Atlas Poetica Journal of World Tanka Poetry 24

ATLAS POETICA A Journal of World Tanka

Number 24

M. Kei, editor toki, editorial Assistant

2015 Keibooks, Perryville, Maryland, USA KEIBOOKS P O Box 516 Perryville, Maryland, USA 21903 AtlasPoetica.org

Atlas Poetica A Journal of World Tanka

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. See our EDUCATIONAL USE NOTICE.

Atlas Poetica : A Journal of World Tanka, an organic print and e-journal published at least three times a year. Atlas Poetica is dedicated to publishing and promoting world tanka literature, including tanka, kyoka, gogyoshi, tanka prose, tanka sequences, shaped tanka, sedoka, mondo, cherita, zuihitsu, ryuka, and other variations and innovations in the ﬁeld of tanka. We do not publish haiku, except as incidental to a tanka collage or other mixed form work.

Atlas Poetica is interested in all verse of high quality, but our preference is for tanka literature that is authentic to the environment and experience of the poet. While we will consider tanka in the classical Japanese style, our preference is for fresh, forward-looking tanka that engages with the world as it is. We are willing to consider experiments and explorations as well as traditional approaches.

In addition to verse, Atlas Poetica publishes articles, essays, reviews, interviews, letters to the editor, etc., related to tanka literature. Tanka in translation from around the world are welcome in the journal.

Published by Keibooks

ISBN 978-1523468966 (Print)

AtlasPoetica.org TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial Marilyn Morgan ...... 56 Educational Use Notice ...... 4 Mark Goldsworthy ...... 57 This Tanka Music, M. Kei ...... 5 Marshall Bood ...... 57 Matsukaze ...... 37, 58, 59, 60, 62 Poetry Maxianne Berger ...... 92 Aalix Roake ...... 7 Mira N. Mataric ...... 61 Alexandra Davis ...... 85 Murasame ...... 62 Alexis Rotella ...... 7 Neal Whitman ...... 64 Allistair Wilson ...... 10 Nick Hilbourn ...... 66 Amelia Fielden ...... 64 Patricia Prime ...... 67, 68, 94, 95, 98 Andy McCall ...... 12, 32 Patricia Rohner ...... 70 Anna Maris ...... 54 Paul Mercken ...... 71 Autumn Noelle Hall ...... 12, 13, 14 Pere Risteski / Пере Ристески ...... 72 Barry Dempster ...... 37 Peter Fiore ...... 72, 73, 74, 91 Bruce England ...... 14 Radhey Shiam ...... 75 Charles D. Tarlton ...... 16, 17 Rebecca Drouilhet ...... 76 Chen-ou Liu ...... 17 Richard St. Clair ...... 77 Cynthia Knorr ...... 18 River Blue Shoemaker ...... 78 Daniel Liebert ...... 19 Ruth Holzer ...... 78 Dave Read ...... 19 Ryoh Honda ...... 79, 81, 87 Debbie Strange ...... 20 Samantha Sirimanne Hyde ...... 83 Don Miller ...... 21 Sandra Renew ...... 84 Don Wentworth ...... 22 Sonja Gavriloska Ljulkova ...... 73 Eusebeia Philos ...... 22, 23, 24, 25 Sylvia Forges-Ryan ...... 84 Gerry Jacobson ...... 25, 26 Tim Gardiner ...... 84 Haiku Jezebel ...... 27 Tim Lenton ...... 86 Ignatius Fay ...... 27, 28 Tish Davis...... 85 Jacob Salzer ...... 29 Thomas Martin ...... 86 Jake Street ...... 29 Tom Clausen ...... 38 Jenny Ward Angyal ...... 30 Jonathan Vos Post ...... 31 Articles Jordan Beane ...... 32 As a Conductor : Between Forty Sound Units and Two José Angel Araguz ...... 32 Breaths, Ryoh Honda ...... 87 Joy McCall 12, 21, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 57, A Note on Brevity, Peter Fiore ...... 91 60, 100 Review: Warp & Weft, Tanka Threads by Debbie Karla Linn Merriﬁeld ...... 39 Strange, Reviewed by M. Berger ...... 92 Kath Abela Wilson ...... 39, 40, 41, 42, 43 Review: shards and dust: new & selected cherita by Keitha Keyes ...... 43, 44, 45 Larry Kimmel, Reviewed by P. Prime 94 Ken Slaughter ...... 45 Review: pine winds, autumn rain by Matsukaze & Larry Kimmel ...... 46 Murasame, Reviewed by P. Prime ...... 95 Liam Wilkinson ...... 48, 49, 50 Review: The Tanka Journal, No. 47, Reviewed by Lorne Henry ...... 50, 51 Patricia Prime ...... 98 M. Kei ...... 5, 53 Review: At the Hut of the Small Mind, by Sanford Marcus Liljedahl ...... 54 Goldstein, Reviewed by Joy McCall ...99 Margaret Van Every ...... 55 Marilyn Humbert ...... 62, 63, 83 Announcements ...... 100 Educational Use Notice Editorial Biographies

Keibooks of Perryville, Maryland, USA, M. Kei is the editor of Atlas Poetica and was publisher of the journal, Atlas Poetica : A Journal of the editor-in-chief of Take Five : Best Contemporary World Tanka, is dedicated to tanka education in Tanka. He is a tall ship sailor in real life and has schools and colleges, at every level. It is our published nautical novels featuring a gay intention and our policy to facilitate the use of protagonist, Pirates of the Narrow Seas. His most Atlas Poetica and related materials to the recent publication is January, A Tanka Diary. maximum extent feasible by educators at every level of school and university studies. Educators, without individually seeking toki is a published poet and editorial assistant permission from the publisher, may use Atlas for Keibooks. Born and raised in the Pacific Poetica : A Journal of World Tanka’s online digital Northwest US, toki often writes poetry informed editions and print editions as primary or ancillary by the experience of that region: the labyrinthine teaching resources. Copyright law “Fair Use” confines of the evergreen forests, the infinite guidelines and doctrine should be interpreted vastness of the sea and inclement sky, and the very liberally with respect to Atlas Poetica precisely liminal spaces in between. toki’s poetry can be on the basis of our explicitly stated intention found online and in print, with work published in herein. This statement may be cited as an Atlas Poetica, The Bamboo Hut, and Poetry Nook. effective permission to use Atlas Poetica as a text or resource for studies. Proper attribution of any excerpt to Atlas Poetica is required. This statement applies equally to digital resources and print copies of the journal. Individual copyrights of poets, authors, artists, etc., published in Atlas Poetica 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 Editor of Atlas Poetica at [email protected]. We welcome innovative uses of our resources for Our ‘butterfly’ is actually an Atlas moth tanka education. (Attacus atlas), the largest butterfly / moth in the world. It comes from the tropical regions of Asia. Atlas Poetica Image from the 1921 Les insectes agricoles d’époque. Keibooks P O Box 516 Perryville, MD 21903 AtlasPoetica.org Matsukaze’s two sequences with Joy McCall This Tanka Music are in the rhythm of call-and-response as practiced in many Christian churches. At first Joy “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men sings out, then Matsukaze, then the positions are gang aft agley,” said Robert Burns two centuries reversed, and it is Matsukaze who leads and Joy ago, and so it has been with me this winter. I who follows. Most collaborative sequences in brought ATPO 23 to print earlier in the autumn English follow a conversational form in which the to give myself time over winter break to work on two voices often merge into one, as opposed to literary projects, but was then laid out with Japanese tradition in which each tanka is bronchitis for three weeks and accomplished autonomous and redundancy is avoided. The none of what I had planned. Meanwhile, earliest, most primitive tanka did use refrains, but submissions continued to pile up. This issue is repetition was discarded in order to pack the therefore stuffed with poetry, and two unique poem as fully as possible. Repetition must avoid non-fiction articles, as well as reviews and redundancy or it weakens the poem, but when announcements. used properly, enhances prosody and meaning. Readers will find Ryoh Honda’s article on the Tanka’s music is enhanced, especially in musicality of tanka particularly interesting. This sequences, by creating melody with variations. arose out of a discussion between the poet and Kath Abela Wilson, the leader of Poets on Site, myself regarding his process for writing and has great experience through her performance translating tanka and ryuka. In his article, he group of combining tanka with other forms of introduces musical notation to show how he reads poetry, recitation, singing, dance, and music. Her particular poems. The system used is unstaffed sequence of tanka prose pieces is like a dance notes to show rhythm. Readers of a musical bent suite in which each short dance shares will be able to follow along in detail, but for the similarities, but is unique in itself. Although not rest of us, it prompts continued thinking about expressly submitted as a sequence, the pieces in the lyricism of our form. the suite share relationships with one another. I was particularly taken with one of the tanka Taken together, the sum is greater than the parts. in Honda’s article that I don’t think has ever been As usual, we have tanka and other short translated into English before, Priest Myoe’s poems from around the world, including tanka that is pure sound. That led me to some translations from Macedonian, Dutch, French, experimentations with ‘sound tanka’ of my own, and Japanese, and much more. The contributors and I hope other poets will experiment with the to ATPO are living up to the journal’s mission of audio qualities of their poems as well. celebrating the diverse music of tanka and Serendipitously, Autumn Noelle Hall sent her related forms. tanka sequence, ‘Whatizzit Good For?’ that intercuts short samples of songs from our youth ~K~ with her anti-war tanka. This tanka music is readily apparent in the M. Kei works of many poets, but since the matter of Editor, Atlas Poetica formal music expression has been brought up, we should acknowledge that some of our tanka poets do have formal music training. Matsukaze is a Cappadocia in Turkey is an area of natural wonders classically trained vocalist, and that no doubt is and unique cultural heritage. part of what creates his unique voice. Thoroughly knowledgeable about modern and Cover Image courtesy of Earth Observatory, NASA. experimental Japanese tanka, he brings us several continues to manipulate the lines of tanka in accordance with his inner ear.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 5

Aalix Roake Alexis Rotella cricket Namaste chirps under the porch I say brother to my brother scares me silly who salutes me again and again as if I were the ﬂag.

~Boston, Massachusetts, USA The electrician ﬁnds a baby racer red maple in the garage reﬂected in the water puts it into a soda can quiet wind then tosses it far as he can. you are so pale now that you are older Too guilty sun shines to say along the glaring my burden horizon would be easier too much daylight if she would wander off. to be ready for evening we Mercury retrograde cannot easily defeat what can I expect bamboo growing from this new doctor out of its proper place his promise in our Japanese garden I’ll be better in a week. the garden Always covering has grown dense her ass now she pulls a mysterious jungle the sweater down where children stalk monsters over her rump. silent snail moves slowly through The moment the mailbox Aunt Millie died systematically consuming a glass shattered all my bills and letters in my hand as the guest rambled on. ~Hamilton, New Zealand

Born in America, Aalix Roake makes her home in New Zealand. She A letter from has had her tanka, haiku and haibun published in journals such as a distant cousin in Russia Modern Haiku, Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, Tinywords and many others. She won a Highly Commended in Kokako’s 5th International the stores there empty Tanka Competition 2015, has won honours in other contests and been she tells me she wants to be close included in anthologies worldwide. but aspirin would quell her pain.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 7 My heart presses Baby’s breath against your back in her garden as you glide for the sister the motorcycle over ﬂushed down this morning’s city ice. the toilet.

Retired neighbor Just once she says carries the Bible I want to dream wherever he goes of my mother quotes a passage from Joel when I was not under an eclipsed moon. her mother.

Cottonwoods From their 401K a girl up to her ankles the parents gift in river a ﬂock of white doves singing a song their new son-in-law’s mother in exchange for a ﬁsh. cloaked in black.

An egret lands A list of all on the back of a cow the birds for this he ever saw I traveled his child’s an hour. only inheritance

Holier than Tao 3,000 miles his lectures from my hometown yet how I drive down the audience our new street genuﬂects. with the same baggage.

The lake All the names this morning still they called each other except for a swan in front of the kids with babies many excuses why their homework on board. won’t get done.

Blood moon Sitting on Santa’s knee anti-abortionists the one year on the street corner I asked each face Mom and Dad wearing The Scream. not to ﬁght.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 8 The painter What is this an air head tube coat more color but a cocoon on his hat walking head ﬁrst than our shutters. into the winds of spring.

Forgive me mother All her letters for not visiting hidden under your stone a squeaky ﬂoor board I’ve grown tired of long after taking care of you. her husband’s demise.

Wind turning Message in the pages a bottle of another day I send it to you to a list in a dream of old worries. with no return address.

Stopping myself A tiny rosebud from calling you lands at my feet by another name the wind brings that burns the tip with it of my tongue. a tinge of hope.

Moan of the north wind Not yet my grandmother rattling the windows alone and seasick the deaf boy the gold locket stolen hands me a note by a nurse calling begs me to invite her in. herself friend.

Darjeeling My husband’s baby pictures he asks in a manila envelope and I answer from his estranged brother — darling, no signature just text anything you ask. “I know you will cherish these.”

~United States A Christmas card from the new chiropractor a dozen Alexis Rotella is a licensed acupuncturist and nutritionist in Arnold, business cards MD. A seasoned practitioner of short form poetry, she is also a well respected digital artist and an ongoing student of bird life. ﬂy out.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 9 once again Allistair Wilson she uses her beauty to cross tonight the road I will send you a boat of promises . . . the sail a patchwork of love I had plans a hull . . . nailed with hope for the garden turns out the garden she was ﬁdgety had plans for me on untold days waiting for the big one he hailed my taxi with her small empty hands as if he was leading a cavalry charge I on the other hand the ﬁrst rains never overcharge come softly to mourn the last and whose great idea dying day of summer was it to go camping tonight . . . the change in minus 10? summer’s youth slipped away the earth . . . and I one day I will in the autumn of life live beside a mountain stream drinking clear waters dancing it is surprising amongst the stars how many decades can pass before you realise . . . this is . . . you famous . . . you on tv your life your money . . . you had it all yet . . . your presence fell on me . . . like a curtain these words . . . my offering blocking out light on this spoken-less night step gently towards the tide washes away the waiting their names the beach doesn’t mind . . . or move our lives . . . appear . . . writ large in sand

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 10 last night the fat doctor a blank notebook beside the bed offering dietary advice nothing came . . . except without irony light specks a plate of biscuits dancing darkness by his side occasionally I gather papers a battered ﬁfteen year old van tap them on end full of ex-army gear and socks with a vague sense of importance . . . chasing Venus across a heath ridiculous . . . you shouting; I know ‘we’re getting closer’ a 13.7 billion year old universe look at you a 4.5 billion year old earth in all your loveliness a galaxy 100,000 light years across inspecting snails 150 billion galaxies before the world an important man? gets to you philosophical artist look at you declares in all your loveliness he is just in all your loveliness a pigment look of his imagination at you if you stand in the street saying; he has ‘I have been expecting you’ many properties eventually . . . someone will call you wise vast wealth but not before others nothing have called the police of true value

~United Kingdom never mind wandering aimlessly in the bardo plane I have just returned Allistair Wilson lives in Kent, southeast England. from kicking stones in the street the fact I live in a down-at-heel area has never stopped the ice cream van coming around in the cold . . . nor jingling away the wildlife

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 11 evening conversation Autumn Noelle Hall

Andy McCall & Joy McCall new orchard math: $5 admission x 4 kids in tow when all the apples you look at the sky now out of reach do you see clouds ~Stuckey, Indiana, USA or the face of God?

the moment I see Google suggested me an endless space the search ended filled and I began to exist with songs in my 20-something’s eyes and wind and love ~Boulder, Colorado, USA when God speaks i his voice c is the thunder i his breath is the wind c l . we are . only the grasses . that bend in the wind and grow in the rain a year later the faucet still dripping • • • — — — • • • morning mist calling into question the silent meadow our environmentalism cattle grazing on my final day peace will come the stuffed bird snatched from my hand and shaken ~Norwich, England savage our dog’s jealousy of those outside the window Andy McCall lives with his wife Joy in Norwich. He works for the local council. He likes nature and motorbikes, and home. ~Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, USA Joy McCall lives in Norwich, England. Her life is wide and full and often difficult. M. Kei has published several of her collections of tanka. She is grateful for many things.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 12 a few thousand lives Whatizzit Good For?* two buildings and some boats the small price we’ve paid Autumn Noelle Hall for the millions we’ve murdered in conflicts overseas a week before Paris for oil, for markets my sister insisting for free trade agreements it’s a rite of passage for US-against-them everyone should travel interests and agendas to Europe at least once WAR — huh* — that’s what it’s good for claiming no such right In God We Trust I consider the t-shirt to line our pockets — at least I’d have to wear: 1% of them — Apologies for America never counting the cost scarlet-lettered on my chest in sworn enemies my neighbor recalls steel, clothing, cars playing amidst the rubble no longer Made in America in post-war Germany these days Hershey’s chocolate bribes we specialize dropping out of clear blue sky in terrorists my own childhood war then blame them on a Marble Mountain their homelands in ruin oceans away while we drone on till I saw dad’s tears spill from a safe distance over Vietnam’s orphans about equality trying to fill a collective his combat boots even unconscious, we bleed as he warned from world-wide wounds that our peacekeeping force inflicted in the name was, in truth, a war machine of power and greed

I could not stand up ~Good Ol’ US of A next to you and defend her still today** *lyrics from Edwin Starr’s War the red of our ﬂag soaking **lyrics from Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA through its white and blue Note: 13, the number of tanka in this sequence, how we wrap ourselves represents both the 11 / 2015 date of the terrorist in its mantle of deceit attacks in Paris and the original 13 colonies freedom which became the imperialist nation that the US democracy is today. — ANH such words are cheap

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 13 Some 3 meals times Sedoka 365 days a year and so on Autumn Noelle Hall feeding the ravenous pit around which life is lived imagining what the mountain might sound like without trafﬁc . . . gun shots . . . man In her sixties a susurrous peace my mother had a stroke in absentia, perhaps “the young old” the whisper of forgiveness that’s what they called her and now I’m past her age ~Pikes Peak, Colorado, USA

For Autumn Noelle Hall, tanka holds memory, emotion, people, and place. It is home to husband, children, wild birds, waterfalls, an Walking downstairs australian shepherd and the deer he trails, bears and mountain lions and I shudder their tracks through the snow. But tanka is equally a form of reckoning, when my shadow a way to wrestle with the world and those who seem bent on its destruction. Tanka is Autumn’s lens on life. moves in front of me Bruce England lives and works in Silicon Valley. His haiku writing began in 1984, and his serious tanka writing in 2010. Other related interests include haiku theory and practice. Long ago, a chapbook, Shorelines, was published with a friend, Tony Mariano. Lighting a candle I see what Bruce England my ancestors lived in My day begins again reading A carp The Daily Storm leaps up with breakfast a cascade weaving through Spiders braids of water probably don’t realize their walnut tree once in an orchard For a dog is now in a backyard head deep in a bowl every meal My ﬁrst wife is the best believed my beard meal ever grew thicker with regular sex — ah, the good times A few red whiskers around She came back my chin in the evening last traces and wanted of some fox to know why I said she had wild eyes

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 14 Outside our window She came blue sky, gulls ﬂying to bed seemingly out to sea wearing only the world bafﬂes me the colors I don’t want to leave yet* on her nails *Derived from ending of HBO miniseries, Olive Kitteridge.

