hosts: Kala Ramesh & Firdaus Parvez
mentor: Lorraine Haig
A Thursday Feature 2nd January, 2025
HAPPY 2025! HAPPY 2025!
HAPPY 2025!
Memories of a Lunch
hard rain
the sound of Hindi film songs
from the kitchen
One day in Chiang Mai a colleague invites me to lunch at a nameless Indian restaurant not far from the Sikh gurudwara. A Punjabi widow has set up two tables in her front room and dishes out whatever she’s got on the stove in the kitchen, always a dal, another vegetable dish, raita, and fresh chapattis that disappear quickly from the communal bread basket. I speak to her in my rusty, formal Hindi. She tells me about her late husband, her two married sons who live nearby in the town of Lamphun, her life in Delhi, her move to Thailand. My Hindi is not quite up to the task, and she periodically slips into Punjabi, but I do my best to keep up and manage to answer questions about my family. Putting on my shoes to leave, I notice the picture of the Thai King next to a portrait of Guru Nanak.
sticky afternoon
the heavy fragrance
of frangipani
Bob Lucky
Read the analysis of this haibun here, by Mathew Caratti:
Challenge:
Does any point in the haibun (given above) strike you as important? See how Bob merges and weaves in two cultures, languages, and thought processes.
Challenging?
It's the New Year—start afresh!
Try something new!
Have fun!
Please remember that the haiku needs to be strong and a stand-alone poem in a haibun. A weak haiku eats into your haibun's strength.
Even haibun outside this prompt can be shared.
PLEASE NOTE:
1. Only two haibun per poet per prompt.
2. Share your best-polished pieces.
3. Please do not post something in a hurry or something you have just written.
Let it simmer for a while.
4. Post your final edited version on top of your original verse.
5. Don't forget to give feedback on others' poems.
We are delighted to open the comment thread for you to share your unpublished haibun (within 300/250 words) to be considered for inclusion in haikuKATHA monthly journal.
Important: Since we're swamped with submissions, and our editors are only human, mistakes can happen. Please, please, remember to put your name, followed by your country, below each poem, even after revisions. It helps our editors; they won't have to type it in, saving them from potential typos. Thanks a ton!
~~~~~~~
PLEASE NOTE:
1. Only two haibun per poet per prompt. Please put your name and country of residence under your poem, it makes the editors' work easier. Thanks.
2. Share your best-polished pieces.
3. Please do not post something in a hurry or something you have just written.
Let it simmer for a while.
4. When poets give suggestions and if you agree to them - post your final edited version on top of your original version.
5. Don't forget to give feedback on others' poems.
We are delighted to open the comment thread for you to share your unpublished haibun (within 300 words) to be considered for inclusion in the haikuKATHA monthly journal.
#2 Gembun broken compass
last light
carried in the beak
of a rook Sandip Chauhan, USA feedback welcome
#2
Gembun
love story
fresh blossom
threading kisses
into the wind
Joanna Ashwell
UK
Feedback welcome
#2
And where to put the vacuum cleaner?
ten pigeons
all lined up on a tree limb
a car backfires
Since moving to France, I have often regretted American houses and apartments with bedroom closets. In my tiny apartments I have never had the space to buy an Ikea wardrobe with doors. So my shoes lie neatly aligned in an L shape beneath two sides of the bed.
Of course, the new kitten will wreak havoc like the others always did.
Alfred Booth
Lyon, France
(feedback welcome)
#2
The Weight of Responsibility
Apologizing profusely, I make a hasty exit from the ruckus, dragging my scruffy seven-year-old by the arm. “What on earth were you thinking?!” I hiss. “This is his birthday party and you were fighting with him?”
“He was the one who hit me first...”
“But you can’t just lose your temper like that! You need to exert self-control, be calm and polite...”
“So you want me to be a hypocrite?”
potato curry...
scrubbing off the eyes
and the guilt
Mohua Maulik, India
Feedback appreciated.
#1
Overflowing bins
I hate summer. It brings in the tourists. Our old town has a narrow main street, not much wider than it would have been in horse and buggy days. They crawl through gawking, never mind the traffic banking up behind. Worse still, they stop on the road, get out and take a photo. We’re too polite to toot. They open their car doors into the traffic and leave them that way until nappies are changed and kids are strapped in. It’s only luck a door’s not ripped off its hinges. Just when you think they’re out of the way, they put their blinkers on to go left, then turn right.
trampled grass
a duck lays…