My sister reminds me 

we’ve already lived through 
the darkest times—

Think about it, she says. 
All the hatred and unrest, 
the lies, the violence. 

I marvel at my sister’s ability to compress the tall tales of our youth into a few short lines.

As if in doing so she might salvage hope from windswept memories. As if she somehow might revise the course of history.

Remember the times 

when life seemed simpler? 
I ask. The endless joy 

we spent calling out 
Olly-olly-in-come-free, 
and Mother, May I? 

—Long-Listed Finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #2

Margaret Dornaus

holds an MFA degree in the translation of poetry from the University of Arkansas. Her own short-form and free verse poetry appears in numerous journals and anthologies, including Contemporary Haibun Online, I-70 Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Minyan Magazine, Naugatuck Review, ONE ART, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Silver Birch Poetry. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she received a Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award in 2017 for Prayer for the Dead: Collected Haibun & Tanka Prose (Singing Moon Press, 2016). And as founding editor of Singing Moon Press, she feels privileged to have published several short-form anthologies, including Behind the Mask: Haiku in the Time of Covid-19.