girls in bikinis
the man I'm with
trying
not to look
- Brenda Gannam
While
the guests order,
the
table cloth hides his hands-
counting
his money
- Clement Hoyt
red light
I study the face
of my tailgater
- Hilary Tann
eye exam
i stop trying
so hard
- Hilary Tann
A selection of classic senryu from old time senryu anthologies in Japan:
when a man
comes asking for a loan
how honest he looks!
someone at the door:
the scolding session
stops - for awhile
when he finally
falls in love with his wife
the end is near
she's been let go
yet in her mother's words
"she's left him"
"Don't let this worry you"
he says, then tells you something
that has to worry you
his wife knows
how to scare a collector:
"He's down with typhoid"
the weapon he uses
for threatening his mother:
a distant land
now that he has a child
he knows all the local dogs
by name
a son kicked out-
several houses down the street
a wife is divorced
the whole town
knows of it, except
the husband
"Bad for my health"-
when you begin to feel so
you've begun to age
the wife-
so much harder to handle
than the mother
having lash out
too much at his wife
he's cooking the rice
since their baby was born
telling him what to do
has become her habit
suckling the baby
in bed, she shakes her head
at her husband
convenient
and inconvenient-
having a wife
no nagging on the day
her husband was a winner-
now there's a woman!
"Just a father-in-law
whose days are numbered"
says the matchmaker
professional smile
of the mortician's wife:
a look of grief
to put it briefly
courting is tantamount
to begging
"older daughter first"
the parents kept saying, until
the younger eloped
the love letter
from the man she doesn't care for
she shows it to mother
first eye to eye
then hand to hand
and mouth to mouth
many excuses
he has used before - his wife
remembers them all
her husband's
becoming a little too kind
weighs on her mind
united at last
in death, a pair
of happy faces
