THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 7th May 2026 Teji Sethi - Guest Editor

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

Guest Editor: Teji Sethi

Host: Srinivas Sambangi

Featured Poet: Seren Fargo

Introduction

The Fragmented Prose

"Preparing to write a haibun is like stalking. You must be patient, circling the idea or experience many times, looking at it from different angles. Should it be confronted head-on or obliquely, truthfully or disguised? It can sometimes take me weeks (or as we’ll see, years) to figure out how to approach and enter a narrative, many times longer than the actual writing."

~ Lew Watts, (The Art of Haibun Prose)

As the prompter for the month of May, I would like to share the haibun below and let it stir your memory.

A Thursday Feature

7th May 2026

Winter

Seren Fargo

I still have arguments with him—seven years after his death. So many unresolved issues. 

lingering cold spell 

unopened rosebuds

frozen in space

Haibun Today 8.4.

(sourced from: The Haiku Foundation, Resources)

Guest editor's note:

I once tried writing a fragmented haibun, in contrast to the longer diary entries I usually compose. For one reason, this piece appeared to me in fragments as different pieces of a larger vignette while I was waiting for my turn in a missionary hospital near my home. So, instead of offering a commentary on Seren’s haibun, I am sharing mine, which I found in my journal, lying unpublished. I wrote the first piece and left it there. The other two followed after a long hiatus. All of them were written as separate entities, but they eventually came together to form a longer haibun (old habits die hard!).

See if they make any sense to you!!

Epilogue I

I am reading a small advertisement pasted on the wall above me. Complete Body Check-up for 3999. Do they include the brain? No. They never do.

empty corridor —

footsteps dissolve

into a shrieking siren

Epilogue II

The fan above me turns slowly. Dust gathers on its blades. I wonder how long it has been since anyone looked up. The brain is forgotten the same way.

staring at me    shadows from the ceiling

Epilogue III

Cobwebs in the corners shake like fragile bodies around me. Sunlight wafts through them, a shimmer of breath in these liminal spaces.

a wheelchair

with a broken footrest— 

waiting still

Prompt for Writers

Have you tried writing a haibun where the prose is brief and fragmentary, with the haiku sharpening the emotional register? If not, give it a try!  

 ***

Thank you and welcome, Teji, as a guest editor for THE HAIBUN GALLERY for May'26 Waiting to see how our members respond to this challenge of fragmented haibun.

_Srinivas

Yes, Teji,

I'm waiting to see what our members come up with. Interesting idea.

__kala