a white-haired man slips a single grape the Life into his pocket without knowing why Stephanie Brennan the avenue slick with rain Monday streetlights reflect the white cat stopped by in his eyeglasses though hopelessly feral I can’t see his baby blues I talk to him travel up my thigh he pretends not to hear what does it mean the white feral cat to you beat up that slanted sunlight my once feral cat you’re always looking for a Tuesday territorial dispute I’m right here, right now over my heart he bakes cookies the fighting ferals squares of moonlight on Wednesday the fur flies on his spatula the white cat and a tiger that sweet taste of freedom I clap my hands so new it burns they stop, take a bow over the Pacific a quandary on Thursday a white gull wheels the white feral cat in the twilight is the cause his cry a reminder of so much chaos of our war-torn world just tryin’ to stay alive in the hazy twilight that shock of white fur a young oak it’s like that with ferals waves wildly in the wind on Friday, out of nowhere barely tethered he’s in the vineyard like his teenage daughter meeting my gaze head on today at yoga Saturday I try to trap a student cries that white feral cat for her dying mother get him fixed the rest of us my neighbor asks why wait our turn he’s not broken
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 89 Sunday, she names him Caspar empty swings and it’s true on Remembrance Day he lies low like a ghost at the city park hunting at night pigeons strutting among the white feral cat of my dreams the polished boots of veterans
Stephanie Brennan lives among the redwoods and fog in her young son Sonoma County, California. She’s been writing fiction for many years, some of which may be found online at: People hangs onto my leg Do Things With Their Lives. Recently she has ventured into at the market poetry having fallen in love with the tanka and haiku I choose red tomatoes writers on Twitter. She started writing her own tanka under still clinging to the vine her pseudonym (@tantamount2), because who doesn’t sometimes like to try on new hats?
in all honesty I promised them a rose garden . . . soft scented petals and the prick of thorns
so sure he’d never forget . . . Susan Constable the anniversary of his son’s death comes and goes a place for everything and everything in its place— longing together we turn for that easy exchange another room inside out between us but still no matching sock nothing but words spoken, unspoken after a long day it takes only a moment not quite winter to agree— yet every rooftop we forget about dinner, iced with frost— go walking in the rain across the Pacific a forest in flames
. . . and on the radio Susan Constable’s tanka have appeared in numerous news of another tragedy international journals and anthologies. Her collection, The in a foreign land— Eternity of Waves, was one of the winning entries in the I search through my iPod 2012 eChapbook Awards, sponsored by Snapshot Press. Susan is currently the tanka editor for the international on- for Pachelbel’s Canon line journal, A Hundred Gourds.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 90 Terri Simon Toki the small snow holds on homeless to the grass and concrete Barbie begging waiting for the sun for change— longest night of the year but all she gets as I watch for you are plastic shoes
in the light rhythm of trains, screech of a winter moon, of wheels, metal tires long shadows whisper toneless I flick the cherry a broken symphony of my cigarette record on one endless groove I saw him his first day back on the outside. hand makes the gesture Did he see me? without hesitation The branches’ shadows on the gesture makes the pot curtains seem bigger this night. clay and discipline movement invents beauty new home— the voice of the mill at night Terri Simon has degrees from Sarah Lawrence College hums the ocean’s tunes (Writing/Literature) and Virginia Tech (Computer Science) and works in IT. She lives in Laurel, Maryland, with her in a different key husband and dogs. She organizes a poetry Meetup, plays hand drums, and has more projects started than she will witching hour ever finish. Her work has appeared in “The Cathartic,” standing on the stoop, “Aberration Labyrinth”, “Three Line Poetry” and the nearly nude anthology “A Mantle of Stars: A Queen of Heaven under a waxing moon, Devotional” by Bibliotheca Alexandrina. a cigarette my incense to Luna
city lights make constellations all their own— and never the same two nights in a row
during breakfast (scrambled eggs, overcooked sausage), the doctor’s sympathetic call: in vitro has failed yet again
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 91 the sign reads a butterfly’s dance, ʜᴏᴍᴇʟᴇss—ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ʜᴇʟᴘs a swirling of autumn leaves, and it’s true— a railroad’s cold steel but I wish I could give where does reality end more than just a kind word and the life of dreams begin? quantum excitation— Matter is let there be mass! neither created 1.56×10⁻²² seconds later, nor destroyed. the god particle is dead . . . We draw our breath from if it ever existed at all remnants of the dead.
