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| Issue 34: | Sept. 2026 |
| Haibun: | 184 words |
By Maryanne Hannan
Sisters, Shall I Speak?
The first voice which I uttered was crying...
—from Wisdom 7:3*
She stands at Mass for the Prayer of the Faithful, afraid her bad leg will buckle like it did last week. She needs to concentrate lest she mindlessly mouth the words, “for us MEN and our salvation.”
It’s a bright modern church. Fan-shaped. Easy parking.
She’s still thinking. The reading, “Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord.” A woman lector. Is she pleased? Or incensed that she has to slither off the altar, immediately after?
Shifting to her good leg, imagining lush leaves, vines, flowers, birds, massing the white walls, enveloping the stark Stations of the Cross. Gaudi-style. Excessive. Mary did not scrimp on the expensive nard.
But where for her, the right path? To resist, a public display, stay true to her angry heart, losing the good will of the patient she sits among? Or be quiet, wait, until maybe too late—and risk missing “the way, the truth, the light” lane forward?
cars inch together cram exits— will someone let me in?
*Wisdom 7:3 is a verse from Chapter 7 of the Wisdom of Solomon, an ancient book found in the biblical Apocrypha. The complete text appears in the King James Bible online (link retrieved in September 2026):
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Wisdom-of-Solomon-7-3/
Maryanne Hannan
is a former Latin teacher who has been dabbling in prose poetry forms for over a decade. She discovered haibun last year and this year, the cheribun. Her first prose poem appeared in the final issue of the venerable Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics [#10, December 2013]. Others have been published in The Citron Review, Drifting Sands, Gargoyle Magazine, the minnesota review, Mom Egg Review, Off the Coast, Shot Glass Journal, WomenArts Quarterly Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in upstate New York.
Author’s website: https://www.mhannan.com/
More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond
⚡ Birds of My Heart by Maryanne Hannan in Drifting Sands Haibun (Issue 34, December 2025)
⚡ The Aughts: A History by Hannan in Slant: A Journal of Poetry (Volume 36.3, Fall 2022)
⚡ Wicked, prose poem in Cider Press Review (Volume 22, Issue 3, 14 October 2020)
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