My thanks to my friend and fellow poet, Iliyana Stoyanova
for writing this tanka sequence with me. 

 

 

Blithe Spirit, the Journal of the British Haiku Society, August 2018

 

 

ONE FRAME AT A TIME

A Tanka Sequence

by Mary Kendall (USA) and Iliyana Stoyanova (UK)

 

camera in hand
you tame the world
click by click …
living your life
one frame at a time

(MK)

the old album
asleep in dust
for all these years
the last two pages
stuck together

(IS)

so alike
everyone said
we could be twins
but then one day
a letter arrived

(MK)

through the open windows
spring wind…
by the ballerina box
my old ribbons tangled
like childhood memories 

(IS)

in my hands now
a forty-year-old picture
of an unknown aunt
a tiny birthmark
same as my own

(MK)