Ralph Murre: Canvas
Route 31 buses pass like time in fog and the canvas waits, as I look at brushes and knives, put them back, squeeze a gob of payne’s grey and some pthalo blue on my palette, consider the quality of the...
View ArticleSharon Auberle: Storm
All night a roaring of waves slamming onto the shore. All night a Wagnerian symphony of wind and water; now and then the thunder of a falling tree. I reach for you, burrowed deep under quilts. Through...
View ArticleJeffrey Woodward: Woodberry Tavern
wading into thickcigarette smoke to the beatof a jukeboxBrubeck and all thatold school jazzThe graying proprietor and his wife, too, were seated, more often than not, with a few aging cronies—familiar...
View ArticlePatricia Prime & Catherine Mair: Uretara Estuary
on the stop bankwandering with the shadowscast by cloudsWe walk beside the estuary taking photographs of bird life: shags, herons, ducks, Canada geese, pied stilts and bitterns. Along the stop bank we...
View ArticleOwen Bullock: Roche
My first full-time job was in a pub kitchen. They did bar food and had a ‘posh’ restaurant upstairs for the evenings. I washed dishes, prepped ingredients, made sandwiches. I also became a shoulder to...
View ArticleEditorial: The Survival of Haibun Today
One year ago this morning I celebrated the first anniversary of Haibun Today in an editorial review of this blog’s stated mission and publishing record. I do not intend to repeat that performance on...
View ArticleRichard Straw: Haibun: It's a Family Thing
A haibun is a family gathering, perhaps a reunion, of young and old and middle aged. Some dads huff prose and some cousins whisper poetry and some sons and daughters do a bit of both or talk gibberish...
View ArticleAdelaide B. Shaw: Montgomery Place
We visit an historic house, one of many in the Hudson Valley.Along the drive leading up to the mansion is an avenue of black locust. The signature tree on this estate. More locust on the river side....
View ArticleGlenn G. Coats: Directions
On Saturday morning, the rear entrance to the corner building is locked, so I enter through the front of the coffee shop. It is early and no one is sitting around the small tables that look out on...
View ArticleChen-ou Liu: Half-Past Tomorrow
Everything has passed me by; I yearn for unseized moments. I think more of what has passed than of what will be. High expectations of youth have given way to acceptance. My life has always been and...
View ArticleBamboo Shoot: Close Encounters
I’m not given to superstition or unsupported flights of imagination, but not so long ago, I had a strange experience, the details of which greatly amused my friends. Even now, the story still gains me...
View ArticleJeffrey Winke: In Mid-Night Wanders
.The rough idling of an 18-wheeler with its pshhhhit, pshhhhit airbrakes stir him in the early dawn. It’s best to move on anyway. Out of mercy or carelessness, the backdoor to this industrial...
View ArticleStanley Pelter: service
.funeral serviceis a contortion of her harsh lifeat last a loud voice hushed..Nearly made 102. Nearly 2 weeks dead. She, we believe, lies nearby. To one side. The event inside this last-of-the-day is...
View ArticleChen-ou Liu: Candle
.Every year, together, my parents light a candle on my birthday cake, giving thanks to their God for the blessings I’ve received. Then I close my eyes, make a wish, and blow out the candle with my own...
View ArticleBenita Kape: Linen Clouds
.Behind me the house which has a life of its own. Perhaps young children lie abed. One may be reading, the very young sleeping, the father listening to the radio. Perhaps the father has directed the...
View ArticleWilliam Sorlien: Untitled
.Upstream a short distance from town is (or was, I should say) a working grain terminal and elevator, not exactly a harbor, perhaps most notable for its proximity to the railroad. The building remains,...
View ArticleDru Philippou: Sanctum
.lions of Apolloguard his Delian templeamong burstsof wild poppiesclambering for the heavens.I run the color red over Father’s free-floating columns drawn on paper, shading the emptiness between them...
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Richard Straw: Background Story, or Would You Like Prose with That Haiku?
.old red Schwinnabandoned in weeds―outburst of rainThe "old red Schwinn" poem was written on May 23, 1988. I was probably smoking a Marlboro Light at the time and resting my haiku notebook on my knee...
View ArticleDana-Maria Onica: Untitled
.Here was a lake surrounded by trees—oaks, as far as I remember. .Where is the tall grass? Where is the wind? .There is nothing left, only this sun killing all the seeds, to the last one, and us, its...
View ArticleAnnouncement: Publication of Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose #2 - Winter 2009
.MET Press is pleased to announce the publication of the second issue of the biannual journal, Modern Haibun & Tanka Prose, edited by Jeffrey Woodward. MH&TP 2 has been published in print, in...
View ArticleChen-ou Liu: The Floating World
.Struck by its sharpness and fragility, I study a blade of grass. This opens my eyes to spring blossoms and winter snow, to nature's wide horizon, to the world I live in. .on the bent tip of a blade of...
View ArticleSharon Auberle & Ralph Murre: Porte des Morts
.crow and seagullon whirling windsa white orchid at the windowfading .Dull olive of cedar outweighs other colors, rationed so carefully in northern winter.The ground is snow-covered; the sky gray; the...
View ArticleRichard Straw: Retrospective Haibun, or Why I Love the Past
.I’m a writer with strong nostalgic longings. One of my favorite essayists is Charles Lamb, someone else who labored for decades as a harmless office worker and who also longed for and wrote mostly...
View ArticleBob Lucky: A Walk Before Dawn
.flattened frog the silence of early morning.every five yearsevery cell in our bodies is replacedyou don’t need to know thatto know the love we made last nightis not the love we made a decade agois not...
View ArticleAnnouncement: Haibun Today, the Blog, Goes Quarterly
.Call for Submissions.Haibun Today—First Quarterly Issue, March 2010.Haibun Today, a literary blog devoted to the promotion of haibun since 2007, will become an online quarterly webzine in 2010 with...
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