Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on Remembrance of 9/11

My Dear Friends:

On this 25th anniversary of 9/11, I would like to share a few poems reflecting on how we—Americans and non-Americans alike—remember this tragedy: not only through the lens of individual grief, but also against the heavy sociopolitical and geopolitical landscape shaped by the “War on Terror.”

false dawn

in a bead of grass dew —

September 11

another year

another “thoughts and prayers” —

9/11, grayer

And after ...

Facing south, a sea of white empty chairs, 2,753 in all, flooded the lawn of Bryant Park, Midtown Manhattan. One for each person. Not a breath of air. This burden of hushed silence...

blinds drawn

against the light of dawn

9/11, yet not

FYI: This is a sequel to my haibun below:

An Unofficial Story, A Haibun

for Oskar

ink-black:

smoke trails a life

from the north tower

Another sleepless night. Winter moonlight on the empty side of her bed. From the bedside table, she picks up A Place of Remembrance: The Official Photo Book of 9/11. She stares at the book for a moment. The tears roll down her face as she rips out some of the pages. With a sigh, she puts the torn-out pages in reverse order. When she flips through them, dozens of people are flying through the windows back into the building.

Editor's Choice Haibun, Cattails, May, 2015

Comment by cattails Haibun Editor Sonam Chhoki: The power of Chen-ou Liu’s haibun, "An Unofficial Story for Oskar" lies in its closing sentence: “When she flips through them, dozens of people are flying through the windows back into the building.” It is amazingly evocative image that has echoes of redemption and freedom from the tyranny of time.

Retracing and Reflecting

for those who have journeyed heavily across the landscape of the heart

the light of dawn

on September Twelfth

the time it takes 

for leaves zigzagging 

to the dust-choked ground

off the tower

one after many sped downward —

Muslim lives

and our world ripped by the day

before and forever

the footprint

of each tower that once stood

now surrounded

by four walls of water and grief

an Afghan woman's look

FYI: The dedication alludes to Melvina Young's remark:

Sadness takes its own time. It can't be hurried along. It can't be rushed. It "moves heavily across the landscape of the heart" until time and love can carry it further into the distance. 

A Room of My Own: Moonlit Kiss Haiku

our moonlit kiss ...

that first time years ago

and the last

Added:

sultry night

a couple knee-deep

in stars

Added:

jasmine breeze

tonight smells of her

gone for years

Added:

hopscotch squares

in pink blossom rain

For Sale tilted

Added:

moving day

the backyard swing 

slows to a stop

Butterfly Dream: Blue Bones Haiku by Susan Constable

English Original

knife cold swimming into blue bones

Modern Haiku, 44:1, 2013

Susan Constable

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

刀刃冰冷般地游入藍骨

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

刀刃冰冷般地游入蓝骨

Bio Sketch

Susan Constable (1943–2026) was an award-winning Canadian poet whose haiku and tanka appeared widely in global journals. She authored the acclaimed collection The Eternity of Waves and served as tanka editor for A Hundred Gourds (2012–2016). Constable also co-edited multiple anthologies and judged numerous international short-form poetry contests. 

One Man's Maple Moon: Cold Light Tanka by Sonam Chhoki

English Original

throbbing headache

blinds drawn against the dawn

I picture

in the rise and fall of notes

birds flitting in the cold light

A Hundred Gourds, 1:4,  September 2012 

Sonam Chhoki 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

劇烈的頭痛

並把窗簾緊閉以阻擋黎明

我彷彿看到

在聲調的起伏中

鳥兒飛掠冷光

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

剧烈的头痛

并把窗帘紧闭以阻挡黎明

我仿佛看到

在声调的起伏中

鸟儿飞掠冷光

Bio Sketch

Sonam Chhoki finds the Japanese short form poetry resonates with her Tibetan Buddhist upbringing.  She is inspired by her father, Sonam Gyamtsho, the architect of Bhutan's non-monastic modern education and by her mother, Chhoden Jangmu, who taught her: “Being a girl doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.” She is the principal editor, and co-editor of haibun for the United Haiku and Tanka Society journal, cattails.

Hot News: New Milestones, 6 M Pageviews & Adding 1 M Pageviews in 25 Days; Call for Submissions

(FYI: Pageviews, September 7: 81, 385)

My Dear Friends:

NeverEnding Story reached a new milestone mid-afternoon yesterday: 6 M pageviews—adding 1 million pageviews in 25 days.(FYI: On August 12, 2026, it reached 5 M pageviews; yesterday's pageviews: 70, 283).

