Toddler-sized bodies dry in the sun. If there’s a wobble, we feel it in our chests. Those hollows wait to be filled without preference for silence or noise. At this stage the funnel heads are featureless, but their arms are raised ready for hugs. In this posture we’re vulnerable too. There’s a choice in what we do with our overlapping stories when they no longer hold truth. We can be kind or mete out judgement. Piñatas are made to be broken as part of a celebration during happy times. Our breakage is more nuanced, stretched across both joy and sorrow.

Untitled photograph copyrighted © 2023 by John Levy.
All rights reserved. Image appears here with photographer’s permission.

Cherie Hunter Day

lives in northern California among seventeen thirsty redwoods. Her haibun, short prose, and haiga have appeared in 100 Word Story, Contemporary Haibun Online, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Mid-American Review, Modern Haiku, Moon City Review, NOON: journal of the short poem, and Unbroken. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and widely anthologized. Recent anthologies include Nothing Short of 100 (Outpost 19, 2018), NOON: An Anthology of Short Poems (Isobar Press, 2019), and Contemporary Haibun 18 (Red Moon Press, 2023).

Her books include a prose poem e-chapbook, Qualia (White Knuckle Press, 2017), and an award-winning collection of short poetry, for Want (Ornithopter Press, 2017). Her latest collection of short poetry, Miles Deep in a Drum Solo (Backbone Press, 2022), won The Haiku Foundation’s 2022 Touchstone Award for Distinguished Books. And her online mini-chapbook, The Rattle Inside (Half Day Moon Press), was released on Earth Day 2023.

John Levy

is a poet and photographer who lives in Tucson. His most recent book, 54 poems: selected and new, was published by Shearsman Books in 2023.

His poetry titles also include Oblivion, Tyrants, Crumbs (First Intensity Press, 2008) and two that were published by otata’s bookshelf: Silence Like Another Name (2019) and On Its Edge, Tilted (2018). Two issues of his photo collaboration with Alan Chong Lau, eye2word: Issue One and eye2word: Issue Two: Japan, were published online in 2019 by otata’s bookshelf.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ 42R Mill Street, haibun by Cherie Hunter Day which was nominated by MacQ for the Red Moon Anthologies, and selected for publication in Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022).

⚡ Crow Hat, ekphrastic prose poem by Cherie Hunter Day after a photograph by John Levy, in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)