Category Tanka

by TUYET VAN DO early March the lingering heat of summer remains in the garden cornstalks fraying uninvited Cyclone Alfred slashes the city floating in the yard lifeless worms watching waning crescent behind the drifting clouds my heart aches missing…

by WANDA AMOS gulf rainsslowly flowing south—packing their pouchesscoops of pelicansrelocate through the mistechoing from skyscrapersa coxswain’s calland the slap of oars…Yarra sunrise dark desert skiesprojecting millions of starsthe thrill of sleepingbeneaththe Southern Cross     in the dust   …

by SAMANTHA SIRIMANNE HYDE Travelling Back a tanka string from Colombo, Sri Lanka monsoon rain… faltering at the temple with a lotus bloom I’m back with grandma at her ancestral shrine the tuk tuk stops at our childhood gate to…

by RODNEY WILLIAMS Flowers on graves a tanka string in mourning for beloved women  in shaded mulch violets bloom yet again… six decades before under such a green arch mum wielding her burnished spade with love for my late mother…

Poet’s House a tanka string coming home to this empty house and full garden a blaze of tulips a tangle of weeds picturesque poetic image… a leaking roof… omg it’s raining in our bedroom now shattered vase… flowers all over…

Lake Barrine a tanka string rainforest walk around the crater lake endless drizzle puddles on the track blurs our view tree ferns between dangling vines cast shadows… time rolls backwards among echoing birdcalls we peer into clear water watch a…

cottage tumbling stone unrooved and unanswered skipped by lowing wind – vagrant souls evicted from shelter their bodies earned

Keitha Keyes lives in a tiny house in Sydney, filled with her husband’s model ships and her many antique irons and trivets. She enjoys writing haiku, senryu, gembun, tanka, kyoka, cherita, sequences and tanka prose. Her work is published in…

a tawny frogmouth on the no standing sign in this dead-end street unable to sleep I search for stars red dust kicked up by long legs chasing short ones the horizon wide… all my sister’s idea to pat that emu…

two thousand yearsborne on the broken columnsof Ephesus –my feet at the grand theatrein the footsteps of St Paul Ephesus Archaeological Site, Turkey in the cornerof the white-walled rooma sad ficus…bright slices of outsideplay across the slow clock Specialist’s waiting…