I’m grateful to everyone who has shared this poetry journey. NeverEnding Story now seeks haiku and tanka submissions. The accepted haiku and tanka will be translated into Chinese and posted on NeverEnding Story and X. And you are welcome to follow me on X at @ericcoliu (5 following; 5,287 followers).

on the windowsill

two canaries singing

to each other

I tweet and retweet

NeverEnding Story  😋

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write.

—Anaïs Nin

HOWEVER 😏

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

—Thomas Mann

Try Again and Fail Better

My fingers strike the keyboard with rhythmic force; my eyes sting, rimmed with red, but something keeps carrying me forward like a surging current beneath the skin.

another

false dawn while robins call

I add three words

backspace them, write five more

then delete the whole line

(FYI: The title alludes to the famous quote about trying and failing:

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. 

-- Samuel Beckett, "Worstward Ho,"  a radical, minimalist prose text that strips language down to its barest essentials to explore decrepitude, memory, the limits of expression, and the stubborn human compulsion to keep going despite inevitable defeat).

And a gentle reminder:

The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it.

—Dylan Thomas

A poem after a poem after a poem is POWER!

—paraphrasing Margaret Atwood

Look forward to reading your poetry

Happy Writing

Chen-ou

Butterfly Dream: Snowplow's Light Haiku by Jacek Margolak

English Original

night deepens

the snowplow's light

fading in the drift

Jacek Margolak 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

夜色漸深

鏟雪車的燈光漸漸

消失在雪堆中

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

夜色渐深

铲雪车的灯光渐渐

消失在雪堆中

Bio Sketch

Born in Rzeszów, Jacek Margolak now lives in Kielce, Poland. A printing technologist by profession, he has spent nearly twenty years writing Japanese short-form poetry, sometimes blending haiku with prose. His work appears in leading international journals and has received awards in Polish and Japanese competitions. 

Butterfly Dream: Grandfather's Vine Haiku by Denis M. Garrison

English Original

bits of trellis

deep within its coils —

grandfather's vine

Eight Shades of Blue, 2007

Denis M. Garrison

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

棚架的碎片

深深嵌入藤蔓的蜷曲之中 —

祖父的藤蔓

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

棚架的碎片

深深嵌入藤蔓的蜷曲之中 —

祖父的藤蔓

Bio Sketch

Denis M. Garrison was born in Iowa, USA, and his childhood was spent in Japan, youth in Europe, Africa and western Pacific. His poetry’s widely published. Garrison’s print collections include First Winter Rain,Eight Shades of Blue, Hidden River, Sailor in the Rain and Other Poems, and Fire Blossoms.

A Room of My Own: Sweat-and-Tears Life Tanka

another

mid-sentence silence

this muggy noon

our thoughts of returning

to sweat-and-tears yet sure life

Added:

cubicle glass

the stare of my eyes

the stare of my eyes

FYI: This could be read as a sequel to my haiku below:

a fly battering

at my cubicle window

this 9-to-5 job

Haiku in Action, Weekly Prompt:"Primordial Fears," July 2nd-6th  2025

Added:

in giant letters

think outside the box

on the wall

of this newbie's cubicle 

on my wall, actions speak louder

Added:

After three years of walking my boss's bulldog, I imagine all I can imagine and then keep on going.

corner glass cubicle

new self growing larger

with afternoon light

Butterfly Dream: Held Breath Haiku by Sonam Chhoki

English Original

first rain releasing held breath of summer

tinywords, 13:3, 2013

Sonam Chhoki 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

第一場雨釋放夏日屏息的呼吸

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

第一场雨释放夏日屏息的呼吸

Bio Sketch

Sonam Chhoki finds the Japanese short form poetry resonates with her Tibetan Buddhist upbringing.  She is inspired by her father, Sonam Gyamtsho, the architect of Bhutan's non-monastic modern education and by her mother, Chhoden Jangmu, who taught her: “Being a girl doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.” She is the principal editor, and co-editor of haibun for the United Haiku and Tanka Society journal, cattails.

Poetic Musings: Prayer Plant Haiku by Barbara Sabol

another shooting

leaves of my prayer plant

unfurl

Modern Haiku, 53:1, Winter/Spring  2022

Barbara Sabol

Commentary: By juxtaposing human tragedy with the silent, automatic rhythms of nature, this sociopolitically conscious haiku creates a powerful tension.

