watching the news 

the light in the window 
slipping away 

so many questions 
and all the answers 
just opinions  

It’s easy to see how good the world is when we measure our well-being against the misery of others. At least we have that roof everyone keeps pointing out and food on the table, bland and expensive though it sometimes is. Think of the starving children in Belgium, our grandparents told our parents who later donated money to build churches in the Congo. It’s hard to imagine people like us running for our lives.

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

Bob Lucky’s

latest book is a collection of tanka and tanka prose, Careful Not to Startle the Yaks (Cyberwit, 2025). He is also the author of My Wife & Other Adventures (Red Moon Press, 2024); My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (Cyberwit, 2019); Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018), a winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize; and Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), an honorable mention in the Touchstone Distinguished Book Awards. He lives in Portugal.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Five Atomic Tales by Bob Lucky in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 30X, December 2025)

⚡ Book Review: My Wife & Other Adventures by Rich Youmans in contemporary haibun online (20:3, December 2024)

⚡ Clare MacQueen’s enthusiastic endorsement of My Wife & Other Adventures (Red Moon Press, 2024): “a mondo memoir of tiny poetic narratives infused with [Lucky’s] signature wit, wordplay, and philosophical musings; a handbook of 63 haibun that takes us meandering on a taste tour through the Near and Far East, entertaining as it enlightens...”

⚡ Bob Lucky at Haikupedia.org (September 2024)

⚡ A Tribute and Commentary on Bob Lucky’s new collection, My Thology: Not Always True but Always Truth by Ray Rasmussen in cho (15:4, January 2020)

⚡ Bob Lucky reviews Touching Fire by Charles D. Tarlton in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 1, January 2020)