The Abstractaphy Initiative

By Richard Grahn

By Kah Ho (Image)
and Gary LeBel (Text)

Artwork: Katrin Davis
Tanka: Tish Davis

By: Anna Cates, Wilmington, Ohio
and Steve Van Allen, Cincinnati, Ohio

even on gray days
the sun fights to silver sheen
beyond cloud cover

We held the door for a lady, dragging two wheeled suitcases, balancing a shopping bag on one. Her long black coat was nice, years ago. She parked her bags inside the door and shuffled to the counter.  “I have 4 dollars,” dragging wrinkled ones from a pocket.

“Keep your money; I’ll cover it,” said the manager.

We took our order and began eating. When the manager swung by our booth, we thanked her.

“I’m from Louisiana.  I was homeless, and an addict.  I know,” she said.

The lady talked to her meal as she ate, and when she was through, wheeled all her worldly goods out the door.

first snow
disappearing with her
silent dreams

By Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, NC, USA

forests
burning far away
I bow
to the wood thrush
singing orisons unseen

I follow a path along the brook, through mountain laurel and rhododendron. The stone hut stands half-hidden among the trees, its roof green with moss. Thick, curved walls enclose an oval of coolness in the summer heat. Elliptical windows admit a little light.  As my eyes adjust, I notice a message chalked on the sloping ceiling:

maybe 
the world isn’t dying . . . 
maybe 
she’s heavy 
with child

*Note: The second tanka is a ‘found poem.’
~From my book Earthbound: Tanka-Prose & Haibun, 2022

By Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, NC, USA

I used to think
it would last forever—
the swallows
coming home each year,
the green hills blossoming

on my path
one pure white feather
I carry with me
news of a dying planet,
a widening war

the bridge
across the creek—
I cannot see
the barred owl 
calling from the other side

a water strider
dimples the surface,
an otter 
rises and vanishes . . .
the stream flows on

spring beauties bloom
among tiny handprints
in the mud
I kneel on the bank
of the passing moment

~First published as the Afterword to A Worn Chest by Joy McCall & Tom Clausen, 2022

  Reprinted in my book The Wind Harp: Tanka Pentads, 2023

By Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, NC, USA

Hokusai painted them, Issa wrote about them, and Mao did his best to exterminate them. 

It’s true that Eurasian tree sparrows gorge themselves on spilled grain.  So, during the Great Leap Forward, the Four Pests Campaign encouraged schoolchildren to kill as many sparrows as they could, tearing up nests and smashing eggs. People beat pots and gongs to drive them from their roosts until the birds dropped from exhaustion.  A billion sparrows died. With few birds left to eat them, hungry locusts swarmed through grain fields and rice paddies. Upwards of forty million people starved. 

gazing 
into Pandora’s box—
nothing left
but a tattered feather
and a mirror full of cracks

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign

By Carissa Coane
California, United States of America

By Theresa Cancro
Wilmington, Delaware, USA

murky lake . . .
long tears cloud
the buffalo’s eye