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Frogpond 45.2 • 2022

Museum of Haiku
Literature Award

Haiku & Senryu

Essay 1 - Beyond Rejection

Essay 2 - Subjective Criticism and Haiku

Haibun

Renku

Book Reviews

Haiku Society of America

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Lila Wrote Her Own Obituary

by Patricia Machmiller

The one-room schoolhouse where she first taught sits here among fields of soybeans and the almost-ripe winter wheat. Now and then a whirr breaks the silence—startled grasshoppers. Gravel crunches underfoot as we make our way south. A cloud of gnats floats over the slough. We hear a ker-splash—a fish, maybe, or a frog? Last night the Milky Way shone brightly and the memory of it—how it arced over the prairie—unearthed feelings of distance and absence. Lila and I don’t speak; we take in the hay fields, already mowed, hill after hill of sunflowers, the corn. When we return, I shall bring in the wash from the line while Lila prepares two glasses of iced tea, each with exactly one ice cube.

her lilies . . .
their prodigal blooming
year after year


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