manmade objects

Red Airplane

/ Melissa Allen / 20 Comments

He’s not easy to shop for. He never wants anything. Or rather, everything he wants he has. When he does feel a need for some consumer product — some electronic components from Radio Shack, say, or a new mechanical pencil — he takes his own money and bikes to the store and buys it. Even his computer he saved up for on his own: didn’t spend any of his allowance or Christmas or birthday money for five years.

What do you do with a kid like that? I try to imagine what he might want if money were no object. And then wish that it weren’t.

.Red airplane flying over mountains and through clouds

for b.a.o. born 9/6/1994

We interrupt this broadcast…

/ Melissa Allen / 4 Comments

… for some brief self-promotion. You can do like I always do and just hit mute while the commercial is running if you want, though. I won’t be offended.

Okay: Tomorrow (July 16) is the last day to get your registration in to Haiku North America in order to be eligible for reduced rate registration. (You can still register after this, it will just cost a little more.) HNA is a huge haiku bash that will be happening in Seattle from August 3rd to 7th. All kinds of fun things will be happening there, as you can see from this schedule.

One of the fun things is a panel discussion on haiku blogging, which will be conducted by Fay Aoyagi (Blue Willow Haiku World), Gene Myers (genemyers.com), Don Wentworth (Issa’s Untidy Hut), and me. What are we going to say? You know, I don’t have the faintest idea. It’s a surprise. You’ll have to show up to find out. (Evil laugh.)

I will say that those other three people are kind of, like, blogger superheroes. If you’ve spent any time around here at all you’ve heard me quote Fay and Don over and over again. I am not quite sure what the world of haiku blogging would be like without them but I don’t want to find out. And although Gene’s blog focuses less exclusively on haiku and thus has gotten less air time here, it is also fascinating and extremely rewarding. So I’m very flattered to be included in their company.

I hope to see a bunch of you there. I think what I’m most looking forward to about this conference is being able to meet people in the flesh who have previously been only disembodied names. Make sure to say hi if you see me, if I don’t say it first.

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One more quick public service announcement: Tomorrow is also the last day to get your haiku/tanka/haiga about mushrooms to me if you want them included in my super-mega mushroom blowout post next week. Saturday midnight. Don’t forget.

Babushkas

/ Melissa Allen / 4 Comments


Broom..

Old women everywhere, like crones out of fairy tales, sweep dirt from and onto the streets with bundles of twigs. I think about stopping one of them to ask for three wishes. But they stare at me suspiciously from under their kerchiefs and mutter when they hear me speak. “She doesn’t even know Russian. Her coat isn’t warm enough. What is going to become of all of us?” All I really want, I think, is one of those brooms.

new moon
the once upon a time
of my life

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.Contemporary Haibun Online 7:2, July 2011

illustration: Rick Daddario, 19 Planets

Tendrils of Ivy (Yotsumono)

/ Melissa Allen / 6 Comments

tendrils of ivy
I think I’ll paint
my mailbox blue

she moves the snake away
from the garden hose

an uninvited guest
is knocking
at the door

one last question
before the storm begins

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verse credits: willie, melissa, willie, melissa


Willie Sorlien suggested that he and I write some renku together and I said okay, even though I was a little scared because Willie has done way, way, WAY more renku than I have and has even won prizes and stuff (the triparshva linked to here, of which he was sabaki, won the 2010 Journal of Renga and Renku Renku Contest). But he was very kind and picked out a nice short form called the yotsumono that was invented by the great John Carley as a renku exercise. Believe me, I need plenty of exercise.

We wrote four of these. (The others will be showing up soon.) I did notice my linking-and-shifting muscles limbering up after a while. I think.

Here’s a couple more yotsumono written by John Carley, Lorin Ford, and John Merryfield, where you can watch their progress in the comments and read a way more intelligent discussion of the form than I could provide at this point.

The Rainbow Cafe

/ Melissa Allen / 5 Comments

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We like to visit a co-op cafe in our Moscow neighborhood, one of the new private enterprises that Gorbachev has encouraged; they have more and better food than most of the state restaurants, and are never “Closed for Repairs” when the employees feel like taking a day off, never display “No Vacancy” signs when the place is empty. The staff are solicitous and polite, and apologetic if something on the menu doesn’t happen to be available, instead of incredulous that you might ever have expected it would be.

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winter flea market —
a wind-up doll
that’s already broken

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It drives the staff crazy if I order for myself instead of letting my boyfriend do it for me. For this reason, I make a point of always ordering for myself, and always before he does. They stare ferociously at him while I speak, and only after he gives a slight nod do they write down my order. Even after I’ve been doing this for months, they don’t yield on their principles. No one there ever asks me what I want.

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I eat my chicken Kiev watching them as they bustle from table to table with worried lines in their foreheads, as if they’re calculating profit margins in their heads. Butter drips down my chin. My boyfriend reaches over and wipes it off with a napkin.

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meteor shower
the wishes I make
in another language

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.— Haibun Today 5:2, June 2011

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