In poems I have captured • • • falling leaves . . . — — — but if I can reduce them to words do I really understand them at all? • • • my spirit’s plea for help if one wears a mask is beyond words long enough, does it become reality? the wings of butterflies, cultivated roses . . . Come (in that moment I am not myself) take me— next time you make me doubt your own power, you. remember— you warp space and time just by existing . . . never and never a girl and never with eyes and mouth again . . . sewn shut— . . . until . . . where do the past and future dwell? pretty as a picture . . . but human spirits— only plasmic solids suspended as a picture . . . not in fluid time . . . for real torpid, turbid, unclarified motes in the eye of God
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 92 a without you grey I’m only day a lone gull out circling round side visiting geese in the fog . . . . honk memories of a carriage ride through Stanley Park with you I built a birdhouse in my soul— it collapsed if I fall under the weight of (do you a single feather have the strength to) winter night— let me go outside the window, a whisper, a sigh, The end of the line is empty; the long and the sweet scent of goblin fruit b l a She said, c “Even in the winter—” k (and though I haven’t heard dnoura gninrut ,niart a word from her in years) “—quizás . . . .”
Winter night— the wind sings my mind and body a whispered lullaby. can’t remember where they were, “Her, her, her, her,” it sings, where they went last night and lays me beside you. but my self, my spirit—I— remember being in you moon kisses sea— rising swell of the tide a little sweet, beneath tangled black sheets, a little sour— lonely fingers you are where your lips ought to be my favorite candy
Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest US, toki often “ . . . hush, writes poetry informed by the experience of that region: the hush, labyrinthine confines of the evergreen forests, the infinite hush,” vastness of the sea and inclement sky, and the liminal spaces in between. toki’s poetry can be found online and in said the sea. print, with recent work published or forthcoming in Atlas I closed my eyes and dreamt of you. Poetica, The Bamboo Hut, and Poetry Nook.
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 93 Tracy Davidson off piste the sound of snow shifting breaks the silence faint cries beneath our feet he treats me after the avalanche to afternoon tea at the Ritz over watercress sandwiches he complains he tells me it’s over of feeling pins and needles in his legs he has yet to notice empty classrooms the shape of bandaged stumps the echo of children’s laughter silenced only memories remain masterful locked in bloodstained walls in its simplicity the art critics say my 5-year-old daughter her cries masked calls it a pile of poop by the splatter of raindrops against the window feet drumming in rhythm the lingering scent on the car dashboard of stale piss and excrement I try not to tread on discarded needles reflected heat the feet of the homeless from skyscraper windows multiple suns burning the sidewalks below Tracy Davidson enjoys writing poetry and flash fiction. Her the feet of pedestrians work has appeared in various publications and anthologies. youthful desire wakened by a first kiss she promises more the gentle curve of soft lips parting before my tongue after breakfast we take a romantic walk across French fields pausing to take in the view . . . so many white crosses
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 94 Tzod Earf a mole rustling in the leaves on this cold morn mirroring this stirring a a curiosity inside of me clap—ap in in a a two poets alone canyon—anyon—ayon dine by candlelight scarfing garbanzo beans and spam— on cloud nine both eye the fruit-cup we dip a straw in the sky and sip noisy goodfellows a cool breeze seventy and stumbling laugh hard at life fading as the cold into the sunset moves in a little closer a couple jogs by their pace too hot I walked for making love tonight down the street turned to see my reflection I try to find in a withered tree my origin in the soil yet cannot retrace my path Lord, I’m a vine come by me who cannot grow backwards I pray bless me, a withered fig tree gibbous moon ice in a drink of daytime sky for moments stirred not shaken at a time beckons a cold cold night I surrender to sit in silence and just be me I see the heartbeat of the wind evening through a shimmering leaf coffee wafts and wonder what drives my heart a breezy notion our cups filled with fresh expectation