The plant’s name in L2 evokes the phrase “thoughts and prayers,” often criticized as an empty, passive response to gun violence. The irony of the plant’s “unfurling” in L3 is deepened through its biological blindness.

At night, the prayer plant folds its leaves upward like hands in prayer; during the day, it unfurls them. By showing the plant unfurling after a shooting in L1, the haiku suggests several possibilities: the absence of genuine, action-oriented prayer; the reopening of a wound; or nature simply moving on, indifferent to human trauma.

The plant acts out of pure instinct — nyctinasty — highlighting the cold contrast between a predictable natural world and a chaotic human one. This irony resonates especially in the United States, a country with more guns than people, where mass shootings have become part of the daily landscape.

Hot News: New Milestone, Highest Monthly Pageviews, "1,489, 445" and Call for Submissions

My Dear Friends:

NeverEnding Story reached a new milestone yesterday at midnight: the HIGEST monthly pageviews: 1,489, 445 (FYI: On August 12, 2026, it reached 5 M pageviews and added 1 M Pageviews in 21 days; Yesterday's pageviews: 43,338)

I’m grateful to everyone who has shared this poetry journey. NeverEnding Story now seeks haiku and tanka submissions. The accepted haiku and tanka will be translated into Chinese and posted on NeverEnding Story and X. And you are welcome to follow me on X at @ericcoliu (5 following, 5,280 followers).

on the windowsill

two canaries singing

to each other

I tweet and retweet

NeverEnding Story  😋

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. —Thomas Mann

a transient glow

before another sunrise

the cursor blinking

while I'm alone with a mind—

all its windows closed

FYI: Ls 1&2 refer to a "false dawn," a transient light that precedes the rising of the sun by about an hour.

My fingers click-clacking — hail against the window.

what's left unsaid

between words and lines ...

alone at false dawn

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t QUIT. 😎 —Richard Bach

robins chirp

to a faint glow in the sky —

carving out

showy verbs and fatty nouns

I hold the poem's bare bones

A poem after a poem after a poem is POWER!

― paraphrasing Margaret Atwood, "Spelling"

Look forward to reading your poetry

Happy Writing

Chen-ou

One Man's Maple Moon: Golden Ripples Tanka by Brian Zimmer

English Original

casting his line

into the golden ripples

of the setting sun

he catches nothing today

but a basket full of peace

Gusts, 19, Spring/Summer 2014

Brian Zimmer

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

將魚線拋入

一波波金色漣漪

的夕陽中

他今天一無所獲

卻滿載著寧靜

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

将鱼线抛入

一波波金色涟漪

的夕阳中

他今天一无所获

却满载着宁静

Bio Sketch

Brian Zimmer was an American poet who wrote from the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri. Published across a variety of international print and online journals, his work was heavily inspired by classical Japanese forms, particularly the poetic-diary (utanikki) and the free-form poetic essay (zuihitsu).

To the Lighthouse: The Art of the One-Liner, Mastering the "Enjambed Double-Take"

In traditional multi-line poetry, enjambment occurs when a phrase runs over a line break without punctuation, pulling the reader forward before the thought is complete. But how does this work in a single-line haiku, where there is no physical line break?

Instead of relying on layout, poets can create enjambment through grammar and semantics.

A double-take occurs when a reader initially parses a word or phrase one way, only to discover a moment later that it belongs to—and transforms—the next part of the image. The mind is forced to step back, take a second look, and reread the line with a newly configured understanding.

Here are two examples of how haiku poets can use this sophisticated technique.

Example 1: The Seamless Pivot

an ocean wave the wind through the grain

Stepping Stones: Haiku & Tanka Selected and New, 2007

Martin Lucas

The First Take

Reading from left to right, the mind naturally groups the opening words as “an ocean wave.” An immediate image appears: water breaking on a shore.

The Enjambment

The poem then moves seamlessly into “wave the wind.” For an instant, the mind may try to interpret wave as a verb—as though the ocean itself were waving toward the wind.

The Double-Take

Then comes the final word: “grain.”

An ocean does not have grain.

At that moment, the syntax and imagery reorganize themselves. The reader realizes that “the wind through the grain” forms a separate visual field: a field of wheat or grass moving in the wind.

