Haibun, April 2012

`Haibun, April 2012

Self Portrait Study by Susumu Takiguchi

Rome

by Ashley Capes

you are good with your Italian. we walk a lot. universally, waitresses seem

to like us. there is a crucial shortage of zebras, crossing the road is a

wonderful risk. I am not very good with my Italian. directions are fun.

children's maps are fun. when sitting at a fountain we don't have to

photograph each other. half the time we race the sun, it lances between

buildings and hides the block ahead. street signs are chiselled into the

walls, graffiti is hard to find. we photograph our meals instead. I'm

looking for the next gelato store and when I get there, I hand new money

over.

the whole street

knows he's not happy

delivery man

old paint

the Uffizi has an airport-like entry with a tip truck bin for disposing of

water bottles. we drop them off with the regret of newly purchased toys

given away. twelve steps later I'm thirsty, as a woman at the ticket booth

attempts to explain things. she's mixed up her tickets, the Academia for

the Uffizi. the other one's back in my hotel, if you could only take one for

the other? it's hot. I want her to have a nice holiday, but I also want to

go inside.

small glass window

an angry

no smoking sign

the guards are bored but they have a presence. they read, they pace and they

stare, I even find one hidden in an alcove, reading on a folding chair. I

think they don't exactly guard the artworks; so much as exist in relation to

them. perhaps both Venus and their blue and maroon uniforms were born here,

between the white walls and the scent of dust, old paint and the an echo of

Medici's passing to keep them company.

in the Botticelli room

crowds round

portable air conditioners

Putting On Her Face

By Ignatius Fay

The ravages of cancer and lupus have taken their toll, most visibly on her head. She has almost no hair. Her scalp is covered with open lesions kept in check with chemotherapy injections. She has absolutely no eyebrows and only a few remnant eyelashes. Her forehead, nose and cheeks are masses of scarred craters.

Her morning ritual takes more than half an hour. She begins with a thick foundation, then brushes her cheeks with a hint of blush, taking pains to blend the two seamlessly. Using eyeliner, she meticulously draws eyebrows and defines the edges of her eyelids. A touch of eye shadow helps her eyes appear less sunken. She applies a medicated cream to her scalp and, finally, chooses a wig. Voilà! A near-miraculous transformation and she is ready to ‘face’ the day.

early yard sale

haggling over the price

of styrofoam heads

Kissing Cousins

By Ignatius Fay

Hands-on sex education for me begins at age ten. Henry and I are hiking with my cousins, Pauline and Helen, both almost nine. Henry is our uncle, three months younger than me. The conversation turns to kissing and we all admit that our only experience has been the chaste, family sort. We decide to practice.

Pairing up, we experiment, then switch partners. We know the tongue is involved, but not what to do with it. How to hold each other, what to do with our hands? Comparing notes, no one gets passing marks.

Then we try boy with boy, girl with girl. Gross! Not because of the same sex thing, but because Henry slobbers and his nose runs when he kisses. We agree that kissing someone of the same sex just doesn’t feel right.

prom night

working up to the kiss

at her front door

Going Ape

By Ignatius Fay

A couple of modifications are made to my apeman role between Friday and Saturday performances of our high school variety night. After the first show, my English teacher offers a suggestion concerning my costume.

“I’m sure the audience couldn’t see anything, but the girls in the orchestra pit are getting far more entertainment than they expected when they joined the band.”

Saturday night I wear briefs under the tiger-skin loincloth.

Just before I go on, she makes a personal request. “You do such a marvelous job as an ape. Hilarious. I’d like to see you eat this on stage,” and she whips out a banana! Just outrageous enough to intrigue me.

The banana is perfect for the eating scene. Center-stage, I make a production of trying to figure out how to get at the fruit inside, as if I’ve never seen one before. In mock frustration, I finally just squeeze one end—harder than intended. The damned banana squirts out of the skin into the air! Displaying reflexes I don’t usually have, I snatch it in midair and jam it into my mouth, smearing quite a bit around my lower face in the process. The biggest laugh of the night!

high school lockers

color-coded by floor

March break

Yellow Ribbons

By paula fisher

We had much needed rain during the night and a change in temperature that announced the coming winter. Walking around the house this morning, I moved many of the potted plants to the sun porch to keep them warm. With the drought that has plagued south Texas leaving so many trees in critical shape, it's hard to tell without being up close which ones are naturally losing leaves. Around my yard there are several crepe myrtles and a few will not be coming back.

day moon

the sun lights up

a weathered face

As we placed yellow ribbons in the old oaks around the church today, I realized just how badly they've been damaged. Before brunch, we raised the flag for Veteran's Day and gave thanks to the men of our community who have served. In my family, five generations of Military service and all came home alive but not all unscathed.

grandma's war cake

a little girl sighs

"is there no candy?"

