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| Issue 33: | August 2026 |
| Micro Tanka Prose: | 24 words |
| OWP* |
By Beverly A. Tift
The Arcane Art of Sky Writing
murmuration
reaching up to trace memories that ebb and tide— then I overwrite the day with something new
*Poet’s Note
The OWP (One Word Prose) form of haibun and tanka prose explores how a single word can resonate with the title, the haiku or tanka, and the surrounding white space.
From the opening of a craft essay I’m developing, “One Word Prose in Haibun”:
In 2009, I once again came across Cor van den Heuvel’s one-word haiku, tundra. Then I noticed how other words—like tundra—held presence on their own. That led to a question: could a haibun exist with only one word in the prose? What would that even look like? There was no plan. The word “Wal-Mart” appeared, and from there came the title and the haiku. On a whim, I submitted my experiment to Contemporary Haibun Online:
https://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/chohtmlarchive/pages054/Tift_AGreat.html
Recently I shared “A Great American Past Time” on my Facebook page, and the resulting conversation made me realize that my 2009 one-off experiment might be something more.
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