my kid
carrying it
home,
her lopsided
heart
Sanford Goldstein
Commentary: Sanford's provocative minimalist tanka gives the reader a "visually and emotionally concrete" description of a child’s artwork,'lopsided" "heart," one that can be transmuted into a metaphor for the whole human condition— which of us does not carry a “lopsided heart”?
Here are another two minimalist tanka about the parent/child relationship in the collection:
ReplyDeletemy son heaps
bowl on bowl
with rice,
head down
he devours the world
how short
my son’s
miss you,
at the close of
today’s letter
Any parent can identify with these two brief, simple poems, which together poignantly express the perennial tension between wanting to send our children forth to “devour the world” and wanting to hold them close.
-- excerpted from "A Poet's Roving Thoughts: Review of This Short Life: Minimalist Tanka" by Jenny Ward Angyal