The Erie–Lackawanna

By paula fisher

As a child growing up in a small town, we lived by a very lonely stretch of railroad tracks. The train came by only once a week. We would run down when we heard the whistle and place buffalo head nickels and old pennies on the track. I was always stunned by the shear strength of the flattening. I would stand in total awe with that hot coin in my hand, watching, slack jawed, as the train disappeared. It was always the same outcome and it has never stopped to amaze me. Simple? Yes. But the whole thing held so much more.

The agonizingly long wait for the next train and our next big excitement to come with it. The danger in being so close to something so powerful. Our brazen boldness for daring to cross our parents. The fear of them finding out, more than our fear of getting hurt. The train disappearing up ahead and into the future...we would sit and make up stories about where it was going. Of where our own trains would take us. The romance of it. That lonely feeling looking back down the empty track. I was melodramatic and brazen, even at five. I was home for a family reunion not so long ago. The train no longer runs on those tracks, it's a hikers trail. My cousins and I went in search of another set. Seven, middle aged idiots, pennies in hand, listening for the whistle, once again.

scuffed sneakers

along the bike path

forget-me-nots

Leap season

By Claire Gardien

Grandma and I walk hand in hand to an unknown building. The window panes shine grey in the glare of the last snow patches circling the trees around the drive alley. On both sides, their twisted branches scorn and mock our hesitant paces: baleful faces turn the panes into walls of uncertainty.

out of the blue trudging our ways

Glad and gloomy by turns on the bleak wet macadam, we walk on and slow down, while few words surge on the tips of our tongues.

endless how’s

how to watch the pain in your eyes

you are sitting on the bed aghast, and asking in a flow of emotions why your baby didn’t live and you can’t see him. It’s all unclear to me although the morning words to your sister defiantly rush back to me, “Let me have your daughter on my lap again, let me kiss her, if ever…” Our tender previous months’ conversations suddenly appear so upsetting to me. I was playing teddy and doll. We were discussing babies’ names, you were so sure to have the ‘little boy” that both of us waited with the same enthusiasm… Pierre-Louis.

“Songs of innocence”

How to cope with your sorrows

floating days -

the river drifts apart

bleak, noxious morn’

You are in an in-between time, no more sharing the past hours of what should have been blissfulness and yet not having entered the time of resilience and oblivion. A new space is forging its way into your mind in which you are weaving a mill of souvenirs that brushes the past days and months with honey and I in company listening with avidity to your words

first days of spring

the murmur of your hand

on primroses’ buds

a flower bird is humming in his cradle and you are experiencing an icing sugar microcosm in which you delve for those sacred instants of motherhood. There I am too, sharing your happiness and your everyday contentment. Spring is yours this year, a lullaby season for the little one to listen to. You are knitting pastels and embroidering sheets. One is azure-blue with little yellow ducks; another is red-festooned with chickens. Above all, you are now spinning a magic world of fantasies with which I’m in tune and at the same time, I feel excluded from your new desolate life.

let us dream on -

the harvest moon

so dull

Grandma’s love for her graveyard tombs is such that I’m almost holidaying in this place too. While she is cleaning, I visit the alleys all around: two rows of little tombs. She tells me I don’t have to worry; they died of the Spanish flu a long time ago. On my way I peep inside the little chapels wondering. A teddy lies on its back. On the photos, all of them tiny babies dressed in their best garments. Are-they dead or asleep? I’m afraid and run away. Pebbles roll under my feet. Come on, says Grandma. “One day, I’ll lose her. What will her mother say?”

Haunted?

a new spring shines

in my heart

Clearing

By Colin Stewart Jones

A fly dizzies about my face as I drink on the front step. I sweep at it but it’s stubborn. Again and again and again! This time, I blow sharply and it flies off probably to annoy the crap out of some other “too early for me, never!” drinker.

