Are they boiled or fried? Isn’t origami made of paper? 
Does this 
mean the buns get soggy? Are origami dogs red like a 
hot dog 
or do they come in pretty colors and patterns? Do they 
bite if 
I try to pet one? Do they taste yucky with mustard? If 
I bite 
one, will it bark? Do they come with soda? Can I have 
it now? 

Poet’s Commentary

The title is from an announcement for a haiku collection by Autumn House Press. Add to it that Los Angeles is the home of the Oki Dog, throw in W. S. Merwin’s wry poem “Questions to Tourists Stopped by a Pineapple Field,” and you can get a pretty good idea of what was going through my mind while writing this one. The WaltMarie form allowed an extra nonsense question in the two-syllable lines, which form a separate short poem complementary to the main one.

Publisher’s Notes:

1. “Origami Dogs Now Available” is the second WaltMarie that MacQ has published; the first appears in Issue 16: “Black and Whites” by Julie Standig. And we look forward to publishing others as more poets discover this form.

2. The WaltMarie was invented by Candace Kubinec, a Pennsylvania-based poet and member of the Poetic Asides community. In February 2021, poet and Senior Editor of Writer’s Digest Robert Lee Brewer wrote, for Poetic Form Fridays:

“I’m introducing Candace Kubinec’s form, the Waltmarie (which is itself a nod to PA members and Poetic Bloomings hosts, Marie Elena Good and Walter J. Wojtanik).”

3. See also “New/Invented Poetic Forms”—and for even more fun, Robert Lee Brewer’s List of 168 Poetic Forms for Poets (updated 12 March 2021):
https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/list-of-50-poetic-forms-for-poets

Jonathan Yungkans

is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer with an MFA from California State University, Long Beach. His work has appeared in San Pedro Poetry Review, Synkroniciti, West Texas Literary Review, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize and was published in February 2021 by Tebor Bach.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ It Belongs to Each of Us Like a Blanket by Jonathan Yungkans, Winner of “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge (Issue 15, September 2022)

⚡ Le Grand Matin by Jonathan Yungkans, a Finalist in MacQ’s Triple-Q Writing Challenge (Issue 11, January 2022)

⚡ La Porte by Yungkans in MacQ’s special Christmas Eve issue (10X, December 2021)

⚡ Two Duplex Poems, plus author’s notes on the poems and on the form, by Yungkans in Issue 10 of MacQ (October 2021)

⚡ Lawful and Proper, poem in Rise Up Review (Fall 2020)

⚡ Cadralor in the Key of F-Sharp as It Cuts into My Spine, in the inaugural issue of Gleam (Fall 2020)

⚡ I’d Love to Cook Like Hannibal Lecter [video], read by the poet at an event sponsored by Moon Tide Press (10 October 2019) celebrating the anthology Dark Ink: A Poetry Anthology Inspired by Horror

⚡ Saving the Patient, poem in The Voices Project (18 January 2018)