THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 26th March 2026. Linda Papanicolaou - Guest Editor

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

Guest Editor: Linda Papanicolaou

Featured Poet: J. Zimmerman

Host: Srinivas Sambangi

A Thursday Feature

26th March 2026

Missing Man

J. Zimmerman

Mid-November after I rake the leaves I stand at Central and First,

holding the Stars and Bars. All of them died in Nam — my brother Joe,

my cousin Freddy, mom's youngest brother Jack. Sometimes I just have

to come out on the streets and stand with my flag. There's no parade.

The smell of burning

could be diesel

could be napalm

—Frogpond 34:1 (Winter, 2011);

http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/form/haibun.htm

Commentary:

At the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society’s retreat in 2010, Margaret Chula

presented a writing workshop entitled “Persona Haibun: The Art of

Empathy.” She spread out a varied collection of photojournalistic

photographs of people, asking participants to pick one and write a haibun in

that person’s voice. I was at that workshop and reading Joan’s haibun I can

vividly remember the photo she chose, and marvel at the non-visual detail

she included to flesh out the character (for non-Americans, the “Stars and

Bars” is the Confederate flag from our 19th century Civil War, a signal that

the character was a lower class white Southerner and a racist). Once I get

past the initial shock, the pain in this portrait sketch becomes almost

overwhelming.

Prompt:

Write a personal haibun in which we can see past your

character’s negative traits to find their humanity.

 ***

Thank you Linda, for your pick of some of the best haibun and offering excellent commentary and thought provoking prompts this month

_Srinivas