No trace In the sixties in my bed I remember watching although a girl dancing I had sex there in a granny dress with a woman next to the band

You laugh Concert over — daughter, the people but once walking outside I was younger, are still thinner, prettier vibrating

In my sixties Wall I reached grafﬁti says the second beauty of two is in prime numbers the Sharpie

In her new office Blossoms, I noticed the mistletoe cuckoo, moon, above her desk snow, and now she said a sprig follows her the year from office to office is ending

Bon voyage Beyond to all the tanka my porch light that slipped out the world seems of my mind to belong to distant dogs An engineer taught me Winter night the sweetness an outhouse of ellipsoid breasts too far I pee off ~United States the porch

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 15 Mind / Body And They Knew That They Were Naked Charles D. Tarlton Charles D. Tarlton There be in Animals, two sorts of Motions peculiar to them: One called Vitall; begun in generation, and The palm at the end of the mind, continued without interruption through their whole life; Beyond the last thought, rises such as are the Course of the Bloud, the Pulse, the In the bronze décor . . . Breathing, the Concoctions, Nutrition, Excretion, &c; to which Motions there needs no help of Imagination . . . — Wallace Stevens — Thomas Hobbes Sometime when the human race was ﬁrst Before I was sick, I don’t remember how I felt coming into existence, they maybe did not need exactly, you know, I couldn’t tell what was appurtenances. They slept on the ground, normal. Now that I am ill, I can’t tell for sure crouched among the reeds, tore their meat with which feelings are part of the sickness and which ﬁngers and teeth, and owned nothing except ones are just the way my body feels naturally. perhaps the lucky sharp rock they’d found. Why Little sensations in my nerves or the beating of would they even cover themselves? They were my heart can set me worrying whether I’m caught in the midst of glacial alterations of spirit having an attack, or something. I have a hard sifted through the slow rhythms of selection. time making myself relax. Invention could only be disruptive.

makes me think I’m not imagine these chairs my body, like it’s a thing and bookcases and tables apart, an object forget the idea of my scrutiny, an alien they began as solutions something just beyond my reach to failures in our nature

the helmsman can make kept someone around a boat go where the wheel says deﬂecting the neurology of our ferocity it goes — ring the bell! seeking comfort in the face ﬂank speed! My brain! The Chadburn of dark growlings and prowlings rings up here but not down there atavisms hidden keeps me in the moment in the graceful learned roles that way a deer stops and lifts civilizations its head searching for enacted. The savage snarls the scent of danger, what some behind every toothy smile tiny noise in the leaves means ~United States ~United States

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 16 It’s All There Chen-ou Liu

Charles D. Tarlton three months now since his wife’s funeral . . . lingering Write the truest sentence that you know. in his rose garden — Hemingway the smell of decay I never fought in a war, I never saved anyone’s life from drowning, I never parachuted living alone from a plane or Bungee’d off the Millau Viaduct, I in an old attic . . . never flew faster than sound or worked as a deep sardines sea diver, I never explored my ancestral home in in a tin box Norway, I never tended bar in a New York City, I squashed by my hammer never wrote a popular song or discovered a rare mineral, I never won a marathon, never boxed as a pro, and I never got into Harvard. no more refugees on the wall of a mosque — what advice can I rows of women give you? Try and keep your word in a rainbow of headscarves be a real friend chanting, no god condones terror don’t ever feel too sorry for yourself, never take the blame she said when it comes to love she needed more space I can say with some confidence I gave her betrayal is a poison 3000 miles of it . . . to the soul and leaves a scar the Pacific expands daily like thrown battery acid

the older you get the door the thinner your skin. That’s what opens and closes I learned over time every eye a world of knowledge of life escapes rocking in chairs on a porch into ﬂoor numbers ~United States I recite love poems Charles D. Tarlton is a retired professor of political theory who has that are etched in my heart . . . been writing tanka and tanka prose since retiring from teaching in she gives a long sigh, 2006. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wife, Ann they’re full of adjectives Knickerbocker, an abstract painter. lacking action verbs

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 17 I whisper to the drunken shadow Cynthia Knorr on the wall: I’m never bored Reading at midnight with your company under a lamp that flickers erratically like a broken heart beating scorching sun in the corner of my eye above the barbed-wire camp . . . one number after another The one little bird on the skins of migrants who doesn’t fly away as I scatter seed eats first, then is eaten snow starts to fall . . . by the cat my eyes meet the eyes of a lobster waiting to be eaten Home is the table in a restaurant window in the corner with you and a good red after a week with the boss she finger-writes in LA those three words on my chest . . . the sting How blissful the sound of the promise of cold rain pinging my ex failed to keep on the tin roof while we lie under a warm blanket bumblebees in the shadow of a sunflower After the snowfall a few feet away an old couple on a sled the silver sparrow barrel down the hill Their grandchildren must be here but I can’t say I’ve seen them at midnight a sliver of light under our bathroom door . . . Draft horses pull cement blocks the sound of her voice, in a contest called huss pullin you’ve got a dirty mind here in New Hampshire Dear god — I fear their hearts are going to burst Chen-ou Liu lives in Ajax, Ontario, Canada. He is the author of five books, including Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize, 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) and A Life in Transition and Fried dough Translation (Honorable Mention, 2014 Turtle Light Press Biennial its golden crust lightly Haiku Chapbook Competition). His tanka and haiku have been honored with many awards. sprinkled with sugar slides into my stomach like a hockey puck

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 18 The back-up band to the back-up band Dave Read for Prince Cheap wine and a dull ache stubborn over my right eye as mountain goats ~New Hampshire, USA two angry drivers lock horns in trafﬁc Cynthia Knorr lives in Strafford, New Hampshire. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and she is the author, with her photographer husband, of The Talking Garden, a book of haiku and taking photography. She learned about Tanka in her writing group, Down a morning-after Cellar Writers, and has been writing it ever since. pill she struggles to swallow Daniel Liebert the night before

the stretch sleet clatters of sunlight into the skylight, the dawn candles glow alone in the park on a fat man a woman does tai chi massaged

resting upon maple whirligigs old shelves heaped rotting books in a birdbath, as dusty as I will die and that his interest will be that the praying mantis drifting turns his tiny head over city limits to see who forest stroked his back ﬁre smoke from so gently a thousand miles away on a bench we keep speaking as I eat the lunch over each other she made me, the rattle high heels tread of silverware my shadow thrown in a drawer

~United States

Daniel Liebert has published or has forthcoming many haiku, tanka, etc. in Ribbons, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Blithe Spirit, etc.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 19 the grass long after days of rain Midnight Shift I’ve never been one to cut Debbie Strange back on my excuses

Winter nights are never quiet when I spend a speck them alone, brooding in bed like an egg in a nest against a dome of down. of sky A plane drones overhead. In rising winds, the sparrow that had evergreen branches scratch messages against the rested on my fence windowpane. Our clock chimes on the hour. The dog’s nails tap dance across hardwood before she settles the breeze down with a sigh. The furnace grumbles through of a fan whirs its cycles, struggling to keep bone-rattling to a stop temperatures at bay. My body tenses as a sharp we feel another crack splits the air. This old house speaks its own summer drift away language, and the strings of my guitar respond with sympathetic vibrations. drifting the sound of tires across the morning squeaking on new snow sky a winter bird the toddler’s finger rises from her rest following an airplane fluffing up her feathers

~Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada ignoring the ringing phone in my pocket I walk along the river to hear the warbler sing Debbie Strange ~Canada she is small-boned with beautiful plumage Dave Read is a Canadian poet whose work has appeared in many this tanka bird journals, including Atlas Poetica. You can view his tanka and whose every short song micropoetry on his blog davereadpoetry.blogspot.ca, or on Twitter, lifts us into glory @AsSlimAsImBeing. for Kathabela Wilson

newly planted evening-scented stock at the end of this careworn day the sweetness of night

~Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 20 late harvest the roar of combines Keep That Battery Charged all night long looming through grain dust Don Miller & Joy McCall there be dragons

~Rosetown, Saskatchewan, Canada keep that battery charged good rubber how we longed on those tires for the circus to come and a hand free for writing! one last chance to hang by our heels from the high-wire moon tree roots cross the pathway ~Elrose, Saskatchewan, Canada seeds go ﬂying pine cones crumble under the tyres white-tailed deer between tamaracks our past the motion was set e l o n g a t i n g eons ago with each golden hour the dispersal of seed propagation of trees ~Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, Canada and now a carpet of leaves a black dog a small girl slavers at the edges running through the woods of my mind kicking up the leaves is there no escaping now they stick to the tyres this inevitable defeat silent, sad reminders ~Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada the battery wanes drum circle and rubber thins my heart pounding at day’s end in my mouth the glow of embers these words that taste of blood and words to be forged and sound like thunder ~Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA / Norwich, ~Bannock Point, Whiteshell Park, Manitoba, Canada England

Debbie Strange (Winnipeg, Canada) is a short form poet, photographer, and haiga artist. She is a member of the Writers’ Collective of Manitoba and is also afﬁliated with several haiku and tanka organizations. Her work has been widely published. Debbie’s ﬁrst collection, Warp and Weft, Tanka Threads, is available through Keibooks, Createspace, and Amazon. You are invited to visit her on Twitter @Debbie_Strange and at debbiemstrange.blogspot.ca.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 21 as a child Don Wentworth my first thunderstorm explained everything, I was apprehensive about approaching Red since then i haven’t looked Pine, and told him so, but he was nothing short of to the clouds for one answer attentive and generous. I was so flustered when I left him, I took his glasses and, walking, attempted to put them on over my own. Smiling, i removed I took them back and apologized. every clock in the house by mistake trying to recover our putting on my teacher’s glasses lost time and possibility I look away trying to see everything with his piercing eyes i sing along for Joy McCall to an oldie on the radio — ~Pennsylvania, USA a song can cut a slit in time for me to see backwards Don Wentworth is a Pittsburgh-based poet whose work reflects his interest in the revelatory nature of brief, haiku-like moments in everyday life. His poetry has appeared in Modern Haiku, bottle rockets, bear days without names creek haiku and Rolling Stone, as well as a number of anthologies. His knock first full-length collection, Past All Traps, was published in 2011 by Six Gallery Press and was shortlisted for the Haiku Foundation’s 2011 on my door Touchstone Distinguished Books Award. His poem “hiding” was seeking asylum selected as one of “100 Notable Haiku” of 2013 by Modern Haiku from time Press. A second full-length book, Yield to the Willow, is now available from Six Gallery Press.

i told myself, here’s what i know — in that absence Time / Existence i never spoke of it again Eusebeia Philos a little light, mostly smoke, i was only dust he tries to exit so i don’t remember through cracks which star i came from — in a broken window no genealogy site has that info either cussing at ﬁve years old, sitting on the head mother assured me of an ancient rock i would never again reﬂecting in want to taste the stillness a bar of soap of standing water

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 22 barely sustained by the ordinary, Pain there’s this madness we eat by the handful Eusebeia Philos when we break our fast

a pinhole of light a tree full of birds burns through her sings out calls curtain of darkness, of alarm, a small way of escape i sit up opens her eyes and look behind me

blossoms leave the trees, unlike man you cry that nothing a rock is unaware changes in the world it exists, and sweep the petals yet pressure to the curb crushes both

quiet people so many different walk in the street destinations past the yelling my mind takes me in the house while i sit with the curtains drawn right here

in the doctor’s ofﬁce my neighbor walks with vigor each of us waits everyday at noon quietly to the corner store in our own pain, for exercise, i stiﬂe a cough beer and cigarettes

next ﬂoor evidence of life — he whispers a neighbor’s in the empty elevator, porch light running out of buttons snaps on to go up in the dark

~United States holiday weekends in our city, emergency vehicles and sirens pierce the festivities

~United States

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 23 a squirrel runs Relationships along a picket fence point by point Eusebeia Philos my wife tells me all of my faults a span of rusted steel bridge at the end of a long table closed years ago, i sit with morning coffee whenever they talk and early thoughts, nothing is said several empty chairs speak their mind you once told me of a safe crossing we sat down through the water — to measure a cold river our absence — now divides our halves between us what could we see she leaves home every night after reasons to wait the kids are in bed another year to ﬁnd herself to save their marriage lost on the streets might not make it either leaving again the house door bounces the woods run open behind her slam, right up to i get up and meadow’s edge — close it by hand where are the lines for us, we wonder i look back like she’s intact green pine cones between quotation marks, growing the same as she was forty feet up, when i met her she and i aren’t ready to happen standing at the edge of her contempt, if i hammer the sun ﬂat a familiar void into a perfect bronze plate, out of which will you let it shine i’ve climbed before nail-hooked on your wall

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 24 being of the air she’s light Out of Control touches soft in glancing, Gerry Jacobson this ethereal sylph

colourful photos we sit, talking on the bank young couple smiling of this rising river, could be too absorbed my offspring . . . to know in a sense they are we’re being swept away

~United States that ﬁerce lust for the highest places climbing up the silver horn Eusebeia Philos rotten rock and slippery snow she rides wild horses — steep and icy . . . my neighbor backs front points kick in her ’69 mustang sudden slip out of the garage and can’t arrest it for the season rope tightens, pulls the other hard rain hits a small town square, falling . . . falling pedestrians quickly take interest out of control in a window display down the face under an awning all my life that nightmare abrasion, darkness my notebook of struggling poems — good enough bodies dangling to smash a bug from a chopper on the nightstand an empty pad in Lygon Street as i drive families deserted on rain seasoned asphalt roads, steam shapes itself ah . . . the ridge into obscure clouded thoughts my world is on both sides around me ~United States in autumn haze the hills lie waiting Eusebeia Philos was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. Many of his long form poems are at eusebeiaphilos.blogspot.com. He can also be found sharing micropoetry on Twitter @Eusebeia_Philos. ~Southern Alps, New Zealand

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 25 Princess Sandals Silver Medal

Gerry Jacobson Gerry Jacobson bright red rug We’ll soon be back together in the old gum tree. sunny prints on the wall — May Gibbs a child’s chair and table ‘Pride swells our hearts as our boys march off pencils and paints . . . unused to war’. Those posters and postcards of a century ago.* Women at home knitting socks and mittens for those brave boys putting up a grand ﬁght at pink dresses Gallipoli. Australia must never fail. Now is the hang in a cupboard hour for all to die for freedom and honour. a pink canopy hangs over her bed . . . her silver medal unslept in ‘For Duty Done’ — donated two sons one shot at Anzac Cove bedside rabbit the other gassed in France illuminated to soften Our casualties: sixty thousand dead, one the darkest night hundred thousand injured. And all the rest of dreams . . . undreamt undiagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (which was ‘discovered’ half a century later). a rack mist and cloud of little shoes a few scattered trees by the door damp grass princess sandals empty landscape pink snowboots . . . unworn unﬁnished statues

* ‘Home Front’, photographs and memorabilia, National Museum of in pappa’s ﬂat Australia, Canberra, 2015 she cries for her mamma he cries ~Australia, 1915 for his daughter I cry for them all Gerry Jacobson lives in Canberra, Australia. He writes tanka in the cafes of Sydney and Stockholm, where his grandchildren live. Gerry was ~Stockholm, Sweden a geologist in a past life. His recent chapbook ‘Dancing with Another Me’ celebrates his resurrection as a dancer.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 26 Haiku Jezebel Are We Alone?

Ignatius Fay clouds over the mountains the color of bruises pink popping blossoms retired this hill without her paleontologist steep oddly the most common questions not even in my ﬁeld oh river, when I glimpsed you from Do I believe in UFOs? I know what they’re the mountain really asking, but I answer in the afﬁrmative I did not understand anyway. Religious fundamentalists or people who your price was the moon are just plain afraid of the possibilities immediately begin to ridicule me for believing in aliens; and the true believers are ready with a the mountains string of questions about where aliens come are still there, I know, from, what they are like, why they are here. through the fog that covers the bay Interrupting, I point out that I hadn’t said I I believe my doubts believe in aliens.

‘But you said . . .’ so many holiday catalogs ‘No, I didn’t. I said I believe in UFOs — so few on my list Unidentified Flying Objects. Anything flying, who can I give mechanical or biological, is an unidentified flying my gifts to? object until we determine what it is. The true nature of most is usually determined in short order. A small percentage, though large in when I tried number, are never satisfactorily identified. to go back home, home disappeared what they are like facts in a book is anybody’s that has no index ‘guess’ being the ~United States operative word

Haiku Jezebel is grateful to have work included amongst such beautiful ~Canada poetry. She is from Bellevue, Washington, United States.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 27 wants to eat from my plate. It becomes an issue. Taste Test And remains an issue for the thirteen years we are married. Ignatius Fay less than optimum both first date and marriage We both work in fast food, off at 2 AM. mistakes Finally a real date, after several late-night (early that I never morning) chats over coffee at an all-night donut make again shop. The evening is beautiful, warm, mid-July, and ~Canada she is wearing a delicately pretty sundress. Seated across from each other in the best restaurant I can afford, we talk about our backgrounds, our likes and dislikes. Getting to know one another. At the high point of an animated story about my Ignatius Fay mishap-burdened childhood, my gesticulating left arm knocks over her full glass of water. Directly alone again into her lap. does it matter who’s at fault her dress seems my deck rendered see-through has no queen of hearts until dry wet and exposed she is embarrassed Thanksgiving the empty mall The atmosphere is still a little strained when parking lot time to order. She expresses interest in my choice, a convention of gulls but opts for the large Greek Salad. A few minutes each with an opinion into the meal, the tension noticeably lessened, she spears something from my plate with her fork. rethinking Before I can object, she’s chewing. I object on volunteerism principle. If you really want some, I’ll order a lately second plate. I do not like having other people feels more like eating from my plate. being exploited no, no she couldn’t eat flying a whole order to a man she met she just wants online gaming a little taste five days to evaluate their potential A few minutes later, she tries it again. Faster this time, I catch her fork and remove the morsel. searching I’ll order some for you if you like, but don’t eat for a specific fossil from my plate. She is insulted. And she doesn’t at lunch understand. What’s the big deal? I should be he finds one I missed willing — no, I should be flattered — that she between my feet

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 28 that being said some issues are Grandma Michal black and white compromise Jacob Salzer not an option

I walk in my lifetime with Grandma the erosion of without words integrity the early sound most aren’t nearly of falling leaves as good as their word

mufﬂed funeral home behind glass taking advantage the untold stories of the bereaved in my Grandma’s at their most eyes vulnerable

~Canada sound of footsteps the brain surgeon leaves Ignatius Fay, a disabled invertebrate paleontologist, writes haiku, tanka, a scar behind haibun and tanka prose. His poems have appeared in many respected the crescent moon online / print journals. His latest collection of poems, Breccia (2012), is a collaboration with Irene Golas. He is the current editor of the Haiku Society of America Bulletin. Ignatius resides in Sudbury, ~Forest in Lincoln City, Oregon, USA (visiting my Ontario, Canada. Grandparents)

Jake Street

I’d write a poem Jacob Salzer but it would be cumbersome and oaﬁsh like a giant trying to work a maple tree the delicate strings of a ﬁddle moves side to side like a lullaby ~United Kingdom soft wind singing songs to sleep

Jake Street lives in the small city of Norwich and spends half his days ~Seattle, Washington, USA (visiting a friend of a friend’s managing a care home and providing occupational therapy for people suffering from mental health conditions, and the other half with his house) head in a distant land where words can speak louder than actions. It should be noted that in this world, cake is always free!