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 95 daylight William Hart dogs bark nonstop; my tired feet want to escape these boots, but I should love my neighbors feared hooker mary jane left the rough trade becoming nurse practitioner I’m a random if there’s hope for her epistle among there’s hope for us all the lost and found, a ragpicker in I love my dear country life’s consignment shop but she leaves me to romp in other lands fierce queen of empires the laughing spider startling in her lust mocked the rain: the last speaker “Ducky for me, of a dying tongue all my feet are webbed!” translates ass as apple to confound the linguists then laughs his apple off one hundred thousand breaths sex sells all each day . . . our products yet not one to waste try and sell some sex exhaling your name next stop city jail
Tzod Earf hails from Cincinnati, Ohio, a small, sleepy when all the world’s peoples mañana town in the Ohio Valley adjacent to the Ohio wise up and think like us River. He discovered tanka on Twitter a year ago and won’t every land on earth enjoys the challenge of setting things “write” in tanka’s be cocked with nukes succinct poetic form. You can read more from Earf by going to @Ear2Earf on Twitter where he is quite engaging and set to preempt open for polite conversation. most with no address adroitly become invisible William Hart is a poet and novelist living in the Los Angeles they steal into the cracks area. His most recent collection of haiku, Cloud Eats dividing real lives Mountain, was published by Red Moon Press in 2013. His only book of tanka, Home to Ballygunge, was published by and lie flat MET Press in 2010. Hart also makes documentaries with his wife, Bengali filmmaker Jayasri Majumdar. some with no address reject the cloak of shame and hint violence or our pocket change we wish they didn’t see us
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 96 Guidelines: Bright Stars, An anything else. Experiments are welcome here. If you’ve written something and you’re afraid the Organic Tanka Anthology, standard tanka venues won’t consider it, send it here. We make no promises, but we’re open to edited by M. Kei new ideas.
[email protected] Tanka definition Reading window: November 10, 2013 Tanka is a short lyric poem originally from thru September 30, 2014. Japan composed of five poetic phrases and making use of the techniques and aesthetics Bright Stars is an experimental project from pioneered in Japan. Because English and Keibooks that will run for one calendar year Japanese are very different, several dozen (2014). As an anthology, it will publish both new methods have been invented to adapt tanka into and socially published tanka (within certain English. Any method is welcome, but we prefer a parameters) in as many volumes as can be filled leaner, more supple poem than is usually created with intriguing work. All volumes will be by the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern. We suggest published in 2014. As each volume fills, it will go 15-20 words of English on five asymmetrical to press and subsequent submissions will be lines. considered for the next volume. There is no planned number of volumes: it will depend Poetics entirely on the quantity and quality of Do not send generic poetry and don’t retread submissions. It will not follow a fixed schedule. Japanese tropes or Western clichés—don’t send The content of the anthology and the press of cherry blossoms, kimonos, or spreading a loved other business will determine the schedule. ones ashes. We want to see poetry in which the An organic anthology, also called a ‘serial poet understands the poetics and uses them to anthology,’ differs from a journal in several ways. engage their own lives and subject matter. First, it has no fixed schedule, so there are no Bright Stars focuses on the Japanese aesthetic deadlines. It’s first come, first serve for quality of ‘akarui’—bright, light, illuminated, brilliant, tanka literature. Because it has no fixed number shiny, brassy, active, energetic, noisy, loud, of volumes, there is no pressure to pad a volume happy, drunk, passionate, wild, playful, vivid, and with mediocre work to make up the requisite boundless. That doesn’t mean you can’t send us number of pages, and likewise, no agony over dark poems—black is a color too—but it should be cutting deserving work due to space restrictions. an active darkness, not a hand wringing, genteelly Although it does not have a fixed schedule, it does sighing darkness. have an end date, unlike journals which expect to For examples of the kind of tanka and related publish indefinitely. Bright Stars will not accept poetry we seek, review the following special submissions after September 30, 2014. features at AtlasPoetica.org: Bright Stars welcomes new and socially The Garage, Not the Garden : Tanka of Urban published tanka literature by emerging and • Life established poets. By “tanka literature” we mean 25 Tanka for Children (and Educators) tanka poetry and any experimentation or • The Unspeakable Body innovation based on tanka, including but not • Social Realism limited to: tanka, kyoka, gogyoshi, waka, • Chiaroscuro—25 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and tanrenga, tanka sequence, collaborative tanka, • Transgender Tanka tanka prose, shaped tanka, acrostics, and •All Hallow’s Evening : Supernatural Tanka
