Hot News:One Man's Maple Moon Volume One 2014

A tanka is snowflakes drifting through the ink dark moon. Chen-ou Liu

Dear Contributors and Readers:

I am pleased to announce that One Man's Maple Moon: 66 Selected English-Chinese Bilingual Tanka, Volume One 2014 is now available online for your reading pleasure.  (Note: I'd revised some of Chinese translations. For those whose tanka are included in the anthology, each  will receive a copy of its e-book edition within three days)

This book is dedicated to Li Bai(701 -- 762), also known as Li Po

A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;

I drink alone, for no friend is near.

Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,

For he, with my shadow, will make three men.

First Stanza of "Drinking Alone by Moonlight"

nine autumns past

first trip to my homeland…

now in Taipei

drinking alone in moonlight

I still long for Taipei

First Prize Co-winner, 2012 International Tanka Competition

Chen-ou Liu

Please post to all appropriate venues. Your time and help would be greatly appreciated. And many thanks for your continued support of my project.

Look forward to reading your tanka (see "One Man's Maple Moon, Volume Two: Call for Tanka Submissions" Deadline: December 1, 2014)

Chen-ou

Selected Tanka: 

a large bruise

deep inside the mango

unexpected

the way you turned away

when I needed you most

Susan Constable

no abacus
for the task
ahead
where the mists part
I begin counting stars

Brian Zimmer

as always,

the echoless flight

of owls...

slicing what’s left

of sanity

Robert D. Wilson

rip-tide --

slowly I return

an occupied shell

to the surging sea

between us

Beverley George

silence

seeks the center

of every tree and rock,

that thing we hold closest --

the end of songs

Michael McClintock

the intense white

of chrysanthemums

while making love

i become

a thousand petals

Pamela A. Babusci

he tells me

why the character for "spring"

is upside down

still the snowflakes

drift between us

Christina Nguyen

I rest my paddle

let the canoe drift awhile

rocks     trees     sky

the lake and I

are an empty mirror

Irene Golas

braiding

her sister’s hair

after the rape

so many

long dark strands

Jenny Ward Angyal

my ex-husband

calls his new child the name

we had chosen

for our son,whose heart

stopped in my womb

Amelia Fielden

now Muslims

and immigrants but

-- the same white faces

-- the same white words

they used to point at me

M. Kei

The staccato of fireworks

from the neighbor's field

      we sit in coolness

             emerging stars punctuate

             the words we haven't said

Carol Purington

her face blurs

into a dozen others ...

I tighten my grip

around all that remains

of what was

S.M. Abeles

Yesterday, I thought

my new poem was brilliant

today, it seems confused—

the morning sun in a haze

over the marsh reeds

George Swede