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 29 pausing on the tracks Jenny Ward Angyal I look for movement . . . the slow rise and fall the soft thump of his belly of a grasshopper against my chest — ~Vancouver, Washington, USA (running on a track clinging to my faded yellow shirt behind a Middle School) as if to summer mufﬂed watching behind glass the year’s ﬁrst school bus the untold stories rumble by, in my Grandma’s I dance a little jig . . . eyes late summer crickets

~Forest in Lincoln City, Oregon, USA (visiting my Grandparents) a pane of glass propped against a tree trunk in the woods dinner my mirrored face mingles with my father with leaf mould and sky and his new Chinese wife I eat the color a little slower of rain-washed angels’ wings — mushrooms ~Vancouver, Washington, USA (in the house that I grew in the forests up in) of New Hope a missing piece blooming of the mountain puzzle in mid-winter another mystery the cherry I don’t want opens all its gifts . . . to solve the longest night begins

~Forest in Lincoln City, Oregon, USA (visiting my Grandparents) a slant of sun across the snowy wood . . . in crystal stillness Jacob Salzer has been writing poetry since 2006. He is the author of 2 the barred owl’s voice haiku collections: The Sound of Rain and Birds with No Names. His closer than breathing haiku are featured in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Under the Basho, Chrysanthemum, A Hundred Gourds, and The Heron’s Nest. He lives in the Paciﬁc Northwest, USA. His poetry blog can be found at: the year’s last day — jacobsalzerpoetry.blogspot.com the white face of a barn owl, heart-shaped, bidding me follow before it’s too late

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 30 a sprinkling Street Food of East London, of mist on my glasses — the meadow a Tanka Sonnet spattered with fallen stars like tiny morning glories Jonathan Vos Post at dawn 200 languages among the morning glories spoken by the 8,000,000 moist with dew residents of London I come seeking Natural Light — an average of 40,000 this harvest of beer cans people per tongue

Preserve Curry houses of East London Our Heritage Day Bagel Annie’s at the farm park — Tubby Isaacs serving jellied eels carved on a picnic bench Brick Lane, once Blackshirts, white power and a swastika once stalked by Jack the Ripper the last notes On Whitechapel ﬂoating on limpid air the ﬁrst Fish & Chips — I open my eyes you are what you eat to a passerby’s t-shirt: and your relationships out of chaos, hope ~United Kingdom ~North Carolina, United States

Jonathan Vos Post is a scientist and author, married to a scientist and solidarité — author, father of an Intellectual Property attorney. He has degrees in all across the globe Mathematics, English Literature, and Computer Science; worked many years in the Space Program, was a Professor of Astronomy, Professor of red roses Mathematics, then taught middle school and high school. He is also co- cast down their petals author with Ray Bradbury, co-author with Richard Feynman, Nobel like bloodstains on the earth Laureate physicist co-editor with David Brin and Arthur C. Clarke co- broadcaster with Isaac Asimov quoted by name in Robert Heinlein’s “Expanded Universe” Winner of 1987 Rhysling Award for Best ~Paris & the world, 11 / 13 / 15 Science Fiction Poem of Year Published in Nebula Awards Anthology #23, 1989, and Semifinalist for 1996 Nebula Award. Prof. Jonathan Vos Post is Co-Webmaster, Vice President, and Chief Information Officer of Magic Dragon Multimedia, on the web since 1996. http:// Jenny Ward Angyal lives with her husband and one Abyssinian cat on a small organic farm in Gibsonville, NC, USA. She has written poetry www.magicdragon.com / . since the age of five and tanka since 2008. She is Reviews and Features Editor of Skylark: A Tanka Journal. Her tanka and other poems have appeared widely in print and online journals and may also be found on her tanka blog, The Grass Minstrel.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 31 musing over lunch José Angel Araguz

Jordan Beane, Andy McCall & Joy after an argument McCall she pulls at her hair talking of warm sunshine split ends two brown cows one lone tree in the wet-meadow where her ﬁngernail peace settles has grown past the polish the moon three ripe blackberries in the middle of the day three holed stones to keep the witches away small drops three pub lunches of orange oil three cigarettes and coffee in your bath hours later orange in each room pub garden a sanctuary hallowed ground walking in Flagstaff the landlord’s quick our laughter footsteps on the gravel on the wind and folds of your blue dress a buzzing wasp noisy hedge-trimmer too much treacle taking out my notebook drunks at the next table after a long trip let us go chill at the ruins a stray hair of hers where my words start again crushed snake beside the ford as you sand down trying to get a piece of wood from one side to the other I follow the ﬁne dust I too die trying rising, getting lost in your hair ~The Globe Inn, Shotesham, Norfolk, England

she points out how ~Andy, Joy and Jordan(19) are neighbours in Norwich, England. we’ve spent each hour Jordan tends their garden and ﬁxes things. All three like country pubs and wandering around ruins, and musing over lunch. for over a week together between conversations argument and sleep

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 32 repeating my name coming home she bites my shoulder to find you reading hours later I want to slip I still feel it an extra page spoken into your book she turns and twists bathwater wooden chopsticks on your shoulder in her hair a light on the flesh the shape holds after biting into my breath an apple fanning her wet hair her skirt across the bed, she talks flows of how long it has grown behind when I look, light stirs, each word the moon takes flight I speak turning my body reading off a list to face her of ingredients in bed, her hand she lifts her braid reaches through to her nose the trees in my dreams and sniffs running my hand in bed, we talk down the side close, of her stomach words more she says: write of this moonlight outside, the moon behind clouds at the window her nicked finger cooking flushed white she loses track under running water of what she was saying in the same sink oil and vinegar where she peeled potatoes mingle on the greens speaking of an old love ~United States she tells me to stop eating myself José Angel Araguz is a CantoMundo fellow and has had tanka fingernail grit published in red lights journal, A Hundred Gourds, Skylark, and on my tongue American Tanka. His tanka placed 2nd in the 2015 Sanford Goldstein International Tanka Contest run by the Tanka Society of America. He on my guitar is presently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH, USA). Author of four chapbooks and the playing the notes poetry collection Everything We Think We Hear, he runs the poetry and chords she knows blog, The Friday Influence. the sounds make me smile

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 33 necessary pain lines

Joy McCall Joy McCall it is pain the monostich the serious doctor how it carries me with gloved hands in the back of the bus a small trickling along that thin straight road blood and rinse-water to some lonely town he says sorry two tracks when my tears fall over the bridges silently past the signal lights so as not to disturb the comforting train the strange work rumbling on

I ask him rewiring the plugs to speak of places changing the fuses he has been positive to distract negative, neutral my tangled mind the light goes on he ponders four lanes rests his hands the traffic builds for a moment Harleys noisy then says — New England, past the trucks Colorado ink’d riders laughing then wild fall colours five lines fill all my cells no more travelling and vessels it is home and Robert Frost sweet tanka, oil lamps, recites ‘Stopping by Woods’ . . . my hearth, my fire

with thanks to Mr. R. Webb, consultant urologist ~Norwich, England

~Norwich, England

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 34 what then? chamomile

Joy McCall Joy McCall too many of us he says my hair everywhere now, crowded, smells of chamomile overcrowded and I am lost again said Edward Abbey in the old story in the wilderness the chamomile lawn what will it be like here decades ago, I sat when I’m gone on the chamomile bench and you’re gone in the ruins and our civilisation the only place suitable has crumbled to dust? for reading such a book

the sacristan’s garden nothing lasts all around me, was ﬁlled for ever with wild herbs he said for burning at the altars — everything comes and goes oregano, lemon balm, thyme rises, falls, and fades away

and I read again Eric Siepmann’s ﬁrst love letter I guess nature to Mary Wesley, 1934 — will take care of it all in its own sweet way campion, thistle sooner or later ragged robin, dog rose, cow parsley, thrift, purple and yellow vetch, he smiled — for now michaelmas daisies, meadowsweet this is where I belong where I’m home: A strange love letter. They had just met, and this sad and lonely waltzed, at a society ball. He had passed her a end of the road note that went something like this — tanka written after watching a video essay by Edward Abbey (1927-1989) ‘I loved it all’ the man you are with ~Norwich, England is stilted and boring I am waiting at the ballroom bar . . . come dance with me

The Blitz was raging, and Mary thought —

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 35 it is all liberating while I wept to escape, to live with pain and fear absolutely for the moment, the yellow sleep with my lovers, because maple leaves the next day they might be dead . . . kept falling

My life, my pain, it feels like the same war. A blitz and later on sanity and reason. I go back to the garden I I sat under have written about before, in the 12th century the willows church ruins near my home. The path through while a swan drifted the garden is just wide enough for the wheelchair. down the river I sit there for a long, long time.

and the ducks living all slept on the bank for the moment their heads I feel the pain under their wings I ﬁll my hands with herbs and made small noises and bury my face, sobbing from the novel by Mary Wesley and the day ~Norwich, England passed and came to its end and I was glad and sorry

Falling and I slept on through the morning into the day Joy McCall and dreamed I fell slowly a red, dead leaf

the choice ~Norwich, England between the devil and the deep blue sea between the ﬁres of pain Joy McCall lives in Norwich, England. Her life is wide and full or the drugging of opiates and often difﬁcult. M. Kei has published several of her collections of tanka. She is grateful for many things, although suffering is not (yet) one of them. After seven decades, she still has much to learn. I am torn as to which to choose. One seems as bad as the other. The neurology clinic, where the kindest of doctors did his work, was among lovely woods, and so I wrote —

falling

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 36 the climb haunting

Joy McCall & Barry Dempster Joy McCall & Matsukaze he carries lost my spirit, featherlight in one song for days up the hill haunted by the wind at our backs that voice, those words the moon up ahead day and night, lost

a haunting voice taking feet, soft footsteps across she weighs the carpet of my ears next to nothing, a dove’s on this slow evening i become a requiem dreamy feather gravity never the Mass less of a burden calls up the souls of the dead and they dance, lingering we stop between soil and stars and sit halfway up looking back all Souls Day, in a house of silence amid a to where we have been congregation of candles looking up to the future and a few Russian icons

spirits this is of the holy ones call the moment we’ve heard to me tonight — so much about I, who can only ever be between comings and goings sinner, never saint the place we truly belong in this autumn season, wearing my shortcomings; my sins—a brilliant, and yet spiced red, on brown skin with shame how long can we stay resting here? black ink the climb is calling on my pale skin my friend, let us go the sinuous serpent the eclipse, the kanji — ~Norwich, England / Holland Landing, Canada loss, longing, life

this Shabbat morning, drenched by rain; i offer Barry Dempster lives in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of ﬁfteen up innumerable prayers collections of poetry, two volumes of short stories, two novels, and a children’s book. with hope for a better life

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 37 stormy the spaces within me all that there is to do where is the peace the southerly wind Tom Clausen & Joy McCall used to bring to my soul? a pause while washing dishes . . . a ryuka comes your words all the way to mind, then an image of some from there to here woman carrying wind in her feet have flown and landed in a clear place Hermes in my heart the winged messenger flies past, like that wind as dusk falls stealing my years and breath your sentences settle playing games with my mind in these tall trees, tucking their heads on lonely evenings in between work, pausing to under tired wings pour all of me into a container called tanka what can be written to take the chill off it is a sieve and make things better words slipping out all that there is to do through the holes that I never get to falling on the fallow ground a seedless rain as fast as I drink a cupful from the well in moments of silence, when seated, you reach in the spring rises my mouth and pull out the rain falls one long string of saffron words the floods come boiling water this migration over the dark orange threads in the heart the tea is bittersweet from all that your words cling to cells has turned out to be and corpuscles too much we settle in silence we walk on eyes seeing the ~New York, United States / Norwich, England simple moments from a different vantage point Joy McCall lives in Norfolk, a place full of ghosts. She is trying to find her way through the later suffering that comes with paraplegia. Poetry and love are the only answers she has found, so far. ~United States / England Tom is a lifelong resident of centrally isolated gorges Ithaca, N.Y. who Matsukaze resides in Louisiana, a classical vocalist and actor, a lover every day makes a seamless journey through the here and now. With of Japanese poetic forms. love for the chance to observe all the changes in light, weather, seasons and how they bring out nuances in the landscape, he is grateful for the simple and profound gift of being here now.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 38 Karla Linn Merriﬁeld What We Have to Do

Kath Abela Wilson Lover, I pray thee connect with dark privacy My mother at 94 is patient and resilient. But of Hiroshima she cannot travel. Her father and mother were or Auschwitz and Dachau. both Maltese as far back as their families went. Their agony is your grief. Malta was at that time owned by England. She was born while her father worked for the British Consulate, in Port Said, Egypt. She went to The winter wind English, French, Italian schools, spoke Maltese at is ground in her brass mortar home, and picked up some Arabic on the streets into tangy paste, in the international community. He died when tasting of tangerine oil. she was thirteen. Several year later she made her Winter’s snows warm into rain. Atlantic crossing to America with her mother. après Yosa Buson She never went to Malta. She fell in love, married, had ﬁve children and never traveled In the raw season again. Her life became complicated when my of ignorance, hatred blooms father left her and now . . . like poinsettias on the altar just below she loves root vegetables a cruciﬁx of blood lust. I make them for her her eyes lit with the prospect Waka, Kyoka, of our travel Gogyoshi, and Tanka come to the reading ~Port Said, Egypt; Santa Barbara, California, in embroidered silks, feet-bound, USA; Pasadena, California, USA; Malta for the poet’s koi secrets.

When an anole slips into your nylon tent, feed it mosquitoes. A win-win in Florida on Site #10 tonight.

A nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in- Residence, Karla Linn Merriﬁeld has eleven books to her credit, the newest of which is Bunchberries, More Poems of Canada, a sequel to her Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills). She is a member of the board of directors of Just Poets (Rochester, NY), and a member of the New Mexico State Poetry Society, and the Florida State Poetry Society. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 39 The Swing Playing on the Street

Kath Abela Wilson Kath Abela Wilson

She told me this story enough times that it The long shiny steel bar fence across the became mine. I feel the salt air lifting my braids street from my house edged a playing ﬁeld. like wind socks. I am standing on the top deck of Sometimes a baseball game went on behind it, a ship, watching men build, attaching twin ropes but I paid no attention. I looked at the fence in a and a moon shaped seat. I slip into it holding on different way. with both hands. I feel at home. We are ﬁnally on our way. From the upswing the Atlantic Ocean is the schoolyard fence all mine. Egyptian childhood over when father’s a xylophone loving heart stopped suddenly in the night. We I played must be on our way to America. on the way home with my pencil the glissando of growing up in the crow’s nest a young girl ~Staten Island, New York, USA tests her wings her swing song heartbreaking American dream

~Port Said, Egypt to Brooklyn, New York, USA

Sway

Katha Abela Wilson

I can’t think of a wall without remembering my lookout. Dead end. Where I jumped up two hands standing to sit sidesaddle on the long white wall, end of the block. Over the vacant lot of white clouds of Queen Anne’s Lace, my favorite. This was forever. I felt the sway of late afternoon.

roller skating right up to the wall the leap I took into your arms

~Staten Island, New York, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 40 Growing Up Ice Cream Delivery

Kath Abela Wilson Kath Abela Wilson

My father was a man of passion, but even he I was almost done. Very pregnant and would say to me “be careful — if you laugh so ﬁnishing up at the ice cream parlor. My favorite much for so long, you’ll end up crying.” I looked sundae with hot chocolate sauce and sprinkles, out the window of our ordinary kitchen into our berries, and lots of whipped cream. Suddenly, ordinary yard. Off the old oak in the center, the “right now,” I said, and he drove me right to the bark kept peeling, I picked it piece by piece to hospital. “Fast, but not too fast,” I said. My old help. I felt as if the deep green moss on its trunk high school boyfriend turned husband. We used was growing on me too. to playfully make out at the drive-in movie in the back seat, but this was serious. in my hand caterpillar just in time after caterpillar as if pre-ordered the feel of long into delivery green-gold fur it was just dessert and she was the cherry on top ~Staten Island, New York, USA ~Staten Island, New York, USA

Shelved Fruit Kath Abela Wilson Kath Abela Wilson Every night before sleep he read aloud to me from the big book. It was not a child’s story. It was the scent of citrus that lured us back to “Great Poems of the English Language”. Later I California all the way from New York. We could noticed the inscription on the title page. A gift to smell the blooms as we approached the border. him from my not yet mother, in her beautiful The first five years we were in Santa Barbara it script, reads “Easter, 1944”. My father and I seemed to hardly rain at all. It was a magic land were “wedded souls”. From his “palette fine” I where water must grow on trees but not fall from tasted “Joy’s grape.” the sky.

decades later parched tongues the last page of imaginary fruit falls out speak volumes I wonder if I have ﬁnished we are thirsty every word for the scent of their wet dreams

~Staten Island, New York, USA ~Pasadena & Santa Barbara, California, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 41 Like Daughter How Life Unfolds

Kath Abela Wilson Kath Abela Wilson

I was very young when she was born. Almost a child myself. I was more innocent and less After the sad death of my husband I moved a experienced than you might expect, for reasons hundred miles into his house. It was the only that I will not take the time to explain. She was place I felt safe. Rick was our best friend for my second child, her brother just a bit over a year years. Months later — our first trip to Kyoto. It older. I was very busy, still a student, had not felt like home. Still, we were lost looking for the gotten my bearings, nor decided what kind of a contemporary art museum. A young man found mother to be. I was loving and creative with them us and decided to practice his English. For several by instinct, in a sense, the child of my children, days he appeared in the morning at our hotel and became our tour guide. On the day we left, he the singular wisdom brought a colorful gift — packets of small origami and beauty of my daughter papers. I love A few months later, back in California, we when someone says decided to marry and invited our favorite sushi I look like her restaurant waitress to the wedding. She had moved to New York City. We sent her the papers, ~Staten Island, New York; Santa Barbara, asking if she would make us origami cranes like California; Pasadena, California, USA the ones she made from chopstick papers. Two days after 9 / 11 / 2001 an express mail envelope spilled regrets and a thousand paper cranes. Our guests could not fly. But a hundred attended and each took home tiny cranes as mementos of overcoming adversity. The Way She Sees Things every day has an origami shape Kath Abela Wilson today is an elephant On the windy deck the small girl watched the riding a mouse gulls. She knew that if she looked hard enough she would see the patterns they made in the sky, ~Kyoto, Japan to Pasadena, California, USA gliding, rising, soaring . As curves of flight were etched in the blue. She fell asleep trying to remember.

years later waterlilies seem to ﬁt together a puzzle the dots life makes she connects them with her eyes

~Staten Island ferry, New York; Pasadena, California, USA

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 42 Someday Keitha Keyes

Kath Abela Wilson chicks peeping out of their nest — I’ll snap the strong stem of night’s white passengers bloom early, as soon as it is fully open. I will walk pop their heads over railings out into the night with it in my hair, bigger than as the ship starts to leave port my head. Like the night moth tipsy with its fragrance, it will be mine. Everything else will be ~Sydney Harbour, Australia forgotten.

night we wear red poppies blooming on Remembrance Day — cereus paper imitations the playfulness of ﬂowers that bloomed of my dreams on the killing ﬁelds of Flanders

~Santa Barbara, California, USA ~Canberra, Australia

Kath Abela Wilson is leader of Tanka Poets on Site and a weekend Secretary of the Tanka Society of America. She recently with Michael at the snow ﬁelds Dylan Welch, co-organized “Tanka Sunday”, an international he a top skier gathering of tanka poets. She creates a weekly Poetry Corner for ColoradoBlvd.net usually highlighting three tanka poets each week, and me just a learner often their art. She has published and performs her work in many end of our romance readings, journals and anthologies and has created and leads Poets on Site, an open group of poets, musicians dancers and artists that ~Thredbo, Australia collaborate in performing on the sites of their common inspiration.

lunchtime at the local park young lovers playing truant from school pool their cash for hot french fries

~Burwood Park, Australia

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 43 Left, left, left right, left Tunnel vision

Keitha Keyes Keitha Keyes

Sydney’s underground. Punctuated by the World War 1. Patriotic fervour and regional homeless, with their sleeping bags and signs recruitment spread around Australia. asking for help. You learn to walk right past, avoiding eye contact . . . “UNDER WHICH FLAG WILL YOU LIVE?” But today there is a newcomer, seated on a “ENLIST AT ONCE” plastic stool. Her appearance is meticulous — “AUSTRALIANS! YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS pretty dress, ﬂawless makeup, nail polish. YOU” Propped up in front of her is a sign, “Until yesterday I had a home.” messages painted on posters eyes glazed or bed sheets with sadness luring new recruits a lady from their homes to a war holding court in the half light Some thought it would be an adventure to join up. ~Sydney, Australia

a uniform a pay packet and a trip overseas hard to resist for this farmer’s son Others didn’t want to go to war. Bedtime Stories reluctant to shame his family Keitha Keyes a man becomes a soldier in somebody else’s war Children gather at the feet of the Wise One.

called a coward look, you can just if he’s not in uniform make out where they’ve been this man roads, rails and runways judged by strangers scratches on the surface is given a white feather made by primitive earthlings

~Wagga Wagga, Australia ~Earth Gazing, 3000 AD

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 44 Mementoes Drifting

Keitha Keyes Ken Slaughter

It was the best day of the year when we were dry months kids. Show Day in our country town. So writing no poems . . . exciting . . . the sounds, the smells, the people. this morning Sometimes Grandad gave us enough pocket I ease my kayak money for two rides. Or maybe we could spend it into the water on one ride and a showbag. Or one ride and a game in sideshow alley . . . My favourite game was the turning clown Sunday morning heads. It was pretty easy to lob a ping pong ball drifting on the lake into a clown’s mouth. And everyone got a prize a dragonﬂy for trying. Usually an animal ﬁgurine or a kewpie settles on my doll. At the end of the day we all compared our wrinkled hand prizes.

