Morning Coffee Haiku

morning coffee darkened

the way a colleague mimics

my English

Hauling the Tide: HSA's 2024 Members' Anthology

Exile Tanka

Mother once sighed,

you've spoken English for too long

you might forget me ...

exiled for years, I can't recall

which language I dream in

Cold Moon Journal, June 5, 2024

Parting Words Tanka

the jagged edges

of her parting words

in perfect English

gash my immigrant heart ...

her face white as the snow moon

Fireflies' Light, April, 2024

Beginning of the End

in dim lamplight

my wife murmurs, "I'm scared

of not knowing you:

you never sleep talk in English

you only dream in Chinese"

these weather swings

from record warmth to cold front

to snowfall ....

the weight of our silence

on the journey to a new life

Scarlet Dragonfly Journal, December 10, 2023

Departure Door Tanka

the departure door

closed between mother and me ...

fifteen years later

surging waves, one continent

and English separate us

Cold Moon Journal, July 7, 2023

The Price of Speaking English

When my father's coworker drove him to the ER with back pain, the doctor sent him home with an adhesive heat patch. Weeks later, he felt as if his back was being stabbed with a dagger.

Armed with English, my borrowed tongue for ten years, I took my father back to the ER.  The doctor asked questions, ran tests, asked further questions, then returned days later with a diagnosis and a thorough explanation. My father was sent to the oncology ward.

Nothing was unusual about this. My stoic father and I have experienced similar situations after settling in this land of opportunity. There's a price to pay for everything. 

these first weeks

a mere blur to me . . .

slant of moonlight

on father's bed 

I sit in grief unspoken 

Contemporary Haibun Online, 18:2, 2022

Caw-Caw-Caw Tanka

crows caw-caw-caw

in the front yard maple ...

ten years of my tongue

acclimating to the way

my white neighbor speaks English

NeverEnding Story, October 21 2022

FYI: See my "To the Lighthouse," post, A Rhetoric Device, Onomatopoeia (where a word mimics the actual sound one hears)

Selected Tanka: Blonde Tutor Kyoka

sitting across
from my blonde tutor
with a dimpled smile
I undress English
layer by layer

Atlas Poetica, 23, 2015

Selected Kyoka: “oh “ Kyoka

Oh, you write
in English . . .
his “oh “
tasting like pinot noir
left open overnight

Atlas Poetica, 22, 2015

Selected Tanka: Chinese World and English Words Tanka

my Chinese world
confined in an attic
with English words
I excavate the interior
world of nostalgia

Poetry Nook, 6, April 2014

Chinese Coolie and English Wordmines Tanka

like a coolie
laboring in English wordmines
for seven years...
the scars in his mind
the hole in his heart

NeverEnding Story, Feb. 5, 2014

One-Line English Lesson Haiku

for my ESL teacher, Sylvia

first English lesson Iamyouareandheis

The Mustard Grain, 1:1, August, 2014

Why Believe You Can Write Verse in English?, A Tanka Prose

I paint

a daisy on the wall

and sign it

with my Romanized name ...

morning mist rising

To write verse in English is not like growing ideograms inside your heart, reaping the sentences matured by the muse of desire, taking your clothes off with words, exposing yourself in the rhythm of the stanzas so that you can hold your passport and cross the borders of linguistic solitudes, emigrating from the ideographic to the alphabetic.

English still remains an unmastered means of deciphering the musings of your heart and mind, it is constantly intruded upon and twisted by inflections from the old language. Often, you are not able to connect emotions to words, to feel the weight of their syllables. Without emotional vocabulary, everything becomes elusion, confusion. The fear of things you needn’t be afraid of.

Even when you can find the right words to reflect your feelings, you are not skilled at weaving these into sentences. They simply become isolated cries clinging desperately to your heart. Even when you can find a way to weave words together into an artistic whole, the poem often fails to conform to the texture mandated by poetry editors. Why believe you can write verse in English, whose music is not natural to you? 1

I skip

a stone of words

across the lake

of another time

another place

NeverEnding Story, June 27, 2014

Note: The concluding sentence is taken from the last two lines of “An Exchange,” a poem written by Nan Wu, the poet who is the protagonist of A Free Life, Ha Jin’s fifth novel.

