In This Issue: 21.3

Haiga by Annette Makino
Quick Links: Articles & Book Reviews • Haibun • Tanka Prose • Haiga • From the cho Team
Announcement
Editorial Team Updates & 2026 Guest Editors
Articles & Book Reviews
Featured Writer: Jenny Ward Angyal
Article: Two Favorite Haibun: The Existential Shrug—Allusion, Metaphor, and Irony in Contemporary Haibun
By Billie Dee
Article: The Art of Haibun Prose, Part 1: Approaching the Wild Haibun
By Lew Watts
Book Review: Slow Boat to Samoa by Matthew Caretti
Reviewed by Rich Youmans
Book Review: Clothes to Go Out In by Margaret Chula
Reviewed by Terri L. French
Books in Brief: Main Street by Darlene O’Dell, Moonglow by Dian Duchin Reed, Mapping the Borderlands: Haibun and Tanka Prose by Barbara Sabol
Reviewed by Rich Youmans
Books Received: The Last Oak Leaf by Caroline Giles Banks; Buttoned Together: A Haibun Novellarette by Diana Webb, Dreaminations: Prose Poems by Jianqing Zheng
Haibun
Debbi Antebi: Constructs
Joanna Ashwell: Abacus
Gavin Austin: Stolen
Shawn Aveningo Sanders: Still Life in a Small Missouri Town
Taofeek Ayeyemi: Sizing Up
Caroline Giles Banks: Thinking Twice
Roberta Beary: Hail Mary Pass
Mona Bedi: Traces of Us
E.L. Blizzard: Shook
John Budan: Mine’s Bigger
Marjorie Buettner: Chambered Heart
Matthew Caretti: Mating for Life
Aidan Castle: tidelands
Anna Cates: Piece of Meat
Peg Cherrin-Myers: Southern Comfort
Margaret Chula: Komomaki
Glenn G. Coats: Triangles
Cherie Hunter Day: The World According to Cyd
Billie Dee:Elevation
Edward Dewar: High Noon
J Hahn Doleman: Waves Like Blue Dolphins
Pete Dunstone: Oceanic
Lynn Edge: All That Remains
Adele Evershed: “Next summer you will dance to a different beat”
Keith Evetts: Air Miles
Colleen Farrelly: The Road Once Taken
Arvilla Fee: Reassembled
Mark Forrester: Moving Shadows
Pamela Garry: The Bridge to Nowhere
Mark Gilbert: Posthumous Haibun
Joy Hallinan: The Key
Vidya Hariharan: Before the Hysterectomy
Reid Hepworth: Marksman
Jonathan Humphrey: Local Yokel (River Sutra)
Celia Jenkins: Almost the greatest love
Ryan Jessup: A Dream in the Dark
Maureen Kingston Prayers from the Void
Tricia Knoll: Rescued
Deb Koen: Truth to Power
Sumitra Kumar: A Smooth Ride
Kat Lehmann: She Lives in the Town Where Her Car Broke Down
Chen-ou Liu: The Passion
Bob Lucky: Culinary Notes: Add Something
Doris Lynch: Silken Touch
Kathleen MacQueen: The thing itself is in motion
Dorothy Mahoney: centenarian
Richard L. Matta: On the Edge
Eve Müller: Descant
Subir Ningthouja: Blind Corner
Maeve O’Sullivan: Transformation
Renée Owen: Tomfoolery
Pravat Kumar Padhy: Gobbledygook
Tom Painting: Formative Years
Vandana Parashar: Escape
Aparna Pathak: Scrutiny
Alan Peat: Whole
Vidya Premkumar: Dear Sylvia,
Dian Duchin Reed: What Remains
Andrew Riutta: Planning My Future Right on the Spot
Alexis Rotella: You Can’t Con a Con
Jacob D. Salzer: Bookmark
Lynne Schilling: The Long Wait
Ronald Scully: Reservations
Adelaide B. Shaw: Streets Paved With Gold
Nalini Shetty: Ligatures of Shadows
Neena Singh: When Dreams Die
Joshua St. Claire: Watching for the Longest Day
Dylan Stover: καπνός
Alan Summers: Ferry Across the Mersey
Sara Tropper: Thoughts upon contemplating interceptor debris at a campfire
C.X. Turner: In the Places She Trusted
Lew Watts : Y Bont
Michael Dylan Welch: Local Hero
Tanka Prose
About the Guest Editor: Gerry Jacobson
Rupa Anand: The Daughter
Jenny Ward Angyal: Cloud of Unknowing
Gavin Austin: The Fragrance of Darkness
Susan Burch: What Happened
Anna Cates: Biological Clock
Barbara Curnow: I Climb a Ladder
Edward Dewar: The Small Things
Tom Guldin: Now Just Junk
Marilyn Humbert: Moon Rise
Karina Klesko: A Breach of Light
Sumitra Kumar: Impermanence
Liz Lanigan: It’s Dark
Iris Lee: Dead Bodies
Ryland Shengzhi Li: Springbeauty
Michael Lester: That Ship Set Sail
Bob Lucky: Coming of Age
A.A. Marcoff: The Atomic Egg
Richard L. Matta: And Then, Silence
Ann E. Michael: High Desert
Vandana Parashar: Garbhagriha
Alan Peat: Sit Tibi Terra Levis
Dru Philippou: No More Than a Fleeting
Shadow
Vaishnavi Ramaswamy: The Heat Between
Two Summers
Adelaide B. Shaw: Memorial
Nalini Shetty: Monsoon Sheets
Joshua St. Claire: On Camille Pissarro’s
“Jeanne Holding a Fan”
Doug Sylver: Nervous Blinking
C.X. Turner: Margins
Mira Walker: Arms
Diana Webb: All Fairy Tales
Simon Wilson: The General of the
Gingerbread Army
John Zheng: The Sweet Remnants of Bygones
Haiga
Haiga Gallery 21.3
Haiga Showcase: Katja Fox
Haiga Showcase: Tim Roberts
From the cho Team
Margi Abraham: Fridge and Friends (tanka prose)
Terri L. French: Observations while sitting at an extremely long red-light in Corinth, MS (haibun)
Gerry Jacobson: Hanging Out (tanka prose)
Jim Kacian: Narcissus (haibun)
Ron C. Moss: Zen Mountain Retreat (haiga)
Peter Newton: Hangtime (haibun)
Dave Russo: How Oak Trees Spread Across North America (haibun)
Rich Youmans: Between First and Second Sleep (haibun)