My brother-in-law says what he hates most about the time we find ourselves living through is the cruelty. He could be speaking for himself. Or for me. Or for anyone of a certain age who rails against the constant toll that recent years have taken on our once younger and nimbler selves. But he’s not. He’s speaking for all the children who’ve been deprived of things we’ve taken for granted most of our long lives. Like food. And water. Like four walls and a roof to shelter us from the vicissitudes of nature. Like the arms of loving parents who rocked us to sleep when we were too afraid to close our eyes. Or the hands of those who wiped our brows so we could keep on dreaming.

blossom rain . . . 

no need to read 
the news 

leaving room 
for something more than 
doomscrolling 

—Short-listed Finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #3

Margaret Dornaus

holds an MFA degree in the translation of poetry from the University of Arkansas. Her short-form and free verse poetry appears in numerous journals and anthologies, including Contemporary Haibun Online, I-70 Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Minyan Magazine, Naugatuck Review, ONE ART, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Silver Birch Poetry. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she received a Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award in 2017 for Prayer for the Dead: Collected Haibun & Tanka Prose (Singing Moon Press, 2016). And as founding editor of Singing Moon Press, she feels privileged to have published several short-form anthologies, including Behind the Mask: Haiku in the Time of Covid-19.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ “The Writer’s Cabin” (plus Poet’s Commentary) by Margaret Dornaus is the first cheribun to appear in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 11, January 2022)—and apparently the first to be published anywhere online. (Poet ai li, who founded the cherita form in 1997, coined the term “cheribun” yet does not publish this hybrid in her journal The Cherita.)