Fiction: Just Two Minutes

Rona trudged home from the bus stop after another long day at the diner. It had been the usual crowd of morons and misfits, plus the handsy guy from Newark who kept grabbing her ass whenever she turned away; she kept turning away, though, afraid of what he might grab if she didn’t.

She walked to the front yard of her home and leaned against a tree. She wanted a smoke, but she had only one cigarette left, and she was saving it for just before she went to bed; she wanted one smoke and two minutes of peace to wrap up the typically dull, frantic, miserable day.

Rona pushed herself away from the tree and walked up the steps. She opened the door and closed and locked it behind her.

“I’m home, E.J.,” she called.

She listened for movement but heard nothing. She walked back toward the kitchen, which was dark

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Pen to Paper: Breaking the Rules of Haiku

Two weeks ago, we examined whether personification and other literary devices common to Western poetry were acceptable in haiku.

Now I have discovered (a mere eleven years after publication) an article that takes us far beyond that initial discussion of what might be permissible in haiku. The piece is by Haruo Shirane, Shincho professor of Japanese literature and culture at Columbia University in New York City. It was published in Modern Haiku magazine in 2000. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, this was the year of the Matsuyama Declaration, which politely insisted that writers of haiku in languages other than Japanese explore the form without being tied down by Japanese conventions.

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