English Wordmines Tanka

like a coolie
laboring in English wordmines
for seven years...
the scars in his mind
the hole in his heart

for 劉鎮歐 who has lost his Chinese soul

NeverEnding Story, Feb. 5, 2014

"Im-mi-grant " Haiku

im-mi-grant . . .
the way English tastes
on my tongue

2nd Prize, 7th Kokako Haiku Competition

Included in Kumamoto University's textbook containing international haiku in English for teaching university-level English-language education

And showcased in Triveni Spotlight Feature, 2026 

Note: Below is the judge's comment: This one is a contrasting type of haiku, no less valid, as it references the writer's inner experience. The word "tastes," a metaphor, is an exemplar for how to use this trope in a haiku, that is, not far-fetched or complicated. With the writer we feel the buzz and hum of the tongue as it produces the unfamiliar phonemes, syllable by syllable.

Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, VIII

the 8th tanka in the sequence about diasporic experiences

my English words
nothing's wrong, I'm fine
slip into
our phone conversation...
Mother's ocean-wide silence

Atlas Poetica, 15, 2013

Politics/Poetics of Re-Homing, I

the first tanka in the sequence about diasporic experiences

a new immigrant
in the land of Snow White
I practice
A,B,C... by talking
to the bathroom mirror

Atlas Poetica, 15, 2013

English as a Second Language Class Senryu

ESL class:
the Chinese have oral sex
with some consonants

New Bones: Selected Gendai Haiku

Note: ESL stands for English as a Second Language.

ESL Class Tanka

I used to be...
from an immigrant's mouth
stretches his story --
the pin-drop silence
fills an ESL classroom
(Note: ESL stands for English as a Second Language)

Gusts, 16, Fall/Winter 2012

Appraisal by Keitha Keyes: This tanka really spoke to me as it reminded me of when I taught ESL to adults.

I used to be…

This is one of the saddest things you hear immigrants or refugees say. Their identity is often based in the past, left behind in their country of origin....

Sometimes when students start to share personal details it is like the opening of a flood gate of thoughts and emotions. The use of the verb stretches is very apt here....

The other students listen in silence. There is no need for a teacher to impose silence on the class. They listen out of respect for their classmate. Perhaps they have had a similar experience. The silence is absolute, captured by the poet...

At the end of the tanka we are left in our dreaming room. What was his story? What is his future? ...

The language in this tanka is simple and concise.

The punctuation when it is used is very effective.

The ellipsis at the end of the first line suggests that the student pauses before he tells his story. It also invites the reader to focus on the student. The em dash at the end of the third line shifts the perspective from the speaker to the rest of the class. 

Review of Another Pnin

Below is an excerpt from Owen Bullock's review essay, entitled On Contemporary Haibun 13 and published in Haibun Today, 6:3, September 2012 (note: the essay is an in-depth (and lengthy) review written in the historical perspective on haibun writing, worthy of multiple readings)

...and I will quote Chen-ou Liu’s in full:

    Another Pnin
 

I hate hearing myself speaking English. My voice sounds inhuman . . . mechanical. In the strain of translating a Chinese word into its English equivalent, the spontaneity and natural quality of my speech are lost. I feel that I’m falling out of the tightly-knit fabric of emotional vocabulary into a hole-filled net of linguistic signifiers.
 

April snow . . .

not a word passes over

my tongue

I find such massive honesty deeply moving. It’s easy for the reader to get over any slight reaction to implied criticism of English, because we know he’s grappling with some big issues. The juxtaposing haiku suggests a sensate snowmelt. I am also in awe of someone who can write so well in a second language, and I would have been extremely proud to have written that last sentence of prose alone.

This haibun leads to me to reflect that if form is not the main original component of a piece then some new revelation or way of conveying ideas might fit the bill. To read any form of poetry in which the writer says something you’ve never read before gives it a huge plus in my eyes.