by Mimi White

when I saw the boat
tipped on its side
a ghost entered our story
it did not matter
that the tide would right it

          Tanka (from a series) 1/12/14

when lilacs bloom
my heart will break open
my father’s dead face
buried in every blossom
from branch to branch he went

          Tanka (from a series) 5/6/14

I had not seen
the white–tailed deer until
they ran high stepping
through the sweet new grasses
why just a glimpse, I cried out

          Tanka (from a series) 5/8/14

an oriole in the orchard
Mother’s illness comes unbidden
thirty years and more
she races back
breathless, in a hurry, leaving

          Tanka (from a series) 5/22/14

when I resist
Autumn’s fierce clarity
a sparrow pecks in the dirt
reminding me to feed
this hunger I have for less

          Tanka (from a series) 5/27/14

how many years
can we live on an island
carry what we need
in a small tin boat
leave everything else behind

          Tanka (from a series) 5/30/14

Mimi White is collaborating with Australian artists Kerryn Forster and Jessie Stanley, each of them exploring the word “contain.” These tankas were written in response to that project.

Mimi White is collaborating with Australian artists Kerryn Forster and Jessie Stanley, each of them exploring the word “contain.” These tankas were written in response to that project.

by Rachel F. Seidman

We know nothing
about currents of wind or water.
We have only hope and intuition.
And a slightly risky faith
that our innocence and good intentions
on a celebratory night
mean no disaster
should result.

Standing there in the darkness
on the edge of land abutting the sea.
But it’s just a bay
not so far from other people’s houses,
lawns and meadows
of summer–dry goldenrod.

We hold aloft a rice paper balloon,
light a match
to the cardboard square suspended
at its base.
Like magic, like a prayer,
like the directions predict
the crinkling white boat
fills with air,
rises.

The little boys shriek
and adults gasp
as the dream of fire and air and light
floats first
too close too close
to the lone tree
but suddenly
swoops and dips below
the branches and then

up and out and beyond
safely over the water
as if guided by more than our breath–holding wishes.

Flying over the ink blue sea
the orange white sketch of a moon
sways and silently skims the air
higher and farther and faster than we imagined
but exactly as we hoped.

by Adam Scheffler

You are dead, Lewis Carroll, the young man said
And yet your hands are so strong
You are juggling two chairs, a saw, and your head
How do you get on?

In my life, chuckled sadly the poet
I shook when I tucked in a sheet
I screamed when I walked in a field of roses
And couldn’t make out my feet.

You are dead, said the boy, beg your pardon,
But you cure modern diseases
And you twist–tie stars to posts in your garden
Where they float and shine in the breezes.

Well in my life, the photographer said
From the crack in the tree there came voices
Which said one life’s as good as another
So don’t make any choices.

You are dead, said the boy Please excuse me
But you pop grapes into wines
And sleep high up in a spiral tree
Smiling and dressed to the nines.

You are right, the corpse said, I indulge
Far too much for my age
But when I grew up in the Battle of the Bulge
I played the Marseillaise on my cage.

You are so dead, said the baby, please tell me
How to live a real life
Should I work hard at learning to spell
Should I think of taking a wife?

Oh to be living, smiled the kind homme.
You’ll figure it out I guess.
Now leave me it’s time for my lesson in drums
And you make me a little depressed.

by Adam Scheffler

A man cobbles together his life together
as best he can, skimming
these shark–abandoned waves

but must so many pastimes lead
back to head–butting the walls of the
padded self ?

In the next version, you’ll play a videogame
where you’ll play yourself playing yourself

And I hate how touching, we stop feeling the other
person’s hand so soon, our bodies assuming
there’s nothing there unless it’s new

The way a man shoves another dorito into his craw

Or a priest rips another black note from his
reptilian brain and slips it into the church’s
suggestion box.

Once I too prayed to god, projected
my best self upwards and spread
it in the finest mirror–net over the nightsky,
looking back down on myself in bed.

Sometimes I still confuse women with goddesses,
or a dead sea–horse floating upside down
with the treble clef of my own happiness

But sometimes I better myself
by noticing things around me:

Look. Tonight’s ambulance spreads dancing jewels.

And across the park, circling the fountain,
two skateboarders have found rich
girlfriends and are balancing them in the air.