an open field

Enjoy the April 2015 issue of CHO which includes: Featured writer: Harriot West The winning haibun in the 2014 Jerry Kilbride Memorial English Language Haibun Contest  An interview with Ray Rasmussen Lynne Rees tackling language choices in her essay exploring 'Theme and Meaning in Haibun' And of course a selection of outstanding contemporary English language haibun from writers across the globe. Here's a little taster from contributor, Lynn Edge . Rancher's Wife My husband can barely walk, but he goes out and checks his cows every day even though he's down to only fourteen head. He hopes to drop dead in the pasture. How can one compete with that kind of devotion? a cow bawl carries through the mist almost winter Contemporary Haibun Online 11.1 April 2015

death, life, life, life, life crisp corpses of flies litter the floor of the conservatory, the low window-sills, the table-tennis table, little clichés of death – on their backs with their legs in the air – wings still fanned as if the end came so quickly there was no time or space to measure between flight and fall, the buoyancy of air  and ground clover and buttercups bunch across the lawn, new growth on the espaliered cherry trees reaches to a leaf’s length of their neighbours; one of us says, my hair grows so quickly  in this heat our daughter complains about her daughter – the scorn in her voice, her tossed head, the moods, the egocentric bounty of an eighteen year old who knows, of course, all there is to know, we know,  we know solanum dulcamara between the apple trees – bittersweet, fellenwort, snakeberry, violet bloom, bitter, blue or woody nightshade – easy to mistake for the deadly kind, atropa belladonna, hallucinator, the poti...

bonfire smoke we talk about our disappointments Thanks to tiny words for featuring my haiku on 4th March 2015

Not Gone deep winter the embers of last night's fire It was the year you were building the house, after you'd pulled down the derelict tractor sheds, after you'd put in the footings. You came to me and said, Be ready at 6.30 tonight. It was October. It was almost dusk. You'd set up two deckchairs, lit a bonfire with old timber, opened a bottle of red wine. And I said, What? And you said, Wait. And we waited and watched the fire and talked about the other places we had lived. And by the time it was dark and the bottle was empty I thought it had all been worth waiting for. But then you said, They never came back. And you told me how every morning that week a flock of Canada Geese had flown over as you worked, then back along the same path at dusk, and how much you had wanted me to see them too. They must have gone for good this time, you said. But they had not gone. I saw them when you described the rush of their wings, their irregular V. And you too, your hands...