Thursday, February 27, 2025

A Room of My Own: Penetrating Silence Tanka

Yellowing Memory, I:

Father's long stare
and penetrating silence
before he walks away ...
under piles of my textbooks
a new copy of Playboy


FYI: Yellowing Memory is my new writing project, and its first entry is stirred by and written in response to Playboy Enterprises's Jan. 23 announcement: "The reimagined PLAYBOY magazine will arrive on Barnes & Noble newsstands nationwide on February 10, 2025. "

The new issue features: Cover Model Lori Harvey, Playboy interview with comedian and actress Nikki Glaser, and the Playmate of the Year.

And this tanka could be read as a sequel to my tanka below:

at high noon I see
a woman pulling down
her windblown white dress ...
Marilyn Monroe's smile
held my young self each night



Added: On the Brink of Trumperica, XVII
written in response to the heated exchange between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Convicted Felon Donald Trump and his lackey J.D. Vance at the White House.

the barrage 
of blaring lies and shit-words
from his meaty mouth ...
between Trump's pauses 
Vance's thunderous echo-fart


FYI: The noun shit-word has been obsolete since its recorded usage only in  the Middle English period (1150—1500) (shit-word entry, Oxford English Dictionary). However, during today's "meeting" at the White House, the Convicted Felon and his lackey "Make Shit-Word Great Again." 


Added: On the Brink of Trumperica, XVIII

white house blowout...
this man-child's meaty smile
in the window
as southern magnolias explode
with a mob of ravens

 
FYI: Among the [symbolically rich] trees on the White House Grounds, the oldest ones, southern magnolias, were planted by Andrew Jackson in 1829.

And PopMatters, Feb.9, 2017: The Spoiled Little Man-Child They Made King: Celebrity, Richard II, and Donald Trump.

Did Shakespeare predict Donald Trump? No. He just wrote a play about a thin-skinned, petty, self-aggrandising narcissist whose poor leadership drove an empire to ruin. 


Added: Yellowing Memory, II:

the ringing
of faraway church bells ...
my ex's smile
lingers in my mind
a shadow I can't escape


Added:

to stay or to go?
I walk through the snowstorm
looking for a sign
in the midnight sky, and yet
there is none, just snowflakes


Added:

a tapestry
of summer clouds
the rocking chair
covered in dust
on grandma’s porch

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