little trinkets church bells souvenirs of long ago over the water a mystery a white feather to anyone else now ﬂoats by my kayak but my sister and me just out of reach

one day, no doubt ~Grafton, Massachusetts, USA someone will throw out my porcelain dog with the chipped ear and not know its story Ken Slaughter ~Grifﬁth, Australia a mountain on the roof of my car Keitha Keyes lives in Sydney but her heart is still in the Australian bush where she grew up. She mostly writes tanka and related genres, revelling glittering white — in the inspiration, friendship and generosity of these writing I chop it down communities. Her work appears in many print and online journals and with the edge of my hand * anthologies. *for Jimi Hendrix

a day after I picked up that phone the wind blows but the windmill doesn’t turn

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 45 just after my Kindle Larry Kimmel awakens I open a book a grey of zen poems half-lidded morning, the toast jumps that man and I jump smoking on the beach — I taste his solitude poking at the ash in my breath of last year’s campﬁre . . . all I do all I am walking — memoir through the pines at Walden Pond . . . the silence just after our ﬁngers a commuter train passes touch the small arithmetic moving day . . . of coins on the counter I place a farewell letter amber to my apartment in sunlight the cicada husk my family stories metaphor we tell and retell . . . to keep the peace Dad buys back the dog in my periphery, he just gave away a mere squeak of a creature — for a sec big eyes, small eyes, meet snow for a sec on piles of snow my door to the world looking up won’t open looking down dog ~United States & llama long & long Ken Slaughter is vice president of the Tanka Society of America. He won the TSA international contest in 2015 and also had two honorable mentions. Ken contributes often to Atlas Poetica and is honored to have his work appear in its pages.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 46 as always, on an evening soft as moth-down watching a robin bob with folded wings a crackle of crickets corrals (like a parson striding the moors, the murmur of voices — hands behind back), uncle Ed I feel handcuffed returned from Iraq small puffs of dust scandal, disaster, rumors of war . . . the dog trots on & on down this media-inspired-haiku — the brown road a fly wrings its hands, narrows into leafiness eats cake, wrings its hands fog lifts a dusting and the brassy larch spiky again — of snow tramped a microscope into lace coming into focus, by tiny talons — the tanka tightens the taste of woodsmoke quantum physics, hot tea, another unseen world a smudged manuscript — to believe in out there in the cold and family genes a Douglas fir the new astrology quivering in the wind the coreid bug, prior to sleep, antique, slow & mechanical — the soft-lit cabin a thought escaped the ritual brandy from the mind of Jules Verne and the owls, still walking never enough owls

~Colrain, Massachusetts, United States in its sunlit bowl does the goldﬁsh circle Larry Kimmel is a US poet. He holds degrees from Oberlin & circle in place Conservatory and Pittsburgh University, and has worked at everything from steel mills to libraries. Recent books are “this hunger, tissue-thin,” or travel endlessly forward? and “shards and dust.” He lives with his wife in the hills of Western Massachusetts. trying to coax the renegades home with a bucket of oats — daft on fermented windfalls the cows, having none of it

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 47 home seaside

Liam Wilkinson Liam Wilkinson adrift in my twenties morning too far along the Esplanade to turn back cheap hotels I suddenly refer to home ﬂutter as my parents’ house their eyelashes but this will always be caught your home in clifftop grasses mum says a feather boa as dad redecorates sings the spare room its blue notes this used to be leaning my room against the seawall now, nameless a fallen angel oil paintings tries to light hang above the bed a ciggie in the wind all these A grades lonely and distinctions the old man walks still, I’m ill equipped towards the ocean to navigate with his boxful time’s passage of puppets shedding ﬁzzing salt tears in the foam on unfamiliar pillows a thousand wet sticks I sail and no sign into uncharted sleep of the moon

~United Kingdom ~United Kingdom

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 48 tide of dreams shells

Liam Wilkinson Liam Wilkinson each night, stirred he turns his life from his sleep over and over by the slightest noise in his hands the old lighthouse keeper like a strange shell down from his tower pilfered from the shore rarely can he drift how did I come to rest here back off he asks himself to his tide the winds whistling of dreams around him of watching the darkness the tide moving out he makes a cup of tea in the flooded pock and stands of a weed-green rock at the kitchen window he finds blinking, blinking a hermit crab, struggling at the moon in his reflection the quiet breath dog-walkers pass of his sleeping wife and tip their hats a din in his ear he keeps quiet he closes his eyes his voice and paints himself a wind his one last secret heaving in desperation a loudhailer of light he tilts his face over the waves to the sky he tears into the night as if it could offer with question marks anything more than rain

~United Kingdom ~United Kingdom

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 49 Ryuka September 27th — Happy Birthday Liam Wilkinson

Many are the peaks and pocks Lorne Henry Of this landscape I call my mind Each ryuka is a safe-house Along the rugged path noises bumping under the house Sitting in a twist of gnarled tree my dog restless A pale half-fallen autumn leaf this moonlit night Hardly flinching in a brief breeze I smell no fox — yet This hope for my hopes yet Woken after midnight by the smell of a fox Away from home, I grasp at hours squirted under the floorboards of my bedroom. Keen to keep the moon from rising But days, like smoke from my small fire I’d gone to sleep with my radio on — softly. Twist into nothingness The experts tell me foxes hate noise so I turn up the volume. The same drum beating in my heart Jazz — a pianist and bass playing ‘Good-morning How I wish to board a mountain Heartache’ so I sing. Bound for winds of the wilderness If you know the lyrics — the lines of that song Home of the great Ling-Yun roll out ironically.

My heart’s a murder of crows serendipity This storm-darkened summer evening or is it co-incidence In one hand, I hold your kindness today is In the other, a pill the seventy-ﬁfth birthday of a leading jazz pianist By a yellow noon-lit river We watch the leaping Asian carp a well known — worldwide sung small song to And discuss the seldom few ways you! Of slowing time’s passage it’s off copyright now — whew!

Dusk is property of the crows fox is complaining with honks — new to me. While night belongs to the foxes the vapours fade slowly So why do I switch on a moon And trespass under stars?

~United Kingdom

Liam Wilkinson’s poetry has appeared in such journals as Modern English Tanka, Presence, Paper Wasp, Atlas Poetica, Simply Haiku, Bottle Rockets, Skylark, Lynx and many others. He has served as editor of Prune Juice, 3LIGHTS and Modern Haiga. He lives in North Yorkshire, England, and his website can be found at ldwilkinson.blogspot.co.uk

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 50 the language River Children between my dog and me I wink at him Lorne Henry he winks back then wags his tail to show he knows it’s a game the gay abandon of Aboriginal children as they jump he asked me a full moon tide to buy him red panties still rising p — l — e — a — s — e shocked by this man a group of boys I was too young playing at being men lie drying on the road my dog licks a broad back a jazz jam a scream — then sheepish petting my bass player husband has organised ~Australia I sing a song or two wives in the kitchen — unimpressed

I tire of the assumption Lorne Henry I must have slept with jazz musicians to be allowed to sing my dog is getting older he takes I walked longer to judge under the bottle brush tree the height to my lap through a spider’s web is it the spider in my hair my dream or an insect from my lamp a house with central courtyard around the outside verandahs all the way my mother with views of the mountains scornful that my menses hadn’t started so close as hers had at eleven to being raped mine ripened at fourteen I crept into the ﬁre station and safety a butcher bird sitting on the fence my dog and I has come for water walk to the front gate swallows dive-bomb him passing farmers wave the snapping of his beak I don’t know who they are but the warmth ﬂows through

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 51 to think new — October 1st one article Japanese weather satellite could open now I can watch my mind my eyes my ears minute by minute the sun could change my way of writing rising across Australia crushed land locked country amber moon squeezes with the popular greeting its way ahoy! between the black mountain range the Danube and clouds that light its way is a long river on my verandah until I learned orchids and azaleas bloom about synaesthesia such beauty I hadn’t thought — with no-one to share different coloured numbers today hot winds are forecast and letters may be strange the car won’t start so little time left rats must have sheltered to read to listen to learn from the hail storm and then what — safe but noisy does this store of knowledge pee on the points again ﬂoat off in the breeze the great egret get back to the gutter brings his mate to the nest where you belong or does she bring him he shouts his home is by the billabong the crowded platform where I used to live empties * the great egret is a solitary bird outside of breeding time

the Buddha statue intentions I took to the op shop of sketching church spires deemed ‘not appropriate’ in Czech villages I gave to a stranger so individual overjoyed to take it a long-lived regret

inspired by I’m told a ﬁnger exercise to practise screaming on the black notes louder strangely prophetic I refuse — it’s just a play a song of China’s rise I may need my life’s saving

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 52 frogs croaking after a hot day sound tanka, after Priest and yes Myoe rainclouds drift from behind the mountains M. Kei in trouble my dog lifts his leg あかあかや against my bed cover あかあかあかや at last I realise あかあかや it’s in answer to the fox あかあかあかやあかあかやつき from the op shop beautiful evening clothes a ka a ka ya I used to wear a ka a ka a ka ya I would again with pleasure a ka a ka ya if I could only sing jazz a ka a ka a ka ya a ka a ka ya tsu ki a white feather oh bright bright drifts slowly to earth oh bright bright bright great egret oh bright bright are all your courting feathers oh bright bright bright still in place oh bright bright moon!

~Australia ~Priest Myoe (1173 – 1232) ~Ryoh Honda, translator* Lorne Henry has been writing haiku for over twenty years and tanka for eight years. She has had quite a number printed in magazines and occasionally dabbles in Haibun. She lives in the countryside in the middle of a large farm in New South Wales, Australia.

pebble pebble sand pebble pebble pebble sand pebble pebble sand pebble pebble pebble sand pebble pebble water sand

bird chirp, bird chirp, flight bird chirp, bird chirp, bird hop, flight bird chirp, bird chirp, flight bird chirp, bird chirp, bird flicker bird chirp, bird chirp, bird chirp, bird

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 53 slow light, slow dawn, slow slowest light, slowest dawn, slow Tan Renga slow shine, slow sun, slow slowest shine, slowest sun, slowest morning Marcus Liljedahl & Anna Maris slowest shine, slowest sun, slowly morning

jigsaw puzzle stars of the starling a missing piece stars of the shining starling snaps into place stars of the starling ﬁlling the darkness stars, stars, stars, starling, starling the beam of a lighthouse stars, stars, stars, starling, starling

red moon step limp, step limp, step all my wishes a pause, a step, a limp, pause fulﬁlled step limp, step limp, pause deep in your voice stair step, limp, stair step, limp, step the pull of the earth stair step, limp, stair step, keys, home

no season river running, ah on the kitchen table river running, running, ah red tulips river running, ah the bittersweet taste river running, river running, yes of your name on my lips river running, river running, ah

autumn leaves red red, so red red adjusting my words red ruddy red, so red to ﬁt with the mood red red, so red red under my solemn dress ruddy red, ruddy red, so a red satin camisole ruddy red, rusty red, rest ~Gothenburg, Sweden / Övraby, Sweden ~Chesapeake Bay, United States Marcus Liljedahl was born in the town of Malmö, Sweden 1972. He has been working as an opera singer at The Gothenburg Opera since * See Ryoh Honda’s article, ‘As a Conductor: Between Forty Sound 1998. His poetry has appeared in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, The Units and Two Breaths’ in this issue. Heron’s Nest, Bones, Under The Basho, Bottle Rockets, and others. One of his haiku has been selected for inclusion in the new anthology, M. Kei is a tall ship sailor and award-winning poet who lives on Haiku 2015, edited by Lee Gurga & Scott Metz. Maryland’s Eastern shore. He is the editor of Atlas Poetica : A Journal of World Tanka. He was the editor-in-chief of Take Five : Anna Maris is a haiku poet. Her work appears in over 20 anthologies, Best Contemporary Tanka, Vols. 1 – 4, and the editor of Bright Stars, three of which are published by Red Moon Press, as well as in most An Organic Tanka Anthology. His most recent collection of poetry is international haiku journals. In Sweden she is published by Miders January, A Tanka Diary. He is also the author of a gay Asian-themed Förlag. She has an MA in Journalism Studies from the University of fantasy novel, Fire Dragon. He can be followed on Twitter Westminster, and has worked as a journalist in Sweden, Russia and the @kujakupoet, or visit AtlasPoetica.org. UK. http://annamaris.wordpress.com

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 54 Margaret Van Every Summertide

Marilyn Morgan evenings on a park bench in the village plaza watching this hard-working world lavender come out and play — and moonlight their simple pleasures become mine the river licking the rocks ~Ajijic, Mexico along the shore the baritone violin moonlight in the lavender transports us to new heights; rippling leaving the hall in the summer breeze . . . we touch the buttocks crickets chanting of the bronze nude in the breezeway night music

~Chapala, Mexico lavender and moonlight drifting the Mahadevi thru an open window asks to bless my womb river songs I say I have none all night long she says it’s of no matter she will bless the void ~United States

~Ajijic, Mexico

I pay my beggars only once a month; were I to pay them every time I pass Marilyn Morgan they’d own me

~San Antonio, Tlayacapan, Mexico warm October sun like yesterday holding hands Margaret Van Every celebrates life in a village near Guadalajara. She and kicking is author of A Pillow Stuffed with Diamonds (bilingual), 2011; the leaves Saying Her Name, 2012; and Holding Hands with a Stranger, 2014.

thundering the dog climbs onto grandma’s lap

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 55 sometimes at night can you my foot reaches hear the silence for you — in the October sun in the ice cold falling of the sheets over the horizon? sliver of moon walking sprinkle of stars the dog Chinese lanterns in the school yard and distant ﬁreworks . . . stepping morning comes too soon over the condoms

Chinese lanterns the backyard whore bobbing along sunbathing . . . like boats the stray cat on a midnight stretches out sea at her feet swimming November . . . naked warm sun along the shore poplar leaves spread my legs wide raining down surfacing for air puddling the trail

~United States it’s a night for skinny dipping Marilyn Morgan is a retired English teacher. She lives and writes in not a breath of air New Hartford, New York, USA. Her poems have been published in cool cool water “Atlas Poetica,” “Bright Stars,” “Ribbons,” “A Hundred Gourds,” as good as an orgasm “American Tanka,” and others. a house guest talking and talking . . . come watch the elephants in the sky why do I desire the neighbor’s apples ripening just over the fence

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 56 tracks Marshall Bood

Mark Goldsworthy & Joy McCall under the lotto billboard unwashed men huddle the tracks around a pay phone above the timber line covered in graffiti are inhabited by those who quest autumn city still gasping from northern forest footprints fires along a wandering path, long passed traces, the ashes ~Canada of old camp fires

Marshall Bood lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. His poetry Orion climbs the horizon has recently appeared in bottle rockets, Modern Haiku and Acorn. hollow cold, misted memory pointed star circled endlessly I wait

the Plough low in the sky my soul asleep in the bare brown furrowed ﬁeld

~Suffolk, England / Norwich, England

Joy McCall lives in Norwich, England. Her life is wide and full and often difﬁcult. M. Kei has published several of her collections of tanka. She is grateful for many things.

Mark Goldsworthy grew up in Norfolk. He spent four years at art school. He has been a working artist for the last 33 years. His interests include boats, horses, and odd people.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 57 Bloodstains over Paris, monotanka rensaku

Matsukaze this morning, listening to a teaching what the Gospel is in the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible i drop a wine glass — i do not hear your question. what is it you want? what do you need? arriving at the beach the ocean expanse shines in the sun . . . the one place where war has not touched the autumn sky a perfect lapis lazuli what ethnic tribe on earth lives without blood-guiltiness? it is to the Hebrew G-d that i cling . . . around evening vespers listening to her chant Hebraic psalms

‘to him who publishes peace . . .’ it has grown cold this evening after 3 am i listen to Isaiah 53 asking every man, ‘what news do you come bearing; herald?’ is the messianic age now come? remembering that November massacre . . . in the four corners, we lament the bloodstains over Paris i can’t explain how good i feel having taken 2 Ibuprofen . . . my swollen lymph node is calmed thinking, how free i’d like to be working my gifts — i listen to Furtwangler’s Bach back to back its after 2am, in silence looking deeply in Torah — a wild morning wind arrives scattering peace the startling blue of her dress . . . i watch her and remember my days of youth mother in her rocking chair lost somewhere between now and 20 years ago i pity her eating steamed asparagus, have you brought the wrong message about the One G-d? . . . silence everything and all, collapse and fall . . . this wild evening taking a drive along the coast to nowhere passing the time . . . noticing that my nose hairs are too long brisk whistling of a cold thin wind in this dream surrounded by Mediterranean nudes! in my waking hours i deal with your sharp silence

‘never be confused . . .’ always uttering half-done phrases. upstairs i sit making tanka after tanka a part of me desires to dive right into a chandelier, a large one made of sugar, light, and liquid crystal in autumn darkness staring at the snow-capped peak of Mount Otowa: this land is so full of mystery reading, ‘String of Beads’ the waka of Princess Shikishi. i wonder what her life was really like i am offended! since when can’t a one line poem not be considered poetry? evenings: we would sit in a warmed house, Lisa getting her hair pressed; grandma sewing socks and humming

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 58 i wait and wait: when will you arrive? will you come bearing that message? reality is so much better at dusk in November peering into a Wild Pink i see the Kingdom of G-d a rich hue, pungent scent he is quiet and highly intelligent, this Muslim brother i’ve met the coffee shop becomes our memorial passing the cedar grove, i am led by him toward this brook i cup water it is cool and sweet

‘bringing in the sheaves . . .’ at this interfaith Passover; admiring the brilliant color of a black man’s eyes

‘Tikkun Olam’ (repairing the world) hands dry after gathering potatoes i don’t think you fully understand me hands stuffed deeply in my pockets i take a quick walk into the dark just to open the hotel gates

~United States across the seas

Matsukaze & Joy McCall multi-tasking: thinking of a friend across the seas a Happy New Year to the Norwich maiden sudden joy at the slow breaking of day a whisper, a song the voice of the brown one from far away to block out the sudden bleakness of living — a book of Dylan Thomas’s poems and a few Vivaldi tunes the violin sings of storm and dark winter I sit watching the sea crashing on the bare shore and weep, forlorn and sad again the same disturbing dream — in my mind the cerulean sash of an early morning rainpour the sun breaking through the clouds a sudden rainbow and the sense of my self ﬁnding my way back home sweep of a car’s headlights through my windows faithfully at work lingering scent of chamomile invokes a brief memory ~United States / England

Matsukaze resides in Louisiana, a classical vocalist and actor, a lover of Japanese poetic forms.

Joy McCall lives in Norwich, England, growing older and not much wiser.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 59 watching certain love scenes in foreign ﬁlms with This Urban Life : tanka you rensaku the lead actors respond much like you do

enveloped in layers upon layers of your love Matsukaze i’ll become a seed in a ripened persimmon

putting on Vivaldi’s Magniﬁcat — this house, dried leaves carried by the wind at the roadside normally lonely becomes sacred for an hour again, declining an invitation to a dinner party “i love you” “i need you” cliché phrases bending cosmos are prominent in our yard — empty fodder for every man who enters me my thoughts become their chocolate scent never with any explanations or the like — getting dark along the way any faceless John soothes loneliness for an hour i always shudder passing that abandoned factory under ghetto skies at the public market i have this thing for chocolate and silence my sister’s rape is something we can’t get over meeting an older you — it’s been 15 years on the train to Dusseldorf, long after 5pm seasoning corn while deep in thought i’ll have an hour to nap before the concert i am breastless! O cruel noon breeze my view from the highrise, absolutely wrapped in layer after layer of your love something poignant about your smile breathtaking — his teak skin against a red tomato . . . . sensual waiting for you by the poolside, glistening in my mind a few tanka begin forming in this city never a dull moment the lover happens to be married as all my men embracing each other like melted chocolate are nothing matters but you against me streetlights . . . streetlights . . . since coming to “I’ve loved many many people.” i say Japan and suddenly i’m struck by the lie i am yearning for Mokichi’s red lights and capital ~United States this urban life, gritty and sometimes unfair meeting the girls for a dinner date Matsukaze some evenings i take autumn inside of me resides in Louisiana USA there’s a gulf that has developed between he and a classical vocalist and actor i composer of tanka, ryuka, and senryu the Louisiana sky a vivid rose madder downstairs kitchen-side — a breakfast of silence

“i have many people i love” i tell you a sudden loneliness mocks me after saying it

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 60 Mira N. Mataric Colors* your polka-dot dress Mira N. Mataric speck on your honesty returning from war to another front at home Monday is sky blue I know where peace waits for me like the babies’ eyes Tuesday like honey with annoying ﬂies autumn shadows cast change the palette a strange look into your eyes I do not know why I feel there’s more than deep tan Wednesday is orange brought from your vacation like a Viennese waltz Thursday aqua and turquoise like the Adriatic Sea in our king-size bed Friday nondescript like tea I feel we are not alone one more presence brought in your hidden memory Saturday is envy-green or my sharp intuition Sunday color of sun-gold it all can be changed depending on the mood thinking of you while weather or even food I bite a healthy apple not seeing a worm before it is too late when I fall in love and more surprise arrives all colors will be brighter I will exhale poems if I inhale prose after a long dark winter my life will be “en rose.” the spring starts all anew pure like a newborn baby ~Pasadena, California, USA ready for hope, faith and love new music and tanka * Variation upon reading Atlas Poetica 22.

