Tanka Poet Mariko Kitakubo
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Tanka & Essays

Some of my poems from my Tanka collection "WILL" introduced in several magazines were translated into English to date.

My 4 th Tanka collection, which is schedule to be published on April 18, 2006, is a bilingual book. I hope all Tanka-lovers enjoy it regardless your mother tongue.
Many thanks to Ms. Amelia Fielden for excellent translation.

Tanka Society of America Ribbons Vol,5 No,4 Winter 2009

Tanka Cafe: Theme: Winter Warmth

to warm
there is plum sake--
contemplating
the first half of my life
I wander back here

Selected Tanka

though advised
to have surgery
I want
to stay a woman--
so faint
the song of the stream

 

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DWARF STARS 2009 Edited by Deborah P Kolodji & Stephen M. Wilson

just as I
enter the strait
the inky nails
of the Grim Reaper
claw towards me

lest we stray
the Milky Way
just happens
to slip between
our entwined fingers

 

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Tanka Society of America Ribbons '09 Fall

Tanka Cafe:the theme of "visiting"

as her death anniversary nears,
I sit beside my memories--
through the evening
the lovely voice
of a tsukutsuku cicada

Selecded Tanka

finding solace
in the impossible
here I am
in a bubble bath
perfumed with green forest

Autumn,
a sobbing violin--
when night falls
oh, Mother,please
let me weep

 

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Tanka Society of America Ribbons Vol,5 No,2 Summer 2009

Tanka Cafe Theme:Separation

I will go and put
all my cherished recollections
into the ocean
where masses of hondawara
seaweed is floating

Selecded Tanka

the aquarium
when closed to the public
falls silent
and the bream sleep
with their eyes wide open

 

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Tanka Society of America Ribbons Vol,5 Spring 2009

Selected Tanka

invisible
a lyrebird is crying
abandon
abandon
the world of mankind
(Previously published in Japanese in Kadokawa Tanka Sept.2005)

comparing
tones of the wind chimes--
gently
a blue butterfly
brushes my earlobe

 

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The Science Fiction Poetry Association, Anthology "Dwarf Stars 2008"

as if
falling down
into the galaxy,
I would fall
into your heart

 

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Tanka Society of America Ribbons Vol,4 No,4 Winter 2008

Selected Tanka

my boy is growing
to look like my father
who abandoned me--
I try not to mind
God's carelessness

Tanca Cafe-theme: The Sixth Sense

a wagtail
is pecking pebbles
on the river bank--
with you,in you,I spend
your death anniversary

 

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Eucalypt Issue 5, 2008

five years now
since I sat there
with mother
supping on noodles
flavered with citron

the sea canyon
is silently weeping
as I cross
concealing my sickness
within me

 

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Tanka Society of America Ribbons Vol,4 No,3 Autumn 2008

Tanka Cafe: Theme: Transience

I'll leave
my memories of love
to float
on the tides
of the sargasso sea

 

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Tanka Society of America Summer 2008

Tanka Cafe Theme: Epiphany

is he an evil spirit
or a god,
that handsome Masai boy--
his gleaming body
has the gloss of silk

Selected Tanka

we go back
back to the scarlet DNA
of original sin
all the way to the womb
of Cain's mother, Eve

 

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Tanka Society of America Ribbons Spring 2008

Member's Choice

joined together by his umbilical cord
I hold my son-then
all the stars in heaven
fall down on me

Tanka Café: Theme "Roads"

in a pool of sun
rusted railroad tracks--
those teenage years
like a fever
galloped through me

Selected Tanka

as they go past
those car wheels sound like
they're dragging
my weekend feeling
away by its tail

 

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Tanka Society of America Ribbons Winter 2007

Tanaka Café:theme "Giving"

joined together
by his umbilical cord
I hold my son--then
all the stars in heaven
fall down on me

Selected Tanka:

empowered
by untold millions
of silent stars,
night by night
my child is growing

 

 

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Tanka Society of America Autumn, 2007,

Selected Tanaka

should there be
a man who sells time,
I will buy it---
if it is time
I can believe in

alongside my friend,
telling her
the whole story
I see night deepening
over the Harbour Bridge

The Tanka Cafe: Welcome and Farewell

hey new earrings,
you who don't know
that I've lost my love,
bring me breezes
from the ocean!