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 97 Reprints translated it yourself, say so. All translators are Bright Stars will reprint previously published credited and their biographies are included. tanka and related literature that meets the 4) Include a short biography written in the following criteria: third person no more than 75 words long. 1a) Anything previously published via 5) If more than one person contributed, the electronic media is welcome: Twitter, Facebook, submitter must expressly state they are blogs, online journals, etc, as long as you let us authorized to act as the agent of the other know where and when it was published. contributor(s) and have permission to publish the 1b) If Edited: If it has appeared/will appear work. in an edited/curated online venue with a 6) Bright Stars does not accept articles, publication date during 2014, it is not eligible. announcements, or book notes. Those should be 1c) If Socially published: All poems published sent to our sister publication, Atlas Poetica. via social media or on your own blog are 7) Bright Stars is published by Keibooks, and welcome. the general guidelines posted to the website at In other words, we are trying to gather up AtlasPoetica.org apply, except where specified electronically published works without stepping otherwise. on the toes of other journals and forums. 2a) Anything that has appeared in a printed Rights book, chapbook, journal, CD, sheet music, or Bright Stars acquires world English-language other fixed medium is ineligible. rights to appear in the anthology, publicity 2b) Small circulation exception: If less than materials about the anthology, and electronic 50 copies were published/available to the public. copy, including ebook and online versions. All (E.g., if you printed out 15 copies for your material will be made available as per the friends and relatives, then it’s eligible, provided it Educational Use Policy posted on the website. meets the other criteria.) Please indicate that it You grant exclusive rights for us to use your was a small circulation item. poems from the time submitted up until 90 days 3) It is NOT a simultaneous submission. after the work appears in print. After that period you do not need our permission to reprint, but a New credit is appreciated. The contributor retains ‘New’ means “never before published ownership of the copyright. anywhere the public could see it.” If it appeared on social media, see ‘Reprints’ above. If you To Submit printed out 30 copies for your class, see 2b Submission address: BrightStarsTanka@ above. gmail dot com. Reading window: November 10, 2013 thru For All Submissions September 30, 2014. 1) There is no payment or contributor’s Join Keibooks-Announce@ discount. googlegroups.com to receive information about 2) You may send up to 40 poems, or an Bright Stars and Keibooks. We will not spam you, equivalent amount of tanka prose or shaped Keibooks-Announce sends 0-6 announcements tanka. Please query for items over 40 poems in per month and no forwards. length; we are willing to publish very long works, but we must be careful how we allocate space. 3) Translations are welcome, as long as English accompanies the other language(s). Please specify the translator’s name(s). If you
Bright Stars • Volume 1 • Page 98 Publications by Keibooks
Collections Edited by M. Kei
circling smoke, scattered bones, by Joy McCall
This Short Life, Minimalist Tanka, by Sanford Goldstein
Anthologies Edited by M. Kei
Bright Stars, An Organic Tanka Anthology
Fire Pearls : Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart (Vols. 1 & 2)
Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka (Vol.4)
Catzilla! Tanka, Kyoka, and Gogyoshi about Cats
Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka
M. Kei’s Poetry Collections
January, A Tanka Diary
Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack tanka and short forms
Heron Sea : Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay tanka and short forms
M. Kei’s Novels
Pirates of the Narrow Seas 1 : The Sallee Rovers Pirates of the Narrow Seas 2 : Men of Honor Pirates of the Narrow Seas 3 : Iron Men Pirates of the Narrow Seas 4 : Heart of Oak
Man in the Crescent Moon : A Pirates of the Narrow Seas Adventure The Sea Leopard : A Pirates of the Narrow Seas Adventure—forthcoming, Summer, 2014
Fire Dragon