A Room of My Own: Aftermath Tanka

the aftermath

our first-and-last therapy:

she uncorked a drain

at the bottom of my heart

and let each secret spill out

FYI: This character tanka could be read as a sequel to the following:

I close my eyes

and slip into childhood ...

these ghostly thoughts

jostling one another

on the therapyist's couch

Shot Glass Journal, 41, 2023

Chen-ou Liu

And for more about character tanka, see To the Lighthouse: Character/Persona Tanka

Added:

my mother

loves her husband, my stepfather

more than me ...

in the dark, this nine-year-old

folds her abuse into silence

FYI: This tanka was inspired by Alice Munro’s daughter' sexual abuse story. 

Toronto Star, July 10: How did what happened to Alice Munro’s daughter stay quiet so long? Start with our uniquely Canadian devotion to silence

Andrea Skinner’s memoir amounts to a national horror story, a specifically Canadian conspiracy of silence, and evidence of a national pathology: It reveals so much of our desire not to tell stories.

Added:

eulogy to her father

the weight of what is left

unspoken

Added: Game Show, 2024, LX

written in response to The New Yorker's July 13 remark: an indelible portrait of our era of political crisis and conflict

with his fist raised

flanked by a giant flag 

bloodied and defiant

Donald Trump mouths to the crowd, fight...

the night gets louder and darker 

FYI: The New Yorker, July 14: A Nation Inflamed

After the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, who can heal a country so threatened by menace, violence, and division?

Robert F. Kennedy, spoke to the Cleveland City Club about the “mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.”

Violence, whether it is carried out by one man or a gang, degrades an entire nation

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire. . . . Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

One Man's Maple Moon: One Wing Tanka by Lorraine Pester

English Original

my friend's trying

to fly with one wing:

pushing

at the walker, his arm

in a sling... and a broken hip

Lorraine Pester

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

我的朋友在嘗試

用一隻翅膀飛行：

他用一隻手

推動助行器, 另一隻手臂

在吊帶裡面 ... 和骨折的臀部

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

我的朋友在尝试

用一只翅膀飞行：

他用一只手

推动助行器, 另一只手臂

在吊带里面 ... 和骨折的臀部

Bio Sketch

Being curious and staying open to possibility is Lorraine Pester’s way of keeping her haikai fresh. She shies from no topic that presents itself. Her deliberate interactions with birds while dog walking is a frequent theme. She lives with her husband and  Abbey schnauzer in south Texas. 

To the Lighthouse: Character/Persona Tanka

Character tanka, also known as persona tanka, are a genre where the poets take on the roles of other people. They are written in first-person or third-person accounts of a character's behaviour  towards/response to a certain life situation or of thoughts/reflections. A successful character tanka depends on selecting an interesting or a unique persona (mask in Greek) whose view of life or perception of reality is conveyed through an effective juxtaposition of his/her thought and action.

The following is a set of character tanka for your reading pleasure:

My heart: 

black linen 

hung at night 

in the shadow 

of a crow. 

Modern English Tanka, 1:1, Autumn 2006 

M. Kei

locked windows

and a dead bolt

used to comfort her;

tonight on the 9th floor

she plays some Bill Evans 

A Hundred Gourds, 1:1, December 2011

Marian Olson

fresh leaves

of a large elm tree

crumpled by wind

I am detested because

I wish to live passionately

Breasts of Snow, 2004

Fumiko Nakajo

in my closet

clothes for all occasions

yet the years

it took to be comfortable

in my own skin

The Tang of Nasturtiums, 2012

Carole MacRury

To conclude today's post, share with you three of my character tanka with different personalities: one timid, another arrogantly dreamy, and the last racist.

I've the right

to swing my fist, but this freedom

stops at the tip

of my love rival's nose ...

I shout before the mirror

alone 

by the penthouse window

my friend repeats 

this is America

why settle for pretty good? 

a policeman

throws a black woman

into the mud

shouting, she held a knife!

(found only in his mind)

Chen-ou

Added: reading between the lives and writing between the lines, XXVII

God, my country

just hard work, no handouts ...

in the spotlight

the mayor punctuates his words

with a gavel-on-the-desk gesture

Added:

this photo of me

with arms and legs wide open

and a face

turned into a Munchian scream ...

now a gray-haired man of few words

Added:

beer foam

spilling over his hand

in soft light

he sweet-talks

at his blind date

Added:

alone, browsing

row upon row of strollers ...

which type

is the right one even if

I don't have Mr. Perfect

Added:

screams mixed with the sound

of a blood-stained bottle of wine

swept across asphalt ...

a man stabbed to death in swarming

by eight teenage girls 

FYI:Swarming/swarm attack is a military-style assault in which a group of people all attack a single individual at once. And for more details about this senseless tragic death, see  CBC News, Dec. 21: Teen girls charged with murder in Toronto 'swarming' death were after liquor bottle: witness