So now I'm whistling no particular tune.

A bird starts singing. Somewhere over in the bushes. A chaffinch maybe. Ha! As if I could tell. But he is a chirpy chappy.

And now I'm still whistling no particular tune. Just louder.

noon sun

my third dram breaks

through the haar

_________

dram: nip of whisky

haar: sea fog

Pursuit

By Colin Stewart Jones

Hank! People joke that if they play your songs backwards they’ll get everything back. Like you, I keep my pain selfish in pursuit of the lyric. I have tried the whole night through. Honest. But all I am is still alone and tired as another night leeches into day.

the old moon

having seen enough

runs from the sun

Orangutan

By Marian Olson

Backside to us, the orangutan sits on a bench watching her young chatter and swing among bars and ledges in the enclosure at the National Zoo. She has a short piece of burlap draped over her stooped shoulders. She never stirs or turns to look at us gawking at her behind the wire enclosure; something about her so familiar, something quiet, a resigned weariness.

She rises when a chilly breeze tosses yellow leaves in a swirl and tugs at the burlap with black leathery fingers until it hugs her shoulder like a favorite shawl. As I walk to the car I pull my own sweater closed and head home.

thou art that

the Hindu scripture says

orangutan and I

Titanic Lore

By Hans Jongman

My wife and I take the car on an old fashioned Sunday drive. King's road has always been our favourite as it follows the shoreline of Lake Ontario. There are many interesting places to visit along the way and coffee shops to satisfy any caffeine cravings.

designated driver

quickly makes the sign of the cross

passing the town band

steam locomotive

all smoke

A sign COLLECTABLES on the roof of an old barn lures us in. Parking the car into a cloud of dust, we enter the shop. A bell clanks and a woman hollers "Be right with you, go ahead, look around!" An overfed tomcat lifts his head but goes back to sleep.

a gust of wind

rattles bric-a-brac

noontide

in a dead-end street

wringing out a shammy

I am immediately drawn to the bookcase leaning against the back wall. It must have at one time supported some really heavy tomes. Between the knick-knacks, a framed Marconi message catches my eye. It was send by the ship Carpathia in April 1912 reporting the sinking of the Titanic. Here indeed I might have found the Holy Grail of ship mementos. In the shop's dim light the thing looks authentic.

marine museum

the silence of the steam-whistle

deafening

I pick up the frame and walk over to the front. A woman, wearing a moose cap, emerges from the basement stairs and takes her place behind the glass showcase.

out of the fog bank

sound of the bell buoy

If this is a photo copy, I will pass on the purchase. I ask if she could just remove the message from the frame and what is the price? When she answers it sounds just like she is surprised how anybody could be interested in this item. "Two dollars" she says, and you should keep the frame, saves me some time taking it apart!"

whitecaps

seagulls mimic

the sound of geese

My wife finds it all amusing. "What did you expect, the real McCoy?"

flea market

mermaid on a plinth

phantom moon

Whisper a Prayer

By Patricia Prime & Owen Bullock

last day of summer

the homeless man asleep

under a city bench

Noises far off. How is that man, who was crying on a Dublin street, with no shoes, in the chilly autumn, a refugee from Bosnia, or somewhere similar, who had little English and no stomach for begging. Someone else who stopped had a friend in social services, said she’d give her a ring, find a bed for the man. None of the other beggars were crying.

on the wall

of the Salvation Army office

‘Poppies’ by Claude Monet

Tourists crowd into the half-dark of the cathedral. They light candles, whisper a prayer, and examine stained-glass windows. Herded out by a guide into the shadow of the forecourt, where flower sellers and people selling postcards have set up stalls, they pause to rest. Across the road a park opens endlessly, with its lush gardens, vegetable gardens and exotic trees. I’ve been here before, but it’s time to leave.

sound of water

river boatmen

in straw boaters

the heat lingers ~

covered in silver paint

mime artist

sitting zazen

ants scale

my back

a moth in my soup

I eat it

with the rest

outside Musee D’Orsay

a busker plays a

clarinet concerto

leaning over Pont Neuf

the vaudeville performer

comes to you