Patrick Sweeney

Cinq Haïku

 

in the redhead's herbarium

a pressed pipsissewa

ignites

 

Inlet of Sakegawa

the green strand of the mermaid's hair

the samurai never found

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telling the palm reader that's not what it says

 

footprints in the mud

my Holly

Golightly

 

like elephantiasis

my illiteracy blocking

the fifth grade aisle

 

burning to death for miles behind a propane truck

 

Patrick Sweeney, writing in the haiku lineage of Koi Nagata and Taneda Santoka. Constitutionally nervous, ecologically alarmed. Heart half-buried at Stinsford. A life spent dropping imaginary pennies off the Empire State Building.

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