February/March Keyword Challenge
Kigo, or seasonal words, are a literary element commonly used in haiku, that allow the poet to instantly transport their reader to a time and place.
For February/March we challenged our poets to use the following kigo in their pieces: slate, ice, and moss. Below are the best submissions of both haiku and “One Breath” poetry.
melting ice
in a comet’s tail
our unshared thoughts
Hynek Koziol
Czech Republic
kintsugi—
pale moss fills the cracks
of the cemetery path
Hifsa Ashraf
Rawalpindi, Pakistan
under
the slabs of ice
rushing current
Ruth Holzer
Potomac Falls, VA
smooth slate —
the hiss of chalk
turning to dust
Vaishnavi Ramaswamy
Chennai, India
born with a tabula rasa, a blank slate,
crowded eight decades later
with hieroglyphics I can’t decrypt
Orman Day
Laurel, Maryland
ice cold night
hard buds
on the hydrangea
Isabella Mori
Coast Salish Lands (Vancouver, BC)
sun dog. . .
each creak in the ice
a different voice
Nicholas Klacsanzky
Seattle, USA
evening rain —
the shine
of slate roofs
Jacek Margolak
Kielce, Poland