Twenty Five Haiku
By Marilyn Chin
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A hundred red fire ants scouring, scouring the white peony
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Fallen plum blossoms return to the branch, you sleep, then
harden again
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Cuttlefish in my palm stiffens with rigor mortis, boy toys can't
love
❖
Neighbor's barn: grass mat, crickets, Blue Boy, trowel handle,
dress soaked in mud
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Iron-headed mace; double-studded halberd slice into emptiness
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O fierce Oghuz, tie me to two wild elephants, tear me in half
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O my swarthy herder, two-humped bactrian, drive me the long
distance
Forceps, tongs, bushi, whip, flanks, scabbard, stirrup, goads,
distaff, wither, awl
❖
Black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne's lace, bounty of cyclamen,
mown paths erupt
❖
Gaze at the charred hills, the woebegone kiosks, we are all
God's hussies
❖
I have not fondled the emperor's lapdog, whose name is Black
Muzzle
❖
Urge your horses into the mist-swilled Galilee, O sweet
Bedlamite
❖
Her Majesty's randying up the jewel stairs to find the pleasure
dome
❖
Ancient pond; the frog jumps in and in and in: the deep slap of
water
❖
The frog jumps into the ancient pond; she says, no, I am not
ready
❖
Coyote cooked his dead wife's vagina and fed it to his new wife
❖
I plucked out three white pubic hairs and they turned into
flying monkeys
❖
Let's do it on the antimacassar, on the antimacassar
❖
Little Red drew her teeny pistol from her basket and said "eat
me"
❖
Chimera: Madame Pol Pot grafting a date tree onto a date tree
❖
His unworthy appendage, his mutinous henchman grazed my
pink cheeks
❖
He on top now changes to bottom, Goddess welcomes her
devotee
❖
Fish fish fowl fowl, mock me Mistress Bean Curd, I am both
duck and essence
❖
Don't touch him, bitch, we're engaged; and besides, he's
wearing my nipple ring
❖
Sing sing little yellow blight rage rage against the dying of the
light
Copyright Credit: Marilyn Chin, "Twenty Five Haiku" from Hard Love Province. Copyright © 2014 by Marilyn Chin. Used by permission of the author and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Source: Hard Love Province (W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 2014)