The bookmark slips out of a dusty poetry paperback pulled from the shelf and falls to the tile floor upside down, sliding across the chilled glaze. I bend to pick it up. My father’s laminated obituary, clipped from the newspaper ten years ago. I don’t remember sticking it in this book or why. Was it marking a favorite verse? Or perhaps, just where I left off.

that thing you said 
that I let go ...
cell memory 

Our local paper dubs him “the body.” Those soft hands gently cupping my cheek. His warm breath across my neck as he curls his tattooed arm around my waist. The lub-dub of my nervous system’s favorite metronome as he hugs me. A body. His body. Once pressed against my body. But nobody speaks his name.

the conversation pivot 
of Midwest nice

Poet’s Commentary by Farrelly

Tan-renga is a short collaborative form based on waka, where haiku is paired with the final couplet related to the haiku. When extended to collaborative haibun, pairing prose with this form yields a call-response style of haibun that can explore two aspects of theme more expansively while maintaining the spirit of a tan-renga. With a haiku-type couplet, this form naturally bridges tanka prose and haibun.

After attempting a solo tan-renga-bun, I recruited Terri French to explore the form collaboratively. Our first attempt, “Sunday Whispers” above, explores loss, and our second attempt, “Losing Time” (in Contemporary Haibun Online 22.1, 1 August 2026), explores addiction. As we wrote, we discovered that this form seemed well-adapted to the exploration of heavier themes through two perspectives or moments in time.

Bio: Terri L. French

Bio: Colleen M. Farrelly