~Pasadena, California, USA Mirjana (Mira) N. Mataric has published 39 books (in English and Serbian) of poetry, short stories, memoirs, and novels, an anthology and several books of translations. Awarded numerous international awards, she has 50 years of active teaching English, Special Education, Russian and Continuing education. She still teaches Creative Writing and promotes poetry, esp. haiku and tanka, with an “excuse” that it teaches precise, concise and poetic style useful for good prose. Mira organizes and participates in public poetry readings in California and abroad.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 61 in a dark place Displaced

Murasame & Matsukaze Marilyn Humbert in a dark place Under three moons, the Loremaster chants without windows from sacred texts inscribed by the ancients. His walls of pain song throbs across the assembly, reminding of waiting for someone our heritage: a time of wandering star-plains and to unlock the door rivers of heaven searching for sanctuary far from strife and unrest of home. We are welcomed when our great ships land how uncomfortable it is and we settle beside native citizens. Our children to be prisoner grow strong and flocks multiply. Many of our to one’s body people marry original residents and blood angry pores expelling mingles until we are one-kind in this haven. raw breath Our children search out new lands, walking beyond sunset and sailing across the endless seas, forgetting the flight of their forefathers. all night Years pass, until beyond the glow of the three calling for release moons come the raiders. Followed by the hordes. dawn breaks the other death row inmates gangs of fanatics start singing old hymns kidnap schoolgirls — cuckoo-wasps touch the stamens in semi darkness of each opening bud in the moment between sleep and consciousness determined images of jail doors refugees march flying open towards freedom . . . stymied by razor-wire and signs you shall not pass evil flies down the corridor hidden beneath out through the bars winter’s white shroud the night sky is filled viscera and bones . . . with wide black wings the displaced, ignored by a free world ~England / United States ~The third planet from GV2 type sun in a Binary Star System Matsukaze resides in Louisiana, a classical vocalist and actor, a lover of Japanese poetic forms.

Murasame lives in Norwich, England, growing older and not much wiser.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 62 Mother’s Little Helper Another Time

Marilyn Humbert Marilyn Humbert

Sitting in front of the TV, dinner on a tray. between Husband dozing in his recliner, easing into the trees of Wilpena Pound retirement. A few months on since our youngest, emerges and last child left home again. This time we hope a serpentine column for good. from another time

moon-dust falls from Morpheus’s curls north wind night trembles stirs wattle scents rippling the ’scape in grey twilight of her dreams they stalk giant red roo It was a short lived wish. That boy . . . boomerangs back, one more time. saliva and ochre ‘what is that noise’ mixed to a paste . . . ‘just doing my laundry mum’ he records the hunt on the walls thud . . . thud of a rock shelter * my twenty something son returns home to stay again . . . machine washing camp smoke swirls his blundstones* to the milky way . . . *Aussie work-boots twinkling ﬁres of those passed ~Berowra, NSW Australia and those still here * cave or overhanging rock shelf

~Flinders Ranges, S. A. Australia

Marilyn Humbert lives in the Northern suburbs of Sydney, NSW surrounded by bush. Her pastimes include writing free verse, tanka, haiku and related genre. Her tanka and haiku can be found online, in Australian and overseas journal and anthologies. Some of her free verse poems have been awarded prizes in competitions and some have been published.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 63 a wild clan Weather . . . or Not of rainbow lorikeets searching Amelia Fielden & Neal Whitman in neighbourhood gardens new sources of sustenance af

Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation’s final law 4. What’s in a Name? Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek’d against his creed We treat ourselves to the La Bibloteca room ~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “In Memoriam, wrapped in terra cotta shades of Venetian A.H.H.” canto 56 Plaster. Here at the Smith-Madrone Vineyards high up on Spring Mountain in St. Helena, the vines are planted on very steep slopes in red 1. Aiken soil which is derived from weathered volcanic materials and sedimentary rock. still salty Breakfast conversation centers on the drought, from my morning sea swim now in its fifth year. Our host remarks, “It’s been I call a normally bizarre year.” the grandkids at the end of their snow skiing day af the store clerk murmurs: nuanced with olive flavor I am befuddled 2. Warm Wishes so I focus on the names and choose The Curator nw An Italian poet e-mails me New Year wishes. She includes her photograph of mimosa blooming at the end of December in the gardens 5. The Temerity of Wildflowers of San Remo where it is unseasonably warm. I forward the mimosa to a friend in Australia and First experiences of the “Mediterranean learn in reply that there it is known as wattle. diet” in its natural setting come with a two year posting to Malta. There I fall in love with wild bird-like Lydia freesias in spring, the intensity of the island’s dry in hand-dyed purple clothing six month long summers, the violence of winter flitting here and there storms, my friend’s husband. she spreads pollen and seeds with scrolling arabesque nw this tideless sea is a placid turquoise, this tideless sea 3. Nothing Stays the Same is a turbulent grey — my secret thoughts stay secret af A cyclone uproots our honey-gem grevillea, which topples onto the verandah. When nature shines again tree-loppers arrive in brightly- 6. Sunshine on My Shoulder coloured safety vests to break its branches and remove the tree-corpse. In 1962 there was an animated TV show about a futuristic family, The Jetsons, where dad

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 64 George Jetson commuted to work in an “aerocar” I learn the shell that resembled a flying saucer with a bubble top. of female crabs is edged As a 14-year-old, I wondered how they avoided bright orange mid-air collisions. This morning on the TV Ag and both sexes walk sideways — Report I learn that agricultural drones are good tips for finding a mate nw causing problems for commercial flights in and out of our local Monterey Airport. 9. The Threads that Bind John Denver crashed his Long-EZ aircraft Perhaps we might have mated for life. And in into Monterey Bay* that era lots of our friends were marrying young, on that date we gather there soon after university graduation. But before he and sing Whose Garden Was This? nw can propose I am offered my ambitious heart’s desire, a scholarship for research in Kyoto. For *October 13, 1997 my birthday he gives me a book about Japan. with love from . . . is inscribed on a blank page. “that’s so you can tear it out if you want to forget me,” 7. Missing he explains.

Our dear old dog, Kin, is missing a tooth. how could I Whether he lost it crashing into the iron-barred ever forget my best friend? gate . . . now he has only blurred vision . . . or home and abroad whether he’d tried to chomp on a long-buried last century and this bone, we don’t know. But his lopsided grin is we stay connected still af rather cute, and he can manage to wolf down his meals as usual.

ﬁfteen years 10. I have felt his heart beat tides rising, falling, in my lap many man-made boundaries I’ll hold him when the time comes now erased — for it slow and stop af we are stewards of this Earth and its climate is changing nw

8. Males Generally Are Larger ~Canberra ACT, Australia / Pacific Grove, California, USA I am a guest professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine. The medical residents take Amelia Fielden, M.A.(Japanese Literature) is a professional translator me to lunch at Mackey’s Crab Shack and do the and an internationally published tanka poet.Twenty-three books of her Japanese translations have appeared 2001 – 2016. Amelia has also ordering. There on a white paper plate a published seven collections of her own tanka. In addition she has Maryland blue crab stares at me and I stare back collaborated with Kathy Kituai and Saeko Ogi, producing two books of at it. There is no silverware on the table. What to responsive tanka with each poet. Amelia also enjoys editing tanka do? I look up at a round of smirks. One of the anthologies; Poems to Wear (2016) is the latest of these. young whippersnappers shows me how to remove Neal Whitman, Ed.D. (Professor Emeritus) lives on California’s the “dead man’s fingers” (the gills), snap the body Monterey Peninsula where he and his wife, Elaine, can walk from their down the center, and pull off the claws. Then, front door one mile north to Monterey Bay and one mile west to the Pacific Ocean. Every day they remind themselves, “If you are lucky from a glass jar in middle of the table, one of my enough to live by the ocean, you are lucky enough.” In 2016 Neal won hosts hands me a wooden mallet to crack open the San Francisco Bay Area Poets Coalition 1st prize and in 2014 the the critter and eat with my fingers. Haiku Society of America Brady Memorial 1st prize.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 65 means that you want them Twenty tankas for a broken to not only vanish from relationship this life and this earth, but all possible earths, all Nick Hilbourn potential lives where you might

meet and you don’t care When I said I loved you that emotion has the bent I also meant that you now to vary from day could hate me but in a to month to year to decade, way no one else would ever that people feel differently be able to understand.

about things at the Some people believe end of their lives, that they in reincarnation and might want to see this others in heaven one person who they share such but I know when we broke ties crucial moments in life with, we were utterly destroyed.

a person who holds If you really hate missing details that have be someone you will destroy their come opaque as a image but perhaps result of the gentle de you’ll say that it’s not the end, preciation of the mind: that there will be amends

the shade of red that in a different way, he was unable to see in an excess of life, in because of the limited the secret fullness disclosed optical capacity only after death where the of men, the vicious wounds that rigidity of language

underlie her ex is suspended in istence because she was ter unfettered resolutions, riﬁed to open where what was said once herself to him: The image is dismissed because no one of the beach. The bitter taste knew how painful it would be of cheap liquor. The confu in reality — sion of close friends. The but if you’re really brave, then doors that seemed to grow increa you’ll break all ties and singly barred. The paved when you say that you never road that could clearly be seen want to see them again that and yet it was closed. Event

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 66 ually grass grew through Nick Hilbourn works in special education in a private school near the asphalt and its own earth Philadelphia. His work has appeared in Inﬁnite Acacia, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Apeiron Review and Queen Mob’s Teahouse. folded over on He writes 6-word book reviews on his blog, itself. Somewhere in the brain largethingslargerthings.tumblr.com it is a mysterious

field of wild flow Ryuka ers the meaning of which nei ther of them had been Patricia Prime able to discern or give name. The brave ones know that if whatever the news on the screen while we can we must love each day hate is done right then it dawns to give us life or lack it means the eternal de to enjoy the next day struction of a per son. It is both a joyous and horrific experi I cannot see the ocean waves on the other side of the hill ence. A darkened cor where the road comes to a sharp bend ner of the garden. An emp there’s the smallest cottage ty vacuum in the universe. This means: walking down a street anywhere in if I doze it is to expand my vanishing point while traffic blurs past me outside the window the world, you will feel towards the motorway silence drape over you. In finite blue funk and absence. If hate is the gas sheen in Van Gogh’s puddles done right you kill yourself in yellow halos rimming cafes almost the colour of sunshine the image is so strong order to keep your self in order to forget that you have rendered spring has come and the pink blossom parts of your life void, inac sways in the breeze like a dancer cessible: Bright cities of bare and graceful on the hillside its presence fills my life nothingness. Bright lights of nothingness. Bright fields of nothingness. Bright days, an old couple walk in the park bright nights, bright corners, bright lives taking advantage of the sun of nothingness singing loud. their thoughts that spring has come at last greeted by buds and trees ~Charleston, South Carolina, USA ~New Zealand

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 67 Cherita Patricia Prime

Patricia Prime ferry crossing tossed on sea-green water the skipper’s roar of Hunua Falls feet on the dashboard as he munches a sandwich the power of water as it cascades downriver historic chapel where the whirlpool built by a friend’s ancestor moves in endless circles where handmade to its still point tapestry-covered kneelers decorate the pews

the camera clicks a thunderhead above photographing swans’ wings at all angles on the surface of the lawn on the ornamental lake ducks drink from a puddle in hot summer sunshine the zen of things around me on our journey north this freezing winter we stop at a quirky roadside café come store full of art and poetry books, china dolls and home-knitting outside my window the last blooms of cyclamen pub meal fall onto the grass below in a small country town with a gathering winter breeze of teachers relaxing before rufﬂes the rainwater the start of pupils’ exams in the gutter the waitress drops a tray of glasses and conversation sun streams though branches stops as if in shock from the competition where the tui have returned to sip from spring blossoms as we travel north interrupting we see a sculpture garden a favourite record on the brow of a hill birdsong shapes of birds and animals against the skyline

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 68 could I ever forget as I write my poems the first sight of Arthur’s Pass pen racing over the paper that freezing winter the last raindrops on the bus to Christchurch patter lightly on the willow when snow and ice covered the road? bending gracefully to the ground in the art gallery one note overlooking the ferry crossing sung by a blackbird we meet an artist breaks the silence from whose exhibition it sounds from the cabbage tree I buy a small watercolour unfurling against the sky swinging in the park it’s nice to see you a woman’s left hand steadies after passing through those a little girl impossible doorways with a beanie on her head your face is a little puffier, wearing mickey mouse gloves hair gone, but still that smile before sunrise he lies in the sand and still half asleep building a fort and moat I listen with a plastic bucket to the mourning dove as the tide moves up the beach cooing in the distance water slowly trickles in my haiku the day is bright which was cut in stone when I go to the funeral on the pathway of my neighbour is now covered with lichen someone I knew and liked, whom and a scrawl of graffiti I’d lived next to for forty years

~New Zealand on the museum walls are portraits and paintings; high in the windows Patricia Prime is the co-editor of Kokako, review / interviews editor of Haibun Today, reviewer & interviewer for Takahe, a reviewer for Atlas Poetica, Meverse a view across Albert Park Muse, The World Almanac of Poetry (Mongolia). She recently published to the Victoria fountain Shizuka with French poet Giselle Maya. the frost departs with what’s left of winter weather as a watery sun appears with new warmth

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 69 their studies. The young girls come before they A Day in Crown Heights go to school, devoted to Jewish learning, and sit in long skirts and eat bagels and cream cheese. Patricia Rohner Every few hours a man with beads of sweat on his brow emerges from behind the counter and wipes the tables clean and restocks the cooler. The day is hot, touching one hundred, the This is the only eating establishment in this first warm day after weeks of cold rain. The men Jewish area and it hums with business. A hat in their black garb, felt hats, side curls, and shop, a bakery advertising kosher Challah and unhealthy pallor mill in front of the Yeshiva cakes, small groceries with shelves of Gold’s praying, talking, and smoking, confronted by a Borscht, Goodman’s Macaroons, and gefilte fish, hostile or indifferent outside world blocks away a jewelry store named Solomon’s Mine, an Israeli where regular New York life goes on. Here in Book Shop announcing “All your Judaic needs,” a Crown Heights the Jews with their beards and liquor store, and gift shops with signs that the fringes go forward as they study and do mitzvahs Messiah is coming and pictures of the founder of or good deeds while their wives in long skirts and this Lubavitch sect, the Lubavicher Rebbe, are sleeves and sheitels push their baby strollers and scattered in the windows on the street. read prayer books. As they stand on the However, it is the Yeshiva, at number seven meridian, the center part of the street across hundred and seventy, where the heart of Crown from the Yeshiva, separated from the men, they Heights exists. Here is where the long silver buses try to inspire another soul to transcend its flaws. line up to take the little Jewish children to the The Yeshiva is large and important, taking up a Catskills for the summer. Here is where the good part of the block. Inside the men and boys Haredi have the same worries and petty with thin, unathletic necks ponder and pour over jealousies as the rest of us, but try to reach past huge books and worship in a vast hall. Sitting, their human frailties. Here is where the men, standing, rocking, tefilin wrapped around their rabbis, and students congregate with the women head and arms, they carry their deep blue velvet in the center of the street on the grass with zippered envelopes with their tallis and books in benches, wait for the imposing black hearse as it plastic when they leave. Upstairs the women, pulls up with the deceased body of a revered preparing for when they will raise large families rabbi. and pass on the traditions, sit and study on “He was a chadik,” one woman says, wooden benches, hard as prison seats for visitors, “Helped the Russians, never complained even in in an area smelling of disinfectant as a black his sickness. I’ve known the family for twenty woman mops the floor of the new bathroom. years.” In this place the women can look down The back of the hearse is opened and the through a glass window and watch the men in black coated men all gather around the casket, their age-old rituals, customs, and devotions. plain pine, simple, no ornaments, and kiss the Surrounding the Yeshiva, the neighborhood pale wooden box, praying and rocking. The Crown Heights stores are small and disheveled. deceased rabbi had eleven children, many are The Crown Bagel Shop has no water and only rabbis or studying to become one, one traveling three wooden tables and a side counter where a from as far away as South Africa, and they stand sink with paper towel sits in the front window. at the back and sides of the hearse with reddish People stand in line and order their breakfast beards and recite Hebrew words. The younger specials for three dollars and fifty cents or bagels sons, leaner and fine boned in black hats and for forty cents apiece. The students come in with sparse beards bend their foreheads on the their black jackets and curly sideburns, their hearse’s window and weep. shirts sticking out of their pants with their fringes The hearse drives away with the black hanging and eat quickly so they can return to frocked men walking behind and then a

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 70 contingent follows the body to Long Island, six Special people, the ultra-orthodox, encased miles away, to a vast Jewish cemetery to bury the in the middle of New York, waking up every day esteemed rabbi. At the cemetery the man who to the realization that the world isn’t as they guarded the body during the night stands in a would like it to be, going forward, doing another gray box because he is not allowed to mingle with mitzvah, inspiring another soul, praying to God, the others, he is a holy man. The body must be giving charity, observing the Shabbat, and interred quickly because the soul will suffer if it is believing that Jewish existence is a miracle. not covered. The men carry the pine box to the site and lower it into the grave. The women stand ~Crown Heights, New York, USA back, separate, but the tears of the wife and daughters flow with plaints of a storm through the heavy summer air over the gravestones, amidst the many gray monuments with Hebrew letters, announcing the death of fathers, soldiers, husbands, grandmothers and great- grandmothers, all beloved, all departed. Paul Mercken The sons, the rabbis, and the students begin wat brood op de plank to shovel the dirt on the pine box, rapidly, over is alles wat nodig is and over again until the entire coffin is covered with the dark earth. The laments of the women en een regenjas — continue, the red haired women and the red al de rest is poëzie bearded sons all broken hearted because their zegt pa en opent zijn krant papa or husband is gone. Papers are passed covered with Hebrew words and everyone prays. ~aan de ontbijttafel Then the mourners remove their leather shoes what someone puts in bags and soft cloth shoes du pain sur la planche are distributed to the family members and the et un imperméable Mourning period begins. After the men walk c’est tout ce qu’il faut — away, some in stocking feet because there were ce qui reste est poésie not enough soft-soled shoes, the mother and père dit ouvrant son journal daughters proceed to the gravesite and say their good-byes. Weeping, their golden red heads ~à la table de petit déjeuner bobbing and praying, they reluctantly let the rabbi go to heaven, absent from their lives all you need is food forever. perhaps also a raincoat The men are instructed to leave the cemetery for lousy weather — from one direction and women another. The vast what remains is poetry blue sky encircles the rows and rows of pa says opening his journal headstones, the black coated men with their beards and prayer books, the women following. ~at the breakfast table The family will sit Shiva for seven days, wearing Retired philosophy professor and medievalist from Belgium (º 1934), their ripped clothing and sitting in with mirrors Bunnik, NL. Research and teaching in GB, USA, Florence IT and covered in their home where they will hold a Utrecht NL. Committee Haiku Kring Nederland (Dutch Haiku Society) minum, prayers held twice a day at seven A.M. since 2004. Published Bunnikse haiku’s en ander dichtspul, 2012 and eight P.M., except on Saturday, the Shabbat, (Bunnik Haiku’s and Other Poetic Stuff, in Dutch) & Tanka of Place — ATLAS POETICA — Tanka’s van plaats, 2013 (bilingual). the Queen, when it will be held at 9:30 A.M. Voluntary work in the fields of nature, society, culture and spirituality. with ten men, minimum, in attendance. Humanist, promoting democratic confrontation by dialogue.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 71 Pere Risteski was born on the 13th of July 1977 in Struga, Пере Ристески / Pere Macedonia. He lives in Ohrid. He works as a school teacher. He has published several books of poetry, including ‘Zen Verse’ and Risteski ‘Impulse’ (haiku).

