Apple core, brown by the time I find it 

Blue feather, iridescent in the afternoon sun 

Cigarette butt, kissed by lipstick 

Dogs: digging, whizzing, pooping, pooping, pooping 

Eggs, hardboiled, abandoned in a bag, drowning in mystery liquid 

Fun-size candy bar wrappers, blue and gooey 

Glass beer bottles, sloshing as I retrieve them 

Half a dozen identically dressed lovelies and their handler, angry 
when I shut down their impromptu photo shoot 

Immodest runner, wriggling out of his trousers and into shorts 
before jogging off 

Jiggling tree branches and the lemon-lover shaking them 

Kids: jumping, running, screaming 

Lemons, just a few left 

Me, baffled by a man cracking a bullwhip on the sidewalk 

Nocturnal visitors: possums, skunks, yowling cats 

Owl roosting in the branches above, soothing me with hoots 

Plastic bottle half-filled with a foamy amber liquid, not beer 

Quarrelsome neighbor, ranting about an imagined slight 

Rottweiler, having burst through the other neighbor’s window 

Second-try-stranger, now back with a big stick, eager to beat 
the last lemons from my tree 

Two grown men, laughing and wrestling each other to the ground 

Unlocked bicycle, ditched on its side, gone by noon 

Vomit 

Whizzing man, drunk, sulky when I tell him to go elsewhere 

Xeroxed lost-dog flier (needs medication, reward $1,000) 

Yet another cell phone yapper, pacing and gesticulating 

Zombie arm, the left one, its plastic middle fingertip chipped 


Give me your refuse, 

your wild, your weird. 
Send these to me, 

a new surprise each dawn. 
I light my porch lamp, musing, 
“What else is on my lawn?” 

—A homeowner’s abecedarian cheribun

—Short-listed Finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #4

Tracy Royce

is a poet and writer with work appearing in Bending Genres, contemporary haibun online, The Ekphrastic Review, Frogpond, The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and ONE ART. Her work was selected for Best Microfiction 2026 and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and a Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun. She lives in Southern California, but you can find her on Bluesky: @tracyroyce.bsky.social

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Side A List Poem by Tracy Royce: “Things That Remain Suspended (Handsfree) When Wedged Beneath My Breast” (includes audio of author reading, and text of mini-interview by HFR) in Heavy Feather Review (16 April 2026)

⚡ What She Wore by Royce in 100 word story (November 2025)

⚡ Returning to the Oncologist After the Mask Mandate Is Dropped by Royce in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 26, January 2025); nominated for the 2025 Touchstone Awards for Individual Haibun