THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 20th November 2025. Neena Singh - Guest Editor

host: Rupa Anand

editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh

Lorraine Haig has stepped down from being a mentor for this forum. Triveni Haikai India and The Haibun Gallery are grateful for her exceptional feedback and responses over the last few years.

guest editor: Neena Singh

featured poet: Rich Youmans

A Thursday Feature 20th November

Introduction:

Walking the Line Between Prose and Poem

The haibun is a quiet miracle of form—a blend of prose and haiku that invites us to pause, notice, and reflect. It offers the intimacy of memoir, the compression of poetry, and the tension of what’s left unsaid. As Bashō, the master of haibun, once wrote: “Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” In that spirit, I invite you this month to bring your journeys—outer and inner—onto the haibun path.

Through prompts, I offer you to explore moments of silence, memory, transition, and displacement. Each prompt is a door—open it with curiosity, and let your prose wander, then pause… and let the haiku breathe.

Your writing can be raw or refined, grounded in the present or drawn from the depths of memory. What matters is the authenticity of your voice and the integrity of the experience. And remember—sometimes what you leave unsaid is just as important as what you write.

Week 3: Crossing Thresholds — moments of change and choice

Prompt: Write a haibun about a personal transition—a literal or metaphorical threshold (e.g., leaving a job, moving homes, becoming a parent, surviving illness). Focus on the moment just before or after the change.

Haibun Examples by Featured Poet:

Rich Youmans

On the last day of the world

I turn off the news. Shut down the phone. Find you in the kitchen. You are watching the cardinals wing through purple twilight. I touch your neck, read the braille of your freckles. Taking you in my arms, I begin to hum—a slow waltz—and together we start our dance. Heart to heart, breath to ear, we move as one, keeping the Earth spinning for just a bit longer. . .

holding tight,

letting go. . .

our one breath

For Belle

Comments

Armageddon would, of course, be the ultimate threshold moment (one we hopefully won't encounter any time soon). Far from apocalyptic, though, this haibun is about love and how, at the end of our days, only a handful of things truly matter. At the top of the list, of course, are the people we love. Rather than wait, my wife and I try to dance as often as we can (physically and metaphorically), as if we were always on a threshold. It's a big job, keeping the Earth spinning, but surprisingly easy once you find the right partner.

Credits

"On the Last Day of the World" (originally titled "As if it were the last day of the world") originally appeared in The Quills, Issue 5, December 2019 (Taofeek Ayeyemi [Aswagaawy], editor in chief).

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Thrown

Her husband saw the notice first. "The Philadelphia Museum will offer pottery classes for the blind every Thursday from nine until noon," he read aloud. He lowered the paper and looked across at her, as if that still mattered. By then it had been two months since the second retina detached beyond repair, one week since she threw her cane across the living room in a fury of frustration and self-pity, smashing one of her Hummel figurines. She looked across at him, her jaw tensing, her gaze directed to a point somewhere beyond his left ear. She nodded once, and he raised the paper.

digging deeper    under dry topsoil, cool touch of clay

That first morning, before the gray van pulled into the driveway, she sat in her rocker as if waiting to be arrested. When the van arrived, an acne-faced man in an orange watch cap—Jeff, she learned on the second visit—helped her down the front steps and into the backseat, next to a large woman in a floral-print dress and sunglasses similar to hers. She stared straight ahead as the van sped off. A few minutes past one, she returned home with misshapen pots and lopsided bowls, refugees from a Dali painting. What can you expect from someone who flunked arts and crafts? she said. But she stayed with it.  Over the weeks her pots and bowls smoothed, straightened. How do they look? she began to ask.

lump of clay    all the shapes deep within   

Classes changed with the seasons. During the holidays, when everyone made ceramic mugs, her handles kept falling off; that year the whole family got decorative pencil holders for Christmas. In the spring, she made a long, thin vase, and her husband chose a flower with the most fragrant scent. By then she had begun to tackle household chores: dusting, setting the table. She learned how to make her own cups of tea. Her husband glued toothpicks to the oven dials, bought pots with lips for easy pouring. That summer, she entered an abstract phase, creating pieces that made everyone scratch their heads. One, the size of a thick dog bone, had been twisted and perforated and painted dung-brown; she called it “The Ins and Outs of Life.” The other, an unpainted white disc growing out of a square base, she titled “Unlimited Horizons.” Her husband wondered what she envisioned. He closed his eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse. 

potter’s wheel    as if this clay could climb forever

Comments

While I was growing up in Philadelphia, my mother's eyesight gradually diminished—she had diabetes and suffered multiple hemorrhages caused by diabetic retinopathy. I remember as a boy accompanying her to an eye clinic where the ophthalmologist would seal the ruptured vessel with a laser. her vision faded to shadows until it disappeared entirely, as the scar tissue from all the laser treatments built up and dislodged the retina. While there's a bit of poetic license in this haibun, the core of it—the unfathomable loss of the visible world—is very real. After a period of sadness, self-pity, and soul-searching, my mother decided she was not going to give in: she called the local  association for the blind and learned of available services and programs, one of which was the art program at the city's museum. There are moments when we find ourselves in new, uncharted circumstances that leave us vulnerable and seemingly isolated, and sometimes the hardest thing is to accept that what you knew will never be again. Beyond loving her, I've always admired by mother for her strength to keep going, to accept, to reach into herself and then reach out. I still have "The Ins and Outs of Life" and "Unlimited Horizons." For me, they are the yin and yang of what it means to live a heroic life.

Credits

"Thrown" originally appeared in Modern Haiku, Issue 49.1, Winter-Spring 2018 (Roberta Beary, haibun editor) and republished in Head-On: Haibun Stories (Redbird Chapbooks, 2018).

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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT NOTICE

              NOTICE

Dear Haibuneers

Starting from March 2025, we at haikuKATHA are moving on to a new submissions format for haibun submissions. (Only for haibun, please note!)

Writers are invited to submit one unpublished haibun and gembun per submission window.

Kindly note the submissions calendar.

1-20 March, to be considered for publication in May

1-20 June, to be considered for publication in August

1-20 September, to be considered for publication in November

1-20 December, to be considered for publication in February

All accepted submissions will receive an email to confirm their acceptance by the 5th day of the publication month.

Your unpublished (only one) haibun should be sent to: 

GOOGLE FORM: https://forms.gle/WkM9frPjtEzNTrVEA

This form will open on 1st December and close on 20th December.

This form will only be available during the submission period. 

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The Haibun Gallery continues as is.

We will be having editors and prompts, and your sharing…