English Original
I sit unmasked
next to a masked man ...
having a crush
on my lipstick
he asks my number
Failed Haiku, 6: 65, May 2021
Lisbeth Ho
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
未戴口罩我坐在
一個戴口罩男人的旁邊 ...
Translation result
他暗戀
我的口紅
並詢問我的電話號碼
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
未戴口罩我坐在
一个戴口罩男人的旁边 ...
他暗恋
我的口红
并询问我的电话号码
Bio Sketch
Lisbeth Ho, whose complete name is Elisabeth Holidaya, is a housewife. She currently resides in Salatiga, Indonesia. She loves reading and writing tanka, haiku, free verse poetry, and contemplative work. Her writings have appeared in various print and online journals and books. She also served as an editor of Antologi Tanka Indonesia 2019, the first tanka anthology in Indonesia.
This "character tanka" is about the "Crush [on a woman's lipsticks] in the Time of Covid" (paraphrasing Gabriel García Márquez), and its L5 sparks the reader's emotions and imagination: what's this masked man going to do with the speaker's phone number if he really has a crush merely on her lipsticks)
ReplyDeleteAnd it might be interesting to do a comparative reading of my covid/mask tanka below, which could be read as a sequel to Lisbeth's:
strangers when we met
strangers again by morning --
but for one night
you touched me
behind my mask
Cattails, April, 2021
For more about character tanka, see "To the Lighthouse: Character/Persona Tanka," accessed at https://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2022/09/to-lighthouse-characterpersona-tanka.html