English Original
petal after petal
red on red
how many
layers of makeup
to look undead
Tanka Society of America's Special Feature: Work, April 5, 2023
Lorelyn De la Cruz Arevalo
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
一片花瓣又一片花瓣
紅上紅
敷用多少層
的化妝品
看起來才像不死
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
一片花瓣又一片花瓣
红上红
敷用多少层
的化妆品
看起来才像不死
Bio Sketch
Lorelyn De la Cruz Arevalo is a self-published Filipino author of Twin deLights: Haikuna Matata and Hainaku! It's Pundemic! I am Balot. Acovida dito. Her poetry has been published in anthologies and journals like The Haiku Foundation, Presence, Mainichi, ESUJ-H, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
Unexpected yet thematically significant and visually and emotionally sarcastic L5 (part of this rhetorical question in Ls 3-5) sharpens the contrasts (natural vs man-made, intrinsic vs socioculturally constructed/gendered, ...) between Ls 1&2 and Ls 3&4.
ReplyDeleteAnd the use of syntactic parallelism in Ls 1&2 also highlights the contrasts, adding visual and emotional significance to the tanka.
It might be interesting to do a thematic comparison reading of the following tanka:
a young thing
at the cosmetics counter
gives me advice ...
I need cream for my wrinkles
she needs age for her wisdom
The Right Touch of Sun: TSA Anthology, 2017
Keitha Keyes