Category Archives: tanka

One frame at a time (tanka sequence)

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aperture-art-blur-414781 pixabay

Photo: aperture art blur/Pixabay

 

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)

 

 

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Photo from Freeimages.com

 

My hand in yours . . . (two tanka)

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Ephemerae,
July Issue 2018

 

how softly
the light shifts
from day to dusk,
the familiar comfort
of my hand in yours 

 

 

 

all morning long
the praying mantis
clings to a window screen—
my fingers less nimble                       
with each passing year

 

 

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Praying Mantis and the Moon by Watanabe Seitei

 

 

 

 

Unwanted touch …

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Presence Issue 61 (2018) / three haiku and one tanka:

 

1.

a shadow blocks the light    unwanted touch

 

2.

washed up –
this broken shell
once sang the sea

3.

far above
old cotton fields –
migrating swans

4.

thin curls of wood
fly away
from the lathe –
his memory slips 
away bit by bit

 

Screen Shot 2018-08-12 at 11.46.46 AM

 

 

 

Chopping carrots…

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failed haiku: A Journal of English Senryu, Volume 3, Issue 32

 

one haiku:

chopping carrots –
with each decisive cut
I think of you

 

and two pieces of tankart:

belladonna

 

 

an alligator glides by

 

 

Haiku and  Tankart are by Mary Kendall, (c) 2018

best journal and pen

With breath so soft . . . (tanka)

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Redlights, June 2018:

 

a newborn fawn
hidden in tall grasses,
with breath so soft
not even a dandelion
stirs

 

Fawn by Carmen Sterba Russell

Photograph by Carmen Sterba Russell (used with her permission) (c) 2018