Пере Ристески е роден на 13.7,1977 во Струга, Македонија. Соња Гаврилоска Љулкова, Работи како одделенски наставник во основно училиште. македонски-англиски јазик Објавени книги: Гревот на првата љубов (поезија), Крајпатни ветришта (поезија), Во преграб на мигот (поезија), Зен верс Преведувач / Sonja Gavriloska (хаику антологија) и Импулс (хаику поезија). Исто така пишува Ljulkova, Macedonian-English и танка, седока и сиџо поезија. Живее во Охрид, Македонија Translator Sonja Gavriloska Ljulkova was born on 28 November 1978 in Ohrid, Macedonia. She is a graduated Philologist of English Language and чиниш брзоструен Literature and a Translator from Macedonian into English and vice versa. She is interested in poetry, art and music. She is one of the four поток, чиниш харфа се authors of „Zen Vers” — haiku poetry anthology. слуша, а тоа ќосот свирка ли свирка, Соња Гаврилоска Љулкова е родена на 28 ноември во Охрид, Македонија.Таа е дипломиран филолог по англиски јазик и гласно пее ли пее книжевност и преведувач од македонски на англиски јазик и обратно. Се интересира за поезија, уметност и музика. Таа е činiš brzostruen еден од четирите автори на „Зен верс” — хаику антологија potok, činiš harfa se sluša, a toa ḱosot svirka li svirka, glasno pee li pee

it sounds like a swift running stream, but the thrush Improvisation #3 whistles and whistles, it sings and sings loudly Peter Fiore

понекогаш ќе Do you remember the night you escorted a се рашири глас дека girl in a kimono to the opera in New York City, in деца страдале the snow . . . ново насилство негде Once Nonno saw Puccini walking out of the во светот — о Боже, не old Knickerbocker Hotel on Broadway. “Maestro,” Nonno says and tips his hat to the ponekogaš ḱe great man who fell in love every time he wrote a se raširi glas deka new opera, my Aunt Linda announced once after deca stradale dinner. At this point imagine your favorite kind of novo nasilstvo negde weather. It was that kind of day. Puccini stops, vo svetot — o Bože, ne clicks his heels together, return’s Nonno’s salute and bows slightly in his direction. sometimes The note in the bottle. Signatures on subway the word is spread that walls. All hearsay. Styles change. children suffered My barber’s name is Aldo. He wears jeans, more violence somewhere tie-dyed shirt open to the middle of his chest. in the world — oh God, no He’s all ﬂuff and a body of steel, and when he cuts my hair he sings along with the Beatles. ~Macedonia

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 72 O tempora! O mores! “This is what we came for,” Richards shouts pounding the table, and The End Of A Love Affair Trane digs in for another chorus or two. How many mornings chill from his rippling rest does Peter Fiore the soul make contact? I used to drive these roads when they were ~United States dirt, I was thinking on my way home from work. On the way to swim in Lake Mahopac you’d look behind at the wake of dust we’d just raised. I remembered driving up the very hill I was coasting down. In Uncle Hugo’s ’41 Plymouth. 1953, I was 11. Improvisation #19 We’d drive up to the end of Lovell Street and then it was like driving over the top of the world. Peter Fiore I was thinking I wanted to stop and write it all down — how you’d be looking up into the sky While we were having dinner on the terrace, and then dropping into a deep green valley — served by Aunt Sarah’s white maid Flora who when I saw the cop in the driveway. spoke only Italian, Uncle Tony turned to my Clocked me at 62 in a 30. brother and said, “Hey, Rocco, wanna go for a They’re gonna mount my Camaro on a shelf walk in the woods.” and lock me up this time. Everybody laughed cause last summer Rocco had gotten lost in these very woods behind the fig ~United States trees before dinner. There were woods everywhere you went then. At Uncle Jim and Aunt Linda’s between the rocks out back and the golf course, at Sal and Evelyn’s in North Salem and even in Flushing there were marshes where we had a raft, and then out back of Uncle Hugo and Aunt Teti’s there were 120 acres of cow pastures, pig pens and a trail down to the brook between rock walls and a dump just as you got The Night Wardell Died . . . there. We were always in the woods unless we were Peter Fiore playing ball. It’s springtime again. My heart soars in these . . . he wonders if they ever really met or did aching bones even though most of my habits are he dream their hands brushed and tangled that bad ones. Soon yellow forsythia will flood the first time and he could feel his left pinky graze the neighborhood and there’ll be cherry blossoms in windward side of her right breast and the tips of Brooklyn and the little parks in the West Village. their tongues touched. A kiss like a butterfly, one Baseball in the fields. of the last of the summer and he knew he was These interludes, duets between a koto and only real in love . . . an accordion. This is what we have. These simple or when he blew out the stars bells for peace. No more starving children. over the City of Angels.

~United States ~United States

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 73 Fifty years ago gangsters, artists and movie Visit From An Old Girl stars partied there in the summer. Friend People in town will tell you that’s where Rocco Baldori’s godfather was murdered. Now you’ll ﬁnd the house haunting and Peter Fiore haunted by its secrets and ghosts. As it is being She dressed all in black and her body was pried apart piece by piece. The bricks and stone pale, like she hadn’t had blood in a long time. I stacked neatly by the driveway. wondered why she was back. You can hear the joists crying in the frozen air. ~United States ~United States

Marshmallow

Peter Fiore Peter Fiore Driving home on the Taconic State Parkway late in the afternoon on a clear day in late starry night October there are more colors in the hills than I of lonely crickets have words. let me I think of how much I want to fuck Lin. hold your sleeve Two deer step out of the woods and bolt once more across the highway. I hit the brakes hard. The pomegranate I bought her smashes into the radio. candles ﬂicker My dick is a wilted moonbeam. over the remains of dinner ~United States over family ghosts and lovers as we drink more wine we let the past slip behind us

playing tennis with Keiko courts on the side of a hill underneath Riverside Church Crying the bells toll every 15 minutes — it’s somewhat magical Peter Fiore

It was once the house of the seven pillars Jimmy’d say with a wide terrace in front of the circular Uncle Tony wiped his ass driveway and another out back overlooking the with ten dollar bills lake. but Aunt Sarah always gave us 20s for Christmas

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 74 stolen books from Kroch’s and Brentano’s unexpected airplane hums line the walls in a blizzard we drank cheap wine come till the sun came up with the morning mail over the L tracks or to burn the snow

~United States do you remember the year we tried to save our marriage by going to a Baptist church Peter Fiore lives and writes in Mahopac, New York, USA. His poems on Easter Sunday have been published in “American Poetry Review,” “Rattle,” “Atlas Poetica,” “Bright Stars,” “A Hundred Gourds,” “Ribbons,” and in Harlem? others. In 2009, Peter published “text messages,” the first volume of poetry totally devoted to Gogyohka. In May 2015, Peter’s book of tanka prose, “flowers to the torch,” was published by Keibooks. toilet training — a little pee on the floor a little poop in the pot and today he colored his penis with a red marker Radhey Shiam stars in the trees your problem dogs barking at the moon your sole problem and inside you ought to solve it we are all wasted only beggars depend on others for their needs something exciting about bells years ago my cat and fog horns was killed by a grey hound and the snow sitting in the room and high altitude fucking I still hear its mews sweetly sitting under my table chopping at the ice your scented letter in the driveway is in my hand the old man stops but I miss badly and doffs his fedora the scent of your favourite perfume dizzy atmosphere jamming you do not know me with the mind of god . . . I do not know angels why I come to you on 52nd Street but I feel comfortable in your company

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 75 you hate me I care not a fig Rebecca Drouilhet in the next birth you will be my wife phases of the moon my only love created by changing angles . . . the past we shared softened by shadows, your romance mellowed by another dawn is talk of the town you deny who will believe you only the echoes be bold accept it of visitors’ footfalls . . . yet I hear the cries of those whose suffering lingers, you want divorce smell the scent of old despair no objection I raise to keep alive the flame of our love I close my eyes I need a son from you to hear wind in the trees . . . things unseen beckon me to dance you are far away beneath the goddess moon of your own free will but your photo keeps company a global tapestry with me its intricate patterns formed by billions of threads . . . yet when I tug on one string you in my thoughts I feel the whole universe wobble I write a love song butterflies flutter wings flowers dance a vintage violin birds sing for his Halloween birthday . . . its notes carrying ~India the spirits of family musicians into the starry sky Radhey Shiam was born on 14th January, 1922, in a reputable vegetarian Hindu family, in Bareilly Cantonment, U.P. India. He ~Picayune, Mississippi, USA inherited love for literature and social service from his parents. Pen and brush continued to enrich his treasure of works, his works in Hindi, Urdu, and English appear in print and online at National and International level. ‘Song of Life’ and ‘The Book of Life’ are two Rebecca Drouilhet is a retired registered nurse whose work has appeared publications. He died 18th April 2015. in numerous print journals, e-magazines and anthologies. She has won a Sakura award and other prizes for her poetry. In 2014, she wrote a book of haiku with her husband titled Lighting a Path. She enjoys doing word puzzles and spending time with her large family.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 76 a requiem Light on My Heart: A Tanka i sing in advance Sequence for our dying world where will the remnant Richard St. Clair go to live?

this foolish person thinking about i call my ‘self ’ impermanence just a blip brings to mind on the cosmic screen how this world and I of inﬁnity will someday be gone

what was i facing the void in my last birth? i see nothing but gloom now a human but the buddha shines my life is truly his love through it precious onto my heart

i breathe gazing on stars in and out light-years away what a gift this day, when will their stories this breath, now hidden to us this life ever be revealed?

another friend this life I’ve known anything but bliss passed on how can I imagine to another realm what it will be like unknown in amida’s land of bliss?

amida’s light from eternity just one more bridge shining to cross over on this heart of ﬁnitude from this life giving thanks of dissatisfaction giving praise to the promised land of bliss ~Cambridge, Massachusetts USA i chose this life of music making Richard St. Clair (b. 1946) a native of North Dakota, has lived in to soothe my pain Massachusetts for half a century. He is a recognized composer of and to soothe modern classical music in addition to his activity as a poet of tanka, the pain of others haiku, and renku. He has recently retired from MIT and now devotes his life fully to his art. His poetry and music reﬂect his deep faith in Amida Buddha as expressed through Jodo Shinshu (Shin) Buddhism.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 77 River Blue Shoemaker Ruth Holzer diamonds and rust sweet strawberries rattle the vanishing face at breakfast of an old man — then I ﬂy I live and die squeezed in with the workers beneath a ginkgo tree returning to Mexico

~enroute from Quebec City, Canada this house is made of trickery faces stacked retirement plan: like trophies on the walls age in place yesterdays for sale die in place just like all my neighbors I steal time to work on a poem . . . a lesser these pages bird of paradise of ideograms waits for your reply stay opaque no matter how intently how long I study them what are men to sunﬂowers and cardinals, maybe dreams that end the second time around without a trace of longing? will be better my birthday ~United States as an orphan

River Blue Shoemaker has just recently started writing tanka poetry. She we found lives with her two cats and a dog. each other again too late for you are just arriving as I am getting out

down the street a big yellow truck noisily grinding up my last typewriter

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 78 sometime during the night Walking with Dogen (1) your hand slips off my shoulder Ryoh Honda and stays off Ryoh Honda, Japanese-English Translator planning Dogen’s tanka on the left, Ryoh Honda’s tanka these travels brings us on the right. closer to mountains and oceans that we’ll never see haru wa hana natsu hototogisu ~Virginia, USA aki wa tsuki huyu yuki saete suzushikarikeri in the dark forests on the icy lakes blossoms in spring I understand hototogisu (2) in summer that all these years autumn moon have been an idle journey winter snow all pure a clear mind of mine ~Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada blossoms of plum cherry and peony the red crushed ice security light moon light and snow blinks a calm calendar faithfully protecting us from everything but time mine no iro tani no hibiki mo ~Virginia, USA mina nagara waga Shakamuni no koe to sugara to Ruth Holzer’s tanka have appeared previously in Atlas Poetica, as well as in Bright Stars, Take Five, American Tanka, red lights and other mountain colors journals. and sounds of valleys altogether with the voice and appearance of my Shakyamuni

the green trees brilliantly wearing sunbeams makes (1) Dogen (1200 – 1253), founder of the Soto school of Zen me feel my body is (2) little cuckoo becoming transparent (3) an another name for September in Japan

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 79 tazune iru those eyes with miyama no oku no that smile in that summer sato zomo to I think of them waga suminareshi whenever I would miyako narikeru like to remember the village deep nagatsuki no inside mountains where momiji no ue ni I visit yuki hurinu is surely my capital miru hito tareka the dear old home uta yomazaramu

an old desk in the Long Month (3) keeps company with snow has just fallen my endless waste on the red leaves of time so today again who else sees this scenery I’m leaning on it why not sing an uta yama no ha no white snow has honomeku yoi no fallen on the brilliant tsukikage ni color forest hikari mo usuku tobu my inside also hotaru kana all stained newly a firefly tachiyorite flying with a gleam kage mo utsusaji in the pale light tanigawa no of the moon rising from nagarete yo ni shi the brow of a hill idento omoeba

in the twilight I shouldn’t drop by chasing a firefly mountain rivers to is no longer reflect myself myself but still I am till I am eligible to only my eyes follow go out into the world hitoshirezu not only being medeshi kokoro wa a river but I am yononaka no willing to go tada yamakawa no to the ocean and then aki no yuugure from there to the sky autumn evenings huyukusa mo in the mountains mienu yukino no beside rivers shirasagi wa in this world are what onoga sugata ni I do love secretly mi wo kakushitsutsu

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 80 in snow field where winter grasses Conversation with Winter aren’t seen at all Songs of Kokin Ryukashu* the white egrets are hiding in their appearances Ryoh Honda always enjoy being among people Ryoh Honda, Japanese-English Translator simultaneously erasing the self and Ryoh Honda’s work on the right. letting the self exist harunu hachihanan mizudori no achinu yunu tsichin yuku mo kaeru mo wasiti nagamiyuru ato taete yuchinu churasa saredomo michi wa wasurezarikeri forgetting the first blossoms in spring and the moon go and return in autumn night I watch water fowls leave the beauty of snow no traces but there is the route — Prince Yoshimura never forgotten with making a ryuka a dewdrop the nonexistent could finally I found its value become existent here realizing that white snows in Ryukyu running too fast is to miss many things nkati kuru tushiya yononaka ni yugafutei ichuti makoto no hito ya warati nagamiyuru nakaruran yuchinu churasa kagiri mo mienu oozora no iro the coming year promises an abundant harvest there would not so with smiles we look at be a man of truth the beauty of snow in this world — Prince Yoshimura the color of sky the bound never seen their admiring mind flew something real far away and finally reached and something unreal the purity of snow between them falling in Ryukyu the border is vague enough to wander pleasantly fuyuni nuga suraya hananu chiri tubyuru ~Tokyo, Japan mushika kumunu uchi haruya arani

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 81 why the petals are swirling plovers ﬂying over and crying in the air of winter sky the loneliness of stranger possibly it’s already spring in an unfamiliar island inside of clouds winter midnight

— Kyan Chokyo — Yonaha Satonoshi the rigidity of winter clouds no one knows where the crying is relaxing and it appears birds are going to ﬂy over spring is just born in I want to love but don’t the center of them know whom should I fuyunu shirayuchinu iruni majiritin kugarashinu kajiya kakuri nenu munuya chikunu uwini fukuna hananu niui siji sarishi achinu katami demunu lost in the color of white snow in winter wintry withering winds however it cannot hide mustn’t blow so hard over a scent of blossoms chrysanthemums as they’re mementoes of autumn — Goeku Chohchi — Goeku Chohi picking up a maple leaf this shape and its nuance only in this place I hoped of the color remind me winds would not blow but after that I had you being completely scattered hatsifuyunu suranu things are renewed shimutu uminachasa nukuru shirachikunu shimutu uminachasa hananu sigata nukuru shirachikunu niwani mashi uchini I believed they’re frosts warati sachusi in the early winter sky but there remains white I believed there was frost chrysanthemums the still remaining white chrysanthemums were smiling — Izena Choboku on the garden fence

taking over the last — Sadoyama Yasutoyo ﬂowers of the year the silver of frost being held in the smiles has covered the ground of the garden all covered not by frost but by white chiduri nachi wataru chrysanthemums kuwinu tsirinasaya narinu yusujimanu ﬁyunu yafan

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 82 ki kusa kari hatiru yuchi shimunu futin Threads that Bind tuchiwanaru matsiya mutunu sigata Samantha Sirimanne Hyde & Marilyn Humbert snows and frosts withered up all grasses and trees except the pine which stands as if city pavement nothing had happened forgetting where I am for that split second, — Higa Gakei the hopscotch squares of my quiet childhood in the cycle of seasons the trees around the pine have she draws changed their colors while it with coloured chalk proudly keeps its style many flowers behind a picket fence — amini nagasariti bars of a previous life suraya kumu chirin hariti simi wataru under the elm fuyunu utsichi watching the clouds through branches, cleaned up by winter rain the tick-tock of my heart no fogs and clouds are seen deciding to let you go the moon is sending out clear bright light in the still pool my reflection blurs, — Toguchi Seihatsu timelines smudged together after the winter rain in sunset shadows the moon shines much purer how transparent the eternity beads slip off of heaven is! the nylon threads in the craft class . . . *’Collection of Ryuka of Ancient and Modern Times’. Originally all the things unsaid edited in mid-19th century, Kokin Ryukashu is the first collection of Ryuka edited to read traditional ryuka songs, not to sing. The collection before you were gone contains 1,700 works, split into six parts for spring, summer, autumn, winter, love, nakafu (versions mixed with waka) and miscellaneous. through a gap between drawn drapes ~Tokyo, Japan star flicker catches my eye — our fleeting lives Ryoh Honda is a tanka lover in Japan. He is enjoying and feels more than happy to share this language-free poetic form with all tanka poets all over the world. ~Sydney, NSW Australia

Biographies next page.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 83 Marilyn Humbert lives in the Northern suburbs of Sydney NSW surrounded by bush. Her tanka and haiku can be found online, in Tim Gardiner & Alexandra Australian and overseas journal and anthologies. Some of her free verse poems have been and awarded prizes in competitions and some have Davis been published.

Samantha Sirimanne Hyde was born in Sri Lanka and now lives in Australia. She is grateful to have recently crossed paths with the a distant huddle exquisite world of haiku, tanka and other Japanese poetry forms. of samphire pickers baskets full to the brim . . . I lose my way again on purple saltings Sandra Renew bleached scantlings can children lie before a hut catch war from their mothers moved for winter weather . . . the war gene who protects us passed down in DNA when the storm rolls in? or the sins of the fathers budgies above the bay in a unison anvil-shaped clouds . . . of thousands beneath the surface ﬁlm swirling of still rock pool water into a ﬁngerprint a sea horse waits ~Australia brushing fronds across my soles awaken me to depths I cannot fathom. Sylvia Forges-Ryan The water’s weight.