Because there is no punctuation to serve as a stop sign, the space between wave and the wind becomes a pivot point. The mind must unconsciously remap the grammatical structure, shifting almost instantaneously from a seascape to a field: 

an ocean wave the wind [cut] through the grain

The effect is subtle but powerful: the poem does not tell us to change our interpretation. It makes us discover that we have been reading it incorrectly.

Example 2: The Political and Emotional Snap

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCVII: "Gazan girl's red balloon"

to Banksy

fireballs bursting into the dark a Gazan girl's red balloon

Chen-ou Liu

The Setup

The dedication “to Banksy” acts as a joshi (prefatory note). It immediately activates the reader's memory of Banksy's iconic Girl with Balloon, an image associated with childhood, innocence, hope, and loss.

By invoking and subverting that familiar symbol, the haiku connects a distant geopolitical tragedy to an image the reader may already carry emotionally.

The First Pass

As the eye moves across the line, it encounters:

“fireballs bursting into the dark…”

The words naturally form a coherent image. The mind assumes that the fireballs are what is moving or exploding into the darkness.

Then the line continues.

The Snap-Back

“…a Gazan girl's red balloon.”

The reader suddenly has to reconsider the grammar.

The phrase “into the dark” can also attach to the balloon.

The mind performs its double-take: the darkness is no longer merely the backdrop against which fireballs explode. It becomes the destination of the girl's red balloon:

fireballs bursting [cut] into the dark a Gazan girl's red balloon

The Dual Meaning

This grammatical ambiguity forces the reader to hold two images simultaneously:

The violence: Fireballs burst across a dark sky.

The loss: Amid the chaos, a child's red balloon slips away and drifts upward into the darkness.

The phrase “into the dark” therefore acquires a haunting, elegiac resonance. The balloon is no longer simply a toy. It can suggest a life, a soul, childhood innocence, or the last fragile remnant of hope ascending into an unknowable void.

The poem's meaning changes during the act of reading.

That is the crucial feature of the enjambed double-take: the reader does not merely encounter two interpretations. The first interpretation actively creates the conditions for the second.

Why It Works

The enjambed double-take, closely related to what literary theory might describe as a syntactic pivot or, in some contexts, an apokoinu, is a powerful way of making the reader participate in the construction of meaning.

Punctuation normally tells us where one grammatical unit ends and another begins. Remove that punctuation, and the reader has to supply the boundaries.

The poet can exploit that uncertainty.

A word initially appears to belong to one phrase, only to reveal itself as belonging to another. The reader experiences a tiny moment of disorientation, followed by recognition. The poem seems to change shape—not on the page, but inside the reader's mind.

That moment of correction can produce the sensation of a sudden realization, a sharp intake of breath, or an abrupt emotional shift.

In the best examples, the double-take is not merely a clever grammatical trick. The moment of rereading becomes part of the poem's meaning.

The reader is made to experience the poem's uncertainty, reversal, or shock rather than simply being told about it.

A Room of My Own: Stonehenge Tanka

a full moon

between the sarsen stones 

of Stonehenge

one silhouette ghosting

across the gravel path

Added:

a thrum of rain

on the old van skylight 

in a parking lot

I murmur, the life I dreamed

yet the life I'm living

Added:

flash after flash

of midnight lightning

my dream and I

rippling

in the vodka glass

Added:

words are only air

dissolving as they are said ...

yet my chest tightens

as if I’ve swallowed a rock

lodged beneath my breath

Added:

belief is a bridge

built across surging waters...

yet my shaking hands

cannot find the wooden rail

to the altar in dim light

Added:

emigration eve

the last notes

of Home Sweet Home

fading once more

into this moonless stillness

Butterfly Dream: Blackbird's Song Haiku by Fatma Zohra Habis

English Original 

spring drizzle

my friend returns 

in blackbird’s song 

EJCA Spring Haiku Anthology, 2026

Fatma Zohra Habis

 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

春雨綿綿

在黑鳥的歌聲中

我的朋友歸來

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

春雨绵绵

在黑鸟的歌声中

我的朋友归来

 

Bio Sketch

Fatma Zohra Habis lives in Algeria. She loves poetry and Japanese culture. Her specialty is physics. Her haiku and tanka have been published in journals around the world, such as Enchanted Garden, The Sacred Dragonfly, The Leaf Journal, and haikuKatha.