Alice Wanderer

Language Matters

I was—in the passive voice—born, expelled from my mother bruised black and she too was cut with a knife by a man in a mask. Sexed, weighed, washed, wrapped, I was laid to sleep in a cot not a word said to credit my part in the battering work of my birth. Contrariwise—my mother tongue tells me—I’ll die like I laugh, lose control wet myself … grammatically the agent.

insect-catcher
antics—a streetlight
turns on

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About the Author

Alice Wanderer has dabbled in haiku for a long time and began writing haibun in 2020. Her book Lips Licked Clean, a translation of selected haiku by the early 20th-century woman poet Sugita Hisajo, was published by Red Moon Press and won a Touchstone Award in 2021.

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