Upset over news of refugees ﬂeeing old driftwood war and poverty marooned up shore I myself create one more, by a strengthening breeze . . . wiping away the spider’s web my desire returns to the sea unfulﬁlled In my recurring dream I am a child again alone on a forest path sand clings to skin hurrying to get home pale and glistening before darkness falls cold to the touch . . . aching pores numbed ~United States safer perhaps

~United Kingdom

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 84 the acrobat Street Performers balancing with her arms dancing, leaping Tish Davis along a red strap that touches the ground! a loonie somersaulting this me through the air still clutching my briefcase and landing with the other coins as she tosses in the musician’s case one fire baton and then the other that unicyclist Quebec City, Quebec, Canada passing a lamp not yet lit reaches for one of the little white bulbs Sandra Renew has published poems in One Last Border Poems for strung above the bistro tables refugees Hazel Hall, Moya Pacey, Sandra Renew. Ginninderra Press, 2015; Flood, Fire and Drought. An anthology exploring the effect of weather events on the Australian landscape showcasing the work of twenty-nine Australian poets with a foreward by Dr Richard Denniss passersby along the bistros and boutiques, Sylvia Forges-Ryan is a former Editor of Frogpond and author of Take on the narrow a Deep Breath, The Haiku Way to Inner Peace. She lives in North Rue Saint-Jean — Haven, CT. this invisible me Dr Tim Gardiner is an ecologist and poet from Manningtree in Essex, UK. His haiku and tanka have been published in various literary the day magazines. His first collection of Poetry, Wilderness, was published by Brambleby Books in 2015. He has published many scientific papers on just long enough natural history and several books, including one about glow-worms. for an acrobat to unroll her red strap on the narrow Rue Saint-Jean Alexandra Davis is an English teacher and poet from Felixstowe in Suffolk, UK. Her poems have been published in literary magazines including Agenda andTwelve Rivers and anthologies such as Slow Things by the The Emma Press. She has performed at the Suffolk that tall man Poetry Festival and is a regular reader at Felixstowe Café Poets. in the loose fitting suit giving in Tish Davis lives in Dublin, Ohio, USA. Her work has appeared in to the pull of her numerous journals including Modern Haibun and Tanka Prose, Atlas Poetica, Haibun Today, red lights, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Presence, purple-feathered boa bottle rockets, Contemporary Haibun Online, and Simply Haiku. those long arms and legs in that baggy suit out of step on that red strap — surely he’s part of the act

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 85 Christmas Tanka Thomas Martin

Tim Lenton her little hand the birth anomaly I love so easily mary thinks hard that I forget she has it through the darkening night so always kiss it again trying to see the shape of a baby in her uncreated dreams mother bought the seeds and planted them in the garden since her death reaching upwards I watch the sunﬂowers the shepherd makes contact follow the sun each summer with an angel and discovers the source of the music in his head you tube I write no poems today only conspiracy among the lambs watched with wide-eyed wonder another new-born sleeps the goldﬁsh swim away covered warmly against the bethlehem night ~United States and the wandering wolves

Thomas Martin was raised on a farm in North Carolina and not feeling wise graduated from the University of North Carolina with a major in the foreigners come through English Literature. He lives with his talented wife in Oregon in the fragile borders Paciﬁc Northwest of the USA. He has published in many literary journals in print and online. understanding the soldiers but not the distant star they asked jesus if he could do magic he touched a key and opened the universe it’s all in there, he said

~United Kingdom

Tim Lenton is a journalist who has written poetry for many years but who has come to tanka fairly recently. He lives in Norwich, UK, and is married with an adult son. He is a winner of the Fish International Poetry Prize and has a website at www.back2sq1.co.uk.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 86 leveraging the expression effect of space and As a Conductor: Between depth of the work. Forty Sound Units and Two How is it beat? We can say either eight beats counting each sound unit in a measure or four Breaths beat counting two sound units as one. When you tune your tanka, it might be more convenient to Ryoh Honda regard the beat of tanka as four beat, so that you can use your hands to conduct your tanka music, No rules of rhyme, no rules of melody. if you like. It has the same length whether you Tanka is one of the most flexible fixed format of think it has either eight beats or four looser beats poetry. What defines tanka is only its length. Even for the standard tanka format. this length you can define at your discretion but you must conduct the tanka, as it is also music; あかあかやあかあかあかやあかあかやあ more precisely tanka is music-oriented poetry. かあかあかやあかあかやつき Internal music in the fixed format underpins the akaakayaakaakaakayaakaakayaakaakaakayaa short poem. Even when you read someone’s kaakayatsuki tanka you still need to conduct them to know its internal music, because the reader as the receiver of tanka needs to approach to share the inner ~Priest Myoe (1173 – 1232) world of the tanka work, finding out the implication of internal melody and rhythm, in The line above is one of the simplest tanka in addition to direct and indirect meanings of words its four hundred year history. As it is sometimes to fully appreciate the work. Tanka is strongly a called a one line poem, Japanese tanka is compressed poem and therefore it requires to be generally written in a line. Once native Japanese decompressed. users find the one line is tanka, it is expected they We are now seeing tanka is for everyone in would intrinsically divide it into five parts to read this world and the borderless tanka world as they learned at elementary school. For tanka welcomes various approaches to develop them written with the Latin alphabet, it would be further. In this article I would like to introduce better to change lines to visualize the space of the how the original standard format of tanka is read soundless sound units, though it suggests new as music for your reference. interesting issues such as the cutting of word flow Those who enjoy tanka, whether making or and the effectiveness of enjambment, which are reading it, consequently play the role of also great pleasures to enter new dimensions and conductor. Tanka literally means short song and reach new frontiers of the world tanka. the song is, needless to say, music. The music is composed of forty sound units, equally divided in a ka a ka ya five measures in the standard form of tanka. So a ka a ka a ka ya each measure has eight sound units. The first and a ka a ka ya third measures have five sound units with sound a ka a ka a ka ya plus three sound units without sound, while the a ka a ka ya tsu ki others, the second, the fourth and the last one have seven sound units with sound plus one e e e e e E E E sound unit without sound. Total of pronounced e e e e e e e E units are thirty one, an aggregation of 5,7,5,7,7 e e e e e E E E sound units, or syllables that is only applicable to e e e e e e e E Japanese whose units of sound has roughly equal e e e e e E e e length. Soundless sound units work just like unpainted white space in Japanese ink paintings,

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 87 oh bright bright five parts in the five measures or lines of tanka oh bright bright bright format, showing breast or backs or other details oh bright bright of the human body only by the expression of the oh bright bright bright five parts. Tanka offers the small limited space oh bright bright moon! with rhythmic guideline to express one’s feelings. Due to its constraints, the tanka poet needs to The line is romanized and divided for the leverage the format. Therefore, it is said English version with its score and translation. expressing something sad without using the word This tanka consists of only three different words, ‘sad’ is tanka. aka (bright), ya (oh) and tsuki (moon). Eight The traditional tanka format, as mentioned hundred years ago, the Buddhist priest monk above, has five measures of which the first and admired and expressed the full moon in extreme the third one hold big pauses in their ends. This plainness. In the thirty one sound units with is a structural definition of the traditional tanka sound, ‘a’ and ‘ka’ count twelve respectively and format and now I can’t help mentioning the free ‘ya’ does five, and except the last two sound units, verse tanka. In contrast with English one, the ‘tsu’ and ‘ki’, all other twenty-nine sound units complete free verse tanka is minority in Japan but end with ‘a’ sound. The implication of openness, some tanka poets such as Takahashi Mizuho largeness and brightness brought by vowel ‘a’ and whose free verse works are characterized by her that of clearness and cleanness by consonant ‘k’ delicate consciousness on tanka format and subtle help to create the visual image of the moon, nuance of wording, and Kikuchi Takahiko who together with the repetitive rhythm and upward published a pair of tanka books, one is free verse sonic wave by the set of low pitch sound unit ‘a’ and the other is standard, those are full of his and high pitch ‘ka’. intelligence and humor, are successfully exploring The translation has the same length with the new frontiers of their tanka world. In Japan the original work, at least I hope it to be so. The history of free verse tanka has nearly one original consists of twelve ‘aka’, five ‘ya’ and one hundred years. Here are some examples with ‘tsuki,’ in total eighteen words, while the English scores of my understanding and translation. translation has eighteen words. In this example, also in general, English tanka use a smaller Ⅰ. 眼を借りて、眼を貸して、お互ひはここ number of words than Japanese one, due to the ろの寂しさを⾒ようぢゃないか。 difference of language structure such as syntax and phonetics. For example, the one-syllable Ishihara Jun (1881 – 1947) word ‘bright’ is four sound units word in Japanese as it is read as ‘bu’ ‘ra’ ‘i’ ‘to’ without stress mewo karite accent. In the translated tanka, the word with mewo kashite accent is assumed to have the length of two otagaiwa sound units of Japanese, while the word without kokorono sabisisawo accent is counted as one sound unit, so that the miyoujanaika translation can keep the same time span with the tanka made in the original language. As far as the content of the tanka is comfortably fit in the song e e e e e E E E format in five measures, it is free to mix iambus, e e e e e E E E trochee, anapest and dactyl, etc., or apply the e e e e e E E E Trager-Smith system which argues for four e e e e sssse E degrees of metrical stress to tune the tanka more e e e e e e e E finely. Imagine five mobile parts of a human body. One head, two arms and two legs and put those

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 88 borrowing eyes born just like lending eyes cracking the earth shall we see suddenly the loneliness of our hearts the blindness of the each other connection called mother and child

Ⅱ. ⾃然がずんずん体のなかを通過する — Ⅳ. 黄いろい花にわすれかけた⾵景をとも⼭、⼭、⼭らせて春近き夜はほのぼのとある

Maeda Yuugre (1883 – 1951) Kato Katsumi (1915 – 2010)

shizenga zunzun kiiroi hanani karadano nakawo wasurekaketa huukeiwo tsuukasuru tomorasete — yama, haruchikaki yoruwa yama, yama honobonoto aru

ess essss E E E e e e e e e e E e e e e e e e E ssssss E sssssS E e e e e e E E E e e e e e E E E E E E E E e e E e esssS e e e E E e e E E e e E e e e e e e e E

one after another letting yellow ﬂowers nature is passing through light up my body sceneries being forgotten — mountains, at night near spring mountains, mountains peacefully relaxed

Ⅲ. 地球が割れるように⽣まれてたちま Ⅴ. この朝クロワッサンちぎりつつ今はどち母⼦と⾔うつながりの盲⽬こなる⼀⽣の中のどこなる

Kaneko Kimi (1915 – 2009) Takase Kazushi (1929 – 2001)

chikyuuga wareru youni kono asa umarete kurowassan chigiritsutsu tachimachi imawa dokonaru boshito iu isshouno nakano tsunagarino moumoku dokonaru

ssssssssss E E E e e e e E E E E e e e e E E E E e e esssSsssssS e e e e E E E E sssS e e e e E E e e e e e E E E ess e e e e e E sssssS e e e e E e e e e E E E E

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 89 this morning rhythm or music of words in tanka whatever the tearing croissant format is. just now Language is one of the bases of culture where am I reflecting its historical backgrounds and each where am I in my life language has its own system and structure which may limit its speakers. Tanka is just a format which is language free and can be shared and Numbers of sound units of the Japanese exchanged with everyone. It could be regarded as examples are below. the ancestor of Twitter, for tanka has been playing a role of communication tool since the Ⅰ 5, 5, 5, 9, 7 total 31 8th century. Tanka is defined only by its length. In its definition at the language-free base, the length Ⅱ 8, 7, 5, 2, 4 total 26 of tanka format is equal to the length of two Ⅲ 10, 4, 4, 5, 9 total 32 breaths, extrapolated from a large number of Ⅳ 7, 11, 5, 8, 7 total 38 tanka works written in several languages. Actually Ⅴ 4, 11, 7, 8, 4 total 34 the length of two breaths corresponds to that of the original standard tanka, also embraces Regarding sample V, music notes were amended for the assimilated perfectly the basic structure of the standard one, sounds of ‘kurowassan’ in line two and ‘isshouno’ in line four. which is composed of the first half called ‘kamiku’ or ‘kaminoku’ (meaning upper phrase as The Japanese free verse tanka was derived tanka is written vertically) and the last half called from the standard one in the process of ‘shimoku’ or ‘shimonoku’ (lower phrase). modernization of Japanese society, adopting the I am afraid it could be quite difficult for me tradition of tanka to a new era that was changing to try the free verse tanka after sticking to the rapidly and dynamically. I believe the free verse traditional form for long time. Then I shall tanka poets tried to seek their own rhythm and imagine the length of two breaths without melodies which are more suitable to the thinking of anything, and that might possibly be modernizing society without discarding concept ultimate tanka of Zen. of tanka. Even though their rhythm distorts from the standard format, it still fits in the length of traditional tanka. The sample scores show their Ryoh Honda is a tanka lover in Japan. He is enjoying and feels more pace of internal music in their free verse tanka than happy to share this language-free poetic form with all tanka poets varies effectively with flexible speed of all over the world. pronounced words and the relative duration of pauses. Nowadays our globe is almost borderless and one can move anywhere else physically or through the Internet at one’s risk. Our world and society became much more flexible than before and we are witnessing the similar trend also in the tanka universe. The unassailable historical position of the standard tanka must be fertile ground for tanka poets over the world who are exploiting the original format, sharing and broadening common values of tanka. In the modern world human sense of values are largely diversified and in the tanka world the poets of Latin alphabet successfully find internal intrinsic

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 90 A Note on Brevity present and past progressive. Aizu’s poem . . . with all the living Peter Fiore with all the dead the lovely earth is floating Scott Fergusson, Tennis Director at the in a dark universe Westhampton Beach and Tennis Club once told his pros, “You’ve got 15 seconds to get your point doesn’t need the helping verb “is”? A later across. After that, kids start fidgeting or bouncing revision works much better, I think. balls off their rackets.” Gogyohka gives you even less time. In a world addicted to text messages, with all the living emails and on-line abbreviations, I’d go even with all the dead further, you’ve got one line to draw a reader in. the lovely earth floating now Put the ring in the nose or get out. in a dark universe

So brevity obviously first means the Brevity can also extend to the elimination of elimination of all wasted words. A poem like capital letters — except for proper nouns. Gogyohka poets sometimes use capital letters at I can always tell the beginning of lines to introduce a new thought how long it’s been or image, or to signal the absence of since I’ve been home enjambment. This is unnecessary too as lines by the length should have natural endings or at least pauses, of my father’s eye brows determined by the breath, the natural pause a writer takes between phrases or images. Capital doesn’t need that first word, since it’s first of all letters actually have the effect of slowing the understood and then clear by line 3. In addition, reader down, and once that happens there is beginning with “can always tell” jump starts the always the danger of losing him / her. reader into the poem faster. Traditionally, haiku The point of brevity is to get to the reader’s poets eliminate pronouns and prepositions heart as soon as possible. although this often does not register in English translations. Another example of the elimination of Peter Fiore lives and writes in Mahopac, New York, USA. His poems anything unnecessary can be seen in Tim have been published in American Poetry Review, Rattle, Atlas Poetica, Bright Stars, Ribbons, A Hundred Gourds and others. In 2009 Peter Geaghan’s poem . . . published “text messages”, the first volume of American Gogyohka poetry. In May 2015, Keibooks published “flowers to the torch”, Peter’s 17 pigeons settle book of tanka prose. on the gray shingles of a Gulf station November blue sky On a bus barreling down 95

Is “on a bus” needed? It doesn’t matter if you’re on a bus or in a car, does it? “barreling down 95” does the job. Brevity can also mean the elimination of what the nuns called “helping verbs” in the

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 91 Strange chooses, for all her titles, a line from Review: Warp and Weft, Tanka the third poem. By staging her triptychs in this Threads by Debbie Strange manner she provides readers with a landmark that shades the meaning of the first two tanka till Reviewed by Maxianne Berger the echo of the title in the third gives the grouping its resolution. In the above case, related Warp and Weft, Tanka Threads to “altar” we find the vocabulary of theism: Debbie Strange offerings, sacred, prayer, deliverance. The Keibooks, Perryville, MD, 2015 “stones” of the first tanka return in the second. Pb. 94 pp The “fragmented” of the second reappears as ISBN 978-1512361124 “fragments” in the third. In both these instances there is no redundancy because the referent has Debbie Strange’s Warp and Weft is an changed. The reading mind feels the tension astonishing collection. First, its 218 tanka were between previous and new appearance. In the selected from those published over a three-year first tanka, the stones are sacred, and they are period. Not being prolific myself, I am amazed receiving offerings. In the second tanka, the voice that over such a brief period a poet could, among leaves behind shasei and moves into metaphor: notebook drafts, produce so many poems of “we” are the stones. Our minds can now connect, sufficient quality as to have engaged the editors of however subliminally, the notion of “sacred” to some thirty publications. the poem’s “we.” Aside from placing single poems on the first Another example of the effect of groupings is and last page, Strange has gathered her tanka in “blues.” into “triptychs”: three tanka that share enough in theme or imagery to be placed together and thus a blue fan to play off one another. The decision to do this unfolding in the distance with 216 tanka, that is to produce seventy-two so many hills triptychs, a daunting task, is ambitious. Had I not we meant to climb before known these were assemblages, I would still be they became mountains astonished by the resonances within them, and by how consistently the groupings do resonate. layers Consider, for example, “the altar of air.” of this blue life winnowed offerings by the hour glass on sacred stones my furrows deepen petroforms scarred with lichen we replay we listen to the chanting wind our lowest notes over and over in the highlands these blues wailing we are standing stones through harmonica bones leaning toward each other Within the space of these three tanka, “blue” f r a g m e n t e d has gone from the denotative colour of a tobacco bundles metaphoric fan, through its own metaphoric tied to jackpine bones colouring of a life, to its plural use as a type of prayer fragments music associated with troubles. This meaning, of hanging deliverance troubles, is found symbolically in the first tanka in the altar of air through hills becoming un-climbable mountains.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 92 In the second tanka, an accumulation of troubles The opening tanka of “a prairie Gael” is through time is suggested by lines on the face, the more obtuse, yet still easily engages the reader persona’s deepening furrows. The final tanka because of the inherent physicality of the follows through with the verb “wailing.” metaphors that permeate the phrases. Although the three tanka were presumably produced separately, the continuities from she sets sail “stanza” to “stanza” within their gathering make through oceans of grain of the triptych a satisfying whole. anchored to her father Readers might notice from the illustrations trailing fingers in his wake above that Strange makes lucid use of metaphor, untangling beards of barley far beyond what many poets present through juxtaposition alone. Certainly this poet does Metaphor is not Strange’s only tool. structure tanka through simple juxtaposition as Consider, in this next tanka, the power of well, and to good effect. The strength of this next allusion. tanka, the final one of the triptych “undone,” is achieved through what is tangible and sensory. ballerinas rehearsing in the park gardening I never knew in the hat you gave me there were so many I am undone graceful ways to die by faded ribbons and the scent of lilies There are very few false notes in this collection — fewer than a handful could be called Because of the groupings, the impact of the precious. Take “the dust / of moon and stars / on above tanka is further reinforced by those that my skin / that winter I learned / all the ways to precede it on the page. The persona has already shimmer[.]”Although vaguely reminiscent of produced emotional ties with the “you”: in the Carl Sagan’s “we are made of star-stuff,” the first tanka, “my bleeding heart / in the small of overall effect is “pretty.” But fewer than a handful your hand[.]”; in the second, the loss is is few enough. For the most part Strange’s tanka expressed as the “we” of “we planted” slips into are forceful and unexpected. And at times, the singular “I” of “time and I stand still” (my daringly surreal. emphases). Consider, too, this next tanka. he gasps at the ragged scars in the nursing home upon my back parchment skin cradles brittle bones remnants of that night a blue labyrinth they tore off my broken wings inked on mother’s handscape time’s trembling calligraphy The poems in this book tell us familiar, human stories. There is death — “rosemary The poem is the second of the triptych from / your bridal bouquet / and funeral “motherstone.” Yet even without knowing the wreath / the scent of you / lingers on my hands” title and the tanka which precedes, the first line, — the power of new love — “you watch me / with “in the nursing home[,]” establishes ample flaming eyes / my skin sizzles / I am ashes / in context for the various metaphors that so acutely your hands” — the lingering bitterness of love depict an aged woman (and the neologism lost — “on the table / an unread announcement / “handscape” is brilliant). I don’t want / to know the name / of his new

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 93 baby[.]” Feelings and emotions we have in The collection opens with ‘silently in a common. Feelings and emotions that make us us. snapshot’, in which the poet evokes the presence of the persona in this way: “you are saying we are something / and look wonderful saying it”. The e l e m e n t a l economy and the variation of the phrases in the forged by cherita reinforce the sense of time and place ﬁre, water, earth and air before the concluding three lines refract back to we soften into ourselves the opening lines. Take 4, for example:

