Haiku Society of America Haibun Awards
Haibun Awards for 2025
Glenn G. Coats & Aubrie Cox Warner
judges
First Place:
by John Barlow, Ormskirk, UK
Lucky
Lucky wants to do it. Birdy does too. We’re in the boys’ bogs, Lucky swinging from the frame of the cubicle door. The priest’s just asked if we’d like to be altar servers, and Sir made out it was an honour, an expectation even, like a rite of passage. Birdy’s by the pissers, his shirt still sticking through his open fly. I’m by the sink, just far enough away not to get my face shoved into the manky tap. The water is warm and tastes disgusting. The sense of guilt weighs heavily, but I tell Lucky and Birdy that I’m gonna say no.the heat of 45 summers what we know now
~ ~ ~
Comments from the Judges
Good rhythm and doesn’t feel like there’s any unnecessary words. The haiku also changes the prose for me as a reader. We like this more with each reading: The prose really captures (vividly) a moment in a young boy’s life.
Second Place:
by Edward Cody Huddleston, Baxley, GA
Rocky Mountain Postcard
Silhouetted by dust and snow, a moose drinks in profile, sipping from the hole in the ice where your signature trails off. Between the summit and the sunset, I put my finger on your fingerprint, or the inky smudge I pretend is your fingerprint.
I wish you were here too.out of stories—
cold wind creaks
the rocking chair~ ~ ~
Comments from the Judges
Another tight poem. We also like the different takes on absence in the prose and haiku. There’s a lot of sensory detail here.
Third Place:
by Dru Philippou, Arroyo Hondo, NM
Housecleaning
Each day I walk past him in the hallway, barely glancing his way, but today the light from a window casts a gentle glow on Mañjushri. I lift the bodhisattva from his altar, rousing him from samãdhi. I blow away cobwebs and the whispers of forgotten prayers, although dust will forever lodge beyond reach in the folds of his robe. Using a moistened Q-tip, I tend to his long, flowing hair and imagine easing out the tangles, strand by strand. I gaze at the shimmering ruby-like gem in his earring; its hidden intensity pulls me in. I take my time polishing the stem and leaves of the lotus that cradles the Perfection of Wisdom sutra. Above his head, Mañjushri wields a flaming sword, broken many times by careless handling, yet it remains poised to cut through my delusions.
cloudless sky
a butterfly
opens its wings~ ~ ~
Comments from the Judges
The central figure in this haibun is going through the mundane steps of cleaning the house when light from a window causes a replica of Manjushri to glow. The house cleaner blows away the dust, cleans his hair then takes a closer look and considers his broken sword—still ready to slice through his/her delusions. The haiku describes a gray day brought to light by the magic of butterfly wings. The attention to detail here, along with the juxtaposition that carries some genuine awareness of tradition makes this a read we kept thinking about.
Honorable Mention:
by Mathew Caretti, Pago Pago, American Samoa
Scavengers
counting clouds
within silver linings
well worn liesWe soon climb into a cramped cabin. Lift off into the oddity of flight, jumping puddles between this island and that. Seeking out again and again the terra of our firma, the grounding of lives so ungrounded that it almost feels like home. The frigate birds all the while course the coasts, their foreshortened legs and awkward ambles making flight for them a hearth nearer the sun. The wind’s sweet airs sweep them along month after month in search of only a means to extend that airborne life. We share in between us the sea, a segue between worlds, and wonder at each other’s being. Wonder at a life lived otherwise.
petrels murmur
into storm clouds
this old dance~ ~ ~
Comments from the Judges
The poet is looking out the window of a crowded plane; noticing patches of land and bodies of water. The narrator considers the frigate birds who are awkward on land and live a mainly airborne life. The author ponders the life of another creature—wonders at another form of life. The haiku that introduces and caps the poetic prose, hints at a disenchantment with things as they are. The broken lines of the prose add to a feeling of disconnect. A haibun that warrants repeated readings.
xxxx
Honorable Mention:
by Mark Forrester, Hyattsville MD
Reel Too Real
By midafternoon, traffic on this stretch of highway slows to nearly nothing. With no trees to offer shade, I keep walking, uncertain of my direction. A few cars slow for a second, study me, then speed past.
I keep my eyes to the ground, away from the sun. Again and again, I spot old cassette tapes, worn out or cracked, tossed from a window into the grass or gravel. Any writing on the label is too faded now to read. Streams of unspooled tape glisten in the harsh light. My foot snags in a large loop of tape, which trails behind me for a few awkward steps.
I long to gather these tapes in my hands, hold them to my ears, listen to their familiar scratch and hiss to help me pass the time. I want to wrap the thin tape tightly across my chest and let its half-remembered music carry me forward to the next strange town.
dry grass—
a young boy whistles
his way home~ ~ ~
Comments from the Judges
The visuals here are pleasurable, and the two takes on music—the literal unspooled cassette and whistling—complement one another.
Honorable Mention:
by Doris Lynch, Bloomington, IN
What Would It Be Like?
To court night at the edge of a forest on a night
with no moon. To stretch long limbs out and raise
your eyes toward the salt-pocked sky, while the
panoply of stars pulls you close, toward other
worlds as magical as this one. To watch
Jupiter descend, her planet light
reflected from the same sun as ours.
To lie in the cool grass and feel
fallen twigs under your rump
as the green light of a luna moth
reveals a rabbit’s sidewise stare.
To feel beneath your body
the pulse of larvae under the soil
while in the distance traffic begins
its morning chugalug and the sun
bleeds over a horizon
you will never touch.day’s first warmth
a tufted titmouse
joins the chorus~ ~ ~
Comments from the Judges
The sounds and general progression are just pleasurable. Not to mention the way the poem visually funnels down to the haiku.
About the Judges
Glenn G. Coats lives with his wife Joan in Carolina Shores, North Carolina. Glenn’s haiku collection about rivers, Furrows of Snow, was published by Turtle Light Press in 2019. A Synonym For Gone was published by Snapshot Press in 2021. His most recent collection about waterways, Another Lost Boat, was published by Pineola Press in 2022.
Aubrie Cox Warner is a disabled poet and scholar. She has an MFA in poetry from Temple University and PhD in rhetoric and composition from the University of Louisville. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks and her work has appeared in publications such as Rogue Agent, Modern Haiku, and Juxtapositions: A Journal of Haiku Research and Scholarship. Her current writing and research interests include disability, nostalgia, hauntings, grief, and place. She serves as the assistant director for University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire’s Center for Writing Excellence and a lecturer in the English Department.