tinywords begins its 20th year!
Now that’s a headline worth celebrating. Here we are, nearly twenty years after Dylan Tweney started publishing tiny poems, one per day, like a daily vitamin
Category: Issue 20.1
spring’s return
a tossed coin
tumbling in air
April Fool’s Day
the cuckoo
switches eggs
tulip magnolia–
the full-throated song
of a meadowlark
varied thrush
between notes
the unwavering light
almost spring
swinging my cane
to a new beat
eight minutes from the sun unfurling ferns
expanding universe
I teach my uncle
how to read
creases in a map
an old man at the trailhead
squints back sunlight
the one who went first
waiting for me
labyrinth’s center
without a way to find you mourning dove
self storage
the bits we keep
to ourselves
(haiga)
mesa clouds
we mind each step
among the pottery shards
the longest
I’ve ever lived in one place…
lichen on maples
spring migration
the return of
vinyl records
every plastic ever made in existence
downstream slightly faster than the debris
earth day
leaving the river alone
with its thoughts
climate strike
making her own sign
like a kid again
breaching the levee
river town
flooded with moonlight
where willows weave shadows the receding river
climate change
the slippery slope
of a glacier
steel band
the oil drums
that drive us
city park
the accordionist pleats
the breeze
Manhattan evening
three fingers
of sunset
spring gusts …
a swirl of dead leaves
in the dugout
express take-out
all the way home
nothing but red lights
small-town diner
she tells us we can take
any seat we like
milk moon
she tells more
than he wants to know
her bony back
against my palm —
Mother’s Day
(First published in evolution, the Red Moon anthology, 2010)
waning moon
arranging flowers
in her mother’s hands
my daughter
can’t read cursive
imagine my sorrow
my notes in her baby book
are gibberish to her
(From A Thousand Voices, Tanka Society
what we take
and what we leave behind
honey harvest
A short haibun by Tia Haynes
fairy lights
on a sapling…
her prom dress
struggling
with the new curriculum
weekly shooter drill
short day
this cold shell
of a bullet
spring vineyard
stone farmhouse pockmarked
with mortar shells
returning
to the vanishing point
in the blue hour
five lonely notes
of a mourning dove
mossy log
a ruffled grouse drums
up the dawn
(haiga)
lilacs
filling the house
with memories
mayfly
the eulogy writes
itself
day moon
bees orbit
the buttonbush
first sprouts
a crow cleans its feathers
on the scarecrow’s shoulder
spring planting–
a runner of ivy
in the dog’s teeth
cluster
of barrel cactus
morning glow
cloud cover . . .
plum blossoms reach out
to the sky
blossom rain . . .
a toadstool turns
inside out
noon sunlight
in the shower’s rhythm
white chrysanthemum
(Originally published in The Mainichi Haiku in English
November 4, 2014)
A short haibun by Larry Kimmel: “Irises”
cooling tea
all I believed
I'd do today
sunrise
waiting for a cormorant
to surface
break in the rain
a flock of lorikeets loud
in the blossoming plum
muting
the commercial
mourning dove
friday night
no one calls
but the geese
old letters in a shoebox
winter sunlight
hanging on
winter sun . . .
the wren’s
vocal warm-up
millions of songs
I will never hear
first snow fall
path of nettles
the sting from
an old memory
first date sushi
the artfully balanced slices
of our narratives
the longest night
feeling nostalgic
for radio static
winter rain
watering the flowers
on her umbrella
tall bamboo
bows to the pruners
late snow
hard times
the bird bath freezes over
before sundown
3am Tao
I try to sleep
without trying
light studded hillside
the miles of night
till the next town
mountain hollow
a sway in the back
of the old draft horse
Amish country
the precision
of a cracked whip
lopsided moon
I consider both sides
of the argument
baseball game
for three hours we all belong
to the same party
a crack
in the concrete box
prisoner’s sky
thunderclap —
the darkening sky splits
into liquid night
(Originally published in beyond the horizon beyond)
more than enough
to fill an afternoon
summer cumulus
the cornfield
closes behind us
summer dusk
living will
the kids know all I need
in the end
sunlight on my face
and ice cream every day
(haiga)
X marks the crosshairs radiotherapy
last of autumn
a prescription bottle
filled with sepia
he tells me
he’s forced to retire
falling-leaf moon
retirement benefits
I pick up
sand dollars
beach umbrella
all day the orbit
of its shadow
(haiga)
seafront clairvoyant
her cypress leaf charm
brushes my palm
(Originally appeared in Presence 58, 2017)
the moon’s pull
shaping the curve
inside the wave
telling me over and over the undertow
afterglow…
the tingle
of sunburn
dawn
your body?s outline
follow?s mine
(haiga)
that look
in our eyes . . .
candle moths
honey-cool melon tasting of a hundred hives
dining
on the lake
water striders
Indian summer
corn-on-the-cob-shaped
corn-on-the-cob holders
summer eve
stuck in my teeth
a wild blackberry seed
keeping their secret
bitterns become
reeds
deep summer moon
so smooth
this skipping stone
controlled burns
in the pine forest
the fine line
between pique
and fury
old growth forest the feeling of being watched
a tree tagged
for clearing
summer’s end
my jar
of old keys
forgotten passwords
art class notes
the margin doodles
improve by the week
someone’s name in chalk at the end of summer
in the space
left by twilight
crickets