According to the poet, “[t]he work is sudden downpour arranged so that readers shuttle back and forth in a church portal we wait between the light and the dark tanka ﬁbres.” Debbie Strange’s Warp and Weft does just so, and talking of Egyptology — me, the resulting tapestry is masterful. More than a trying not to notice book to recommend to other readers who seek the sodden cling astonishment, the collection can also serve as a of her dress blueprint for poets who want to explore tanka poetics beyond the contemporary foundation of The sudden downpour forces the poet to take shasei and the keystone of juxtaposition — these shelter, where he and his companion discuss poetic devices should and will continue to Egyptology, but he can only focus on the wet support contemporary tanka. But Debbie dress clinging to her body. Strange’s collection leads tanka into a whole In 8, we are taken back to the age of the other realm. caveman. The poem includes the title of the collection in its last line:

of man’s first dawn bison on cave walls Review: shards and dust : new & shards & dust selected cherita by Larry The cherita are packed full of telling details: in 9, for example, he sees in the market place: Kimmel dust and dung a fly riding the piper’s fingers Reviewed by Patricia Prime Here the picture is completed by a “woman shards and dust: new & selected cherita in white / magical as a unicorn”. The poem is so Larry Kimmel mysterious that the ending comes as a complete Bottle Rockets Press (2014) surprise. Pb. 20 pp. In 11, it is an “urban midnight”, where “in a ISBN: 978-0-9792257-8-9 pool of yellow lamplight” the poet imagines “an el Greco / in the garret window”. Larry Kimmel has a page on his website In 15, Kimmel tells a lovely story of his 5 devoted to cherita: . It gingerbread man by biting the head off first, as includes an article he wrote that was originally “it’s more humane”. 17 skillfully interweaves published in Sketchbook. Kimmel says it is a newly coming across a headstone with an instance of invented form created by ai li about 15 or 18 recognition: years ago.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 94 crossing the churchyard in winter Review: pine winds, autumn on a headstone her name yet not her name rain by Matsukaze & Murasame the electric instant before I hurry on Reviewed by Patricia Prime

While hitch-hiking in 20, the poet is invited pine winds, autumn rain : tanka strings in for a coffee and sees in the kitchen: “chicken Matsukaze & Murasame and a fridge full / of Schlitz.” Skylark Publishing (2015) These carefully crafted cherita are not merely Pb. 70 pp. a compilation of memories and experiences, but ISBN: 9781514146804 lend themselves to selected depictions of the past Price: £10 from Amazon UK / $15.58 US and present and how they relate to each other. Kimmel further explores the recollection of pine winds, autumn rain features the tanka people, places, music, nature and human nature. strings of two ﬁne tanka poets: Matsukaze is the For example, in 22 he writes of the break-up of a pen-name of an American male poet, Murasame relationship: which suggests it could be with a is the pen-name of Joy McCall, who is a retired partner: nurse living in England. The book also features the colour photographs of Pete Bromage on the we came to an understanding theme of doors, windows, gateways, arched cornices and other portals which serve as but it wasn’t over, I could see that, entrances to the past. The text marries a so I shoved all I could into a laundry bag wonderful introduction, ‘Blood Hymns’ by the 20 truck hours later editor Claire Everett, Founder and Editor of and 2 states away, Skylark and Tanka Prose Editor of HaibunToday; a still a dishwasher short prose acknowledgment by Joy McCall; an essay on tanka and sedoka by Matsukaze; and an Humour, too, is never far from the poet. In afterword on the collection by myself. (Quoted 27, for instance, in the concluding haiku, he tanka are in italics by Murasame and in regular remarks: “a long way from here / the type by Matsukaze). headstone / awaiting me.” In 32, he writes about The collection opens with a photograph of a a cottage he would like to rent, where “sumacs window accompanied by Murasame’s tanka: jungle the property.” This is a lively collection, with phrases and the brown man lines to savour and the poems resonate in the opens the ancient doors mind. At his best, Kimmel possesses a highly and shuttered windows perceptive gift for relaying moments in his life I hear him singing, with wonderful precision. Over all, the effect his footsteps on the stairs generally is of a sensitivity playing over the surface of things, ﬁnding slightly strange This is followed by “spirit unbroken”, locutions to effect a subtle atmosphere. accompanied by a photograph of a window Sometimes the result is a supple, subtle, looking into a walled garden from the inside of a wonderful miniature poem. Kimmel is a writer I church porch. The tanka string begins with the would like to spend more time with. He reminds lyrical tanka: me that when poetry works, it can do so much, in such a small space.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 95 overcast afternoon “kinfolk”, where the accompanying photograph in a quiet house is of a half-open church window, is one of give warm and spice-scented, and take. In this beautiful tanka string, the poets peering outside are separated by an ocean, but still they gather in a whisper I utter: Murasame warmth, friendship, consolation and strength from each other through their correspondence: The loyalty and pragmatism is what gives the poem authority. the alto voice “unhealed leaves”, whose photograph sings such gentle songs illustrates an overgrown garden before a church that tears fall door, is tender, more musical, and more elegiac: my spirit slips away to Louisiana what is this covenant my kindred made thousands of miles away with unhealed leaves on her island that often mock me? singing in soft rain amid a congregation of leaves the thorns of the may tree What is most striking about these poems is catch in my hair their sheer generosity: the tanka strings are like held fast, I fear nothing, elegies, not just for each other, but also for place, no Judas, no betrayal time and friendship. In every case, there is a tenderness and reverence for each other. In the When the poets turn to “the burning day”, poem “seventy”, for example, we see the power of the elegiac tone remains, not for the sun-blazed poetry: barren hilltop in the photograph, but for loss, weariness and the quest for mercy. Matsukaze shinto monks draws us in rhetorically, asking in one tanka: have to sit upright “where is your fire?” and in another: “can I help when they die but / inhale the burning day over the horizon?” the stacks of waka The poets continue with the theme of heat, will hold you up torment, branding and muttering: surrounded since circling by stone pagodas in the hot winds, torment this evening chill, a woman my weary head sings sedoka in a paper voice I fall to my knees to a koto accompaniment not expecting mercy The black and white photograph which am I branded illustrates “charred remains” is of a winding path with a scarlet letter through an overgrown field where a wind-blown do I move Hawthorne-like tree leans. Here the poets address the eye, which in the heat of day together take on an almost talismanic muttering my prayers? significance, as is said “the eyes are the window to the soul”: For these two poets, the significance of their personal relationship, which we see illustrated in

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 96 in these eyes these women sometimes light move around me sideways sometimes darkened clouds many eyes and on some occasions behold me the color of rain in silent derision

in his brown eyes In “these paper veins”, music, age and sometimes storms language are delicately interwoven as the poets thunderclouds reflect upon past events. Matsukaze muses: then the sun breaking through ah, dear Murasame I shall wrap the shawl The tanka strings strike a wonderful balance of this young skin between the celebratory and the elegiac, around a knowing suggesting a belief that the act of remembering is and aged soul the only key to any kind of immortality, as we see in “dark river”: The poem “spinning” tells of grief, and how in Murasame’s tanka, she asks her friend to pull my river her from the cold fire of life: overflows the banks nutmeg and cloves the fine ash lie scattered of ages haunts me on the flattened grass rising, falling, take my hand, pull me in a from the cold firepit scattered rain I hear the lapping The final tanka string in the collection, of this murky river “wings”, focuses on the intermingling of “this in my soul rustic life” with the “dense darkness / beneath blanched bones” and eloquently gives recognition This note of friendship and love seen in to the frailty of life and the perception that many of the tanka strings in this collection, is however tough life becomes there will be balanced by those of belonging, remembering resolution. and bearing witness. These two poets ‘play’ their poetry as a “madhouse” dwells on the related themes of musician plays an instrument: with a crisp, women haunting the streets, derision, shedding authoritative, confident touch that never leaves tears and cleaning wounds. In this poem, the the reader in doubt. Whether intoning images of speakers ponder: poetry, nature or human nature or eternal truths, theirs is a vigorous verse, tuned to the deeply do they haunt you personal but never far from the doubts, emotions, these many women? wishes and hopes of everyone. The strings are the mad streets melodic, harmonious and richly satisfying to ear, are not the place mind and heart. for a sleepless poet

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 97 Review: The Tanka Journal, No. the Ise Sea — white waves offshore 47 were flowers, I’ll wrap and carry them Reviewed by Patricia Prime home to my wife The tanka chain that follows, “Summer The Tanka Journal, No. 47 Here, Winter There”, is by Amelia Fielden and Edited by Ayu Yuhki Mari Konno. These are the last two verses: The Japan Tanka Poets’ Society Konno’s in italics: Tokyo, Japan, 2015 Pb. 32 pp nation Membership fee per annum US $40 for 2 issues. after nation, menaced by terrorism — The Tanka Journal includes individual tanka, my husband overcome translated tanka, tanka strings and book reviews. now by senility Subscribers are from Japan, America, Australia and other countries. Announcements are also senility made in the journal of forthcoming tanka advancing in Mother — competitions. midnight The journal opens with two tanka each by I am her fatigued carer, the Nihon Kajin Club New Board members, in older than retirement age both Japanese and English. This is an example by Tsunehiro Hayashida: There are five cat tanka by Yukiko Inoue Smith. This is the second one: when the magnolia tree Kimata-sensei loved the ownerless filters the light cat with a heavy only sadness reaches my eyes pregnant belly even after three decades follows us with tottering steps These are followed by five tanka each by five Japanese poets translated into English by Then follow 19 pages of tanka strings and Yasuhiro Kawamura, Aya Yuhki, Hiroshi individual tanka by a variety of poets. The Furugohori, Fumiko Tanihara and Fusako following is from Kimi Kawamura’s tanka string Kitamura. The following tanka is a translation “Rainy Season”: from Akahiko Shimaki by Hiroshi Furugohori: touching how sad, flowers of hydrangea the eyes of a little bird are, in full bloom inside of the cage, I feel cool and the weight of brightened up by the light a raindrop on my palm of a winter day! This is the last verse from Beverley George’s Five tanka are translated from The Man’yoshu “from a blank page . . . rising”: by Tomoko Mikami. This is the first:

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 98 positioned with care Goblin bends her ear on paper she handmade To the sound of rain and in Tokushima Gives herself up to tickets, coasters, photographs Poetic imagination and her ﬁrst folding crane For a long time

This one from Neal Whitman’s “For Kay Cats do not Tracy who knows why or should”: laugh out loud but at times Cannery Row I see in Monterey in California Our cats smile is a poem a quality of light Many of the poems in this collection create a a tone, a habit, a dream simple music from the savouring of words. The poems that are most successful are often those And one from Sanford Goldstein’s “ﬁnding: a tinged with the philosophical, pairing lofty and tanka string”: tangible.

finding he no longer had any appeal, he sat before the television set until after midnight Review: At the Hut of the Small Mind, by Sanford Goldstein There are two book reviews: rising mist, fieldstones by Joy McCall, reviewed by Aya Yuhki and Cat Tanka, Vol. 2: The Story of Goblin and Reviewed by Joy McCall Pumpkin Junior by Yukiko Inoue-Smith, reviewed At the Hut of the Small Mind : a tanka sequence by Takae Shibasaki. There are many people for by Sanford Goldstein whom these two books will appeal, including Winfred Press: Second Edition 2015 those who love nature and those who love their Pb. 68 pp. cats. ISBN-13: 978-0-9864328-1-1 In her review of rising mist, fieldstones, Aya Yuki The book is available from CreateSpace eStore writes: https://www.createspace.com / 5856945 One more thing I would like to mention is about the mysterious spiritual world of Joy, When I first read Sanford Goldstein’s At the that is to say, the infusion of her view of Hut of the Small Mind, more than a decade ago, I nature reminding us of the existence of was struck by two things — firstly, the loveliness of fairies in Ireland and the Eastern ideas of the poetry, and secondly, how intriguing was the ‘nothingness.’ Readers will enjoy Joy’s story it told, and how it unfolded, tanka after spiritual world which is expressed in the tanka. following tanka: ‘the island / is heavy with Reading it again now, in this beautiful new edition which Winfred brings us, I am reminded trees / the green gods / grow wild here / I of the same things — this is fine tanka poetry, that kneel at their feet.’ tells the sequential story of Sanford’s journey to the Zen retreat; his observations, his feelings, the In the review of Cat Tanka by Yukiko Inoue- everyday happenings, the friendships that develop Smith, the reviewer quotes two tanka:

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 99 and more, the learning, the insights. It is like a documentary of a journey not only in place but ANNOUNCEMENTS within the poet. The journey begins as he leaves the familiar: Atlas Poetica will publish short announcements in any language up to 300 words in length on a space available basis. Announcements may be edited for brevity, clarity, grammar, or devouring any other reason. Send announcements in the body of an email these supermarket cakes to: [email protected] — do not send attachments. as if tomorrow’s trip may be my last! 3-language Tanka and almost at once he is in another kind of Anthology Published world — From Maxianne Berger: it’s by candlelight and perpetual I’ve been asked by Patrick Simon, publisher cock-crow of éditions du tanka francophone to get the word I write out about a 3-language tanka anthology he just my morning poem published. Tanka by 99 Japanese poets, modern and contemporary, one tanka each in Japanese, and towards the end of his brief stay, he French, and English. The English translation understands — team are Kozue Uzawa, Yasuko Ito Watt, and me as copy editrix. wanting to stay, More information at: http://www.revue- I could not, tanka-francophone.com / editions / and leaving, catalogue_editions_tanka.html I wanted #anthologie_de_tanka_japonais_modernes to write ten thousand poems ISBN 978-2-923829-20-3 and as he arrives home, he writes —

I drag down the sabi emptiness of my mountain hut; Haibun Today Changes in Kyoto Reading Period there’s rain Writers are now invited to submit haibun, I think that this is one of most lovely tanka I tanka prose and articles for consideration in the have ever read. But the book is ﬁlled with such March 2016 issue of Haibun Today. Writers of poems; one after another, they enchant. haibun, in particular, should note the new It is one of the Sanford’s great gifts that he reading periods that now apply to that section of writes so clearly and honestly, that we, too, get to the journal. They will ﬁnd the pertinent go to that Hut of the Small Mind with him. It is a deadlines by consulting our Submission lovely place. Guidelines at Haibun Today.

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 100 Haﬁz Speaks of Hide and Special-event Tanka Prose Seek : Animated Tanka Contest Winners

Sequence Published The Tanka Society of America is pleased to announce the winners of its ﬁrst-ever tanka prose I hope the thankful holiday was good to you! contest, held this 15th-anniversary year: I wanted to share something I thought might interest you. In support of the Pikes Peak Poet 1st Place: Urszula Funnell (UK), Laureate, Janice Gould, whose community ‘Checkmate’ project is meant to be poetry videos, I’ve just 2nd Place: J. Zimmerman (USA), ‘Ah uploaded an original tanka sequence (which I Morelia’ wrote for Gary for his birthday and animated 3rd Place: Claire Everett (UK), ‘The Window with my wildlife photography) to Vimeo. Poem’ Here is the link: https://vimeo.com / Honorable Mentions: Jenny Ward Angyal 147234412 (USA), ‘Gaps,’ and David Terelinck (Australia), Autumn Noelle Hall ‘Carved in Stone’

Much appreciation goes to poet and editor Bob Lucky, who diligently served as judge for this The Tanka Society of blind-review contest. We’re also very grateful to poet and TSA volunteer Susan Burch, who America’s 2015 Members’ worked behind the scenes in helping us Anthology administer the contest, especially in building the judge’s electronic ﬁle of anonymous entries. And I’m delighted to announce that the 2015 a huge thanks, of course, to the sixty-nine poets Members’ Anthology, Spent Blossoms, is now from around the world who submitted entries. available to order through Lulu. All TSA To read the winning tanka prose pieces, members who submitted tanka have been please go to the TSA website. (http:// represented in this beautiful collection. Our www.tankasocietyofamerica.org / ) Note that the heartfelt thanks go to Claire Everett for being this full judge’s report, including contest commentary, year’s guest editor. We are also grateful to David will be published in the winter 2016 Ribbons. Rice (TSA Ribbons editor), who designed and The judge’s comments will be added after that to produced the anthology, and to John Hall for the website. donating the cover photograph of fallen camellia blossoms. — Janet Lynn Davis You may order copies directly from Lulu at TSA vice president & contest coordinator, the low price of $10 (+ SH). Just go to 2014-2015 www.lulu.com and type “Spent Blossoms” in the Search bar at the top of the page. Over the next couple of months, Board members and invited guests will be featuring a favorite tanka from the 2015 anthology on the TSA Facebook page, along with commentary. Please feel free to post your own comments.

Margaret Chula TSA President

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 101 Winfred Press Announces Keibooks Announces Tanka At the Hut of the Small Mind : a Left Behind 1968 : Tanka from the tanka sequence, by Sanford Notebooks of Sanford Goldstein

Goldstein Now ninety years old, Sanford Goldstein is the foremost tanka poet writing in English today. First published in 1992, At the Hut of the Small In Tanka Left Behind 1968, he gives us a glimpse Mind by Sanford Goldstein, is a tanka sequence into his early life and development as a poet. now published in a new edition by Winfred Press. 1968 was a turbulent time when the poet’s wife In this volume Goldstein tightens his focus on the was hospitalized with a serious brain disorder, his poignancies of individual moments. The result is daughter was hospitalized after a bicycle a vivid, poetical work, animated and illuminated accident, and his father died. by Goldstein’s deep engagement with his subject Through it all, Goldstein was aware of the matter, his attention to detail, and especially by outside world with its protest marches and civil his skill and delight in the tanka form to make rights issues. The black nurses and patients at the language sing. Goldstein’s tanka show astute hospital are part of the constrained intimacy of appreciation of form, rhythm, style and skill in that time, each family consumed by their private invoking layered atmospheres in both the human griefs, yet sharing a common humanity. and natural worlds. This is a collection with a deep respect for the tanka tradition and a “Goldstein gives us in this ‘tanka novel’ one heartfelt desire to celebrate the poet’s of his most moving and powerful works. A classic experiences. Beautifully crafted, intelligent and from the father of English tanka, written in his full of heart, this work shows the potential for the apparently artless style, just when we thought long tanka sequence. — Patricia Prime, Co-editor we’d heard all he had to say. This is absolutely of Kokako essential Goldstein. A must have for any English tanka collection.” — Larry Kimmel, editor of At the Hut of the Small Mind: a tanka sequence Winfred Press by Sanford Goldstein Winfred Press: Second Edition 2015 “The ﬁrst time I read the collection, I did so Pb. 68 pp. in a single session without leaving my chair. ISBN-13: 978-0-9864328-1-1 These extraordinarily plain spoken and terse $8.00 USD poems are at the same time emotionally powerful, gripping one’s attention and one’s The book is available from CreateSpace sympathy, and astonishingly beautiful in their eStore: https://www.createspace.com / 5856945 soul-baring honesty. There is simply no other work of tanka in English with which to fairly compare this collection. I highly recommend this book.” — Denis M. Garrison, Author of First Winter Rain (tanka) and publisher of the ﬁrst edition of Sanford Goldstein’s collection of collections, Four Decades on My Tanka Road

Tanka Left Behind 1968 : Tanka from the Notebooks of Sanford Goldstein ISBN-13: 978-1514848111 (Print) 104 pp Keibooks 2015

Atlas Poetica • Issue 24 • Page 102 Publications by Keibooks

Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka

Collections

Warp and Weft, Tanka Threads, by Debbie Strange

ﬂowers to the torch : American Tanka Prose, by peter ﬁore

on the cusp, a year of tanka, by Joy McCall NEW! rising mist, ﬁeldstones, by Joy McCall Hedgerows, Tanka Pentaptychs, by Joy McCall circling smoke, scattered bones, by Joy McCall

Tanka Left Behind 1968 : Tanka from the Notebooks of Sanford Goldstein, by Sanford Goldstein NEW! Tanka Left Behind : Tanka from the Notebooks of Sanford Goldstein, by Sanford Goldstein This Short Life, Minimalist Tanka, by Sanford Goldstein

Anthologies Edited by M. Kei

Bright Stars, An Organic Tanka Anthology (Vols. 1 – 7)

Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka (Vol. 4)

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

Fire Dragon