 

 

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Tanka Society of America Anthology "Sixty Sunflowers"

all you men
who have flown from me--
I feel you
less as sea winds,more as
glints of light on the waves

high up
in the bare tree
winter has come
bringing with it
letters for the deceased

one's life
can not more be entrusted
to another
than can the timing
of a perfect soft-boiled egg

 

 

Tanka Society of America Spring Issue

Tanka Cafe Theme: Newness

thinking of the day
I leaned about
the supernova---
from a chill distance,
notification of my disease

Selected Tanka

what you 're saying
in my favorite voice
is blown
from your lips
by the salty breeze

 

Tanka Society of America Summer Issue

Tanka Cafe Theme :Summer

I am stabbed
by your soft eyes
in this summer
of Lyre and ocean
singing in turn

Editor's Selected Tanka

I expect
nothing in return
for this love
of transparent indigo
deeper than the ocean

 

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Eucalypt Issue 4, 2008

sometimes I wish for
shoulders to lean against--
there's a bitter wind
like the delivery of letters
after my death

Eucalypt lssue 3, 2007

maybe it's better
not to know the depth
of her wounds---
tranquilly I ask

how many sugar lumps?


how small
I really am
here between
potato field

and the wide sky

Eucalypt lssue 2, 2007

we won't know
if it's benign
till we operate---
I'm nodding as if
this isn't about me

 

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“Eucalypt” A Tanka Journal – Inaugural Issue

even rainy days
at the beach
aren’t bad,
I whisper in the ear
of the jet-black Labrador

the sounds
of a cat grooming itself
in Tunisia
all the cobble-stones
are on fire with sunset

 

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Simply Haiku, Summer 2007 vol.5, no.2

cutting my foot
on a tree-root
I felt
the desolation of Descartes
slowly slide into me

for whom then
did I blossom?
I cast my gaze
over the light and shade
of the distant past

a warm teardrop
as I waken
from the dream
of being held back
from the brink of a cliff

as if
falling down
into the galaxy,
I would fall
into your heart

dipping my toes
into the blue water
of the inlet,
I felt my body
surge with life

 

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My work received “Ehime Shinbun-sha Award” at Haiku Pacific Rim Conference in April, 2007.

for whom
am I in full bloom?
castle ruins

 

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"RIBBONS" Tanka Society of America Journal
Selected Tanka Editor's Choice

I wish
I could be reborn
a loquat tree ---
then I would not
love you so much

 

"RIBBONS" Tanka Society of America Journal
Tanka Cafe Theme: Leafless Autumn

how dazzling ---
beyond the horizon
are those who
never return to me, you
and the breeze from our summer

 

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“RIBBONS” Summer 2006, (Tanka Society of America Journal)

like clouds
vanishing from a puddle
that morning
my father
silently disappeared

 

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My work will receive Japan Times President's Prize at INTERNATIONAL TANKA CONVENTIONS (English Tanka Division,hosted by the Japan Tanka Poet's Society, to be held in Honolulu in November, 2006.

lest we stray
the Milky Way
just happens
to slip between
our entwined fingers


Excellent English Tanka Prize.

our two shadows
are lengthening -
oh God,
why am I a lamb,
why is he a wolf?


I will attend the award ceremony on November 22, 2006, at Honolulu Pacific Beach Hotel.
The report will be announced in my website later.

 

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"TANKA" June, 2005 (Kadokawa Shoten)

the mother
who dwells within me
is smiling
as she nurses an infant,
a younger mother than now

unconscious
my mother sleeps on,
beside her
I drift away a little
from the time of this world

my mother
has become
my beloved child,
put to bed
in a pure white room

I will live feeding on my heartbreak--
at my feet
the silence of love
laps like wavelets

my life
is without a future -
meantime
I've increased the earring holes
in one of my lobes

what emptiness,this -
on the surface
of the marsh
a blue heron stalks,
casting a long shadow

time after death,
immeasurable -
I will put together
a bundle of dim lights
and walk on

in the end
I will be
nothing but spirit,
eyes and ears
all gone

there are probably
poems that only I
can write -
I prefer cherry trees
after their blossoms

 

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"TANKA GENDAI" July, 2005 (Tanka Shinbun-sha)

on a chilling morning
I realise that
for my mother
there will be
no next summer

sun shining
into corners of the glass door -
leaving behind
an unfinished letter

Mother departed this life

Mother is dead -
beneath my recollections,
like a ringing in the ears
the receding light
of mid-summer

loving both
thunder and evening showers
I love
the summer that uproots
and carries me off

can I love again,
do I still have
the courage
to fall
head over heels?

all alone
in a far-off place
is revolving
a tiny universe,
a plum in space

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"TANKA ORAI" August, 2005 (Nagarami Shobo)

when my mother
has silently slipped
from her life,
I sought a new star
in the Milky Way

after all the years
of a single mother
with one daughter,
this empty space -
a leaden-gray moon

tranquilly ashes
continue to fall
on this ruined village
where like a scream
the silence shines

 

after viewing the 'Nuclear Scars of Chernobyl' exhibition of photographs by Hirokawa Ryouichi

approaching I see
a village ruined
wind howls on high
as if all their names
have been forgotten

 

after viewing the ' Nuclear Scars of Chernobyl ' exhibition of photographs by Hirokawa Ryouichi

sometimes
while I gaze at the sky
I'm thinking
of hydraulics,of what
my boy is studying

urn your back
on your mother and walk on,
grow strong -
the wind of your childhood
blows bright in my memory

it feels like I'm astray
in a giant sand-clock,
with quantities of sand
falling down on me
from time to time

I've gone on
not putting it all
into words - now
sounds from the river
within me grow louder

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