Tanka Writing Roundtable • Fall 2009
Dr. Randy Brooks

Thirteen

by
Gordon Gilmore

This semester has been dizzying to me. Living in a house with four musicians can certainly lead to a lack of peace and quiet. Sometimes, the only quiet I can get is by going to have a cigarette on my front porch. Thus the burned state of this chapbook; I wanted you to experience in visual, olfactory, and tactile sensations what usually accompanies my state of peace and quiet. And I hope you appreciate it.

this move
from my parents’ home
my last—
I might get some money
when my mom visits

writing tanka
on a Sunday afternoon
at my computer—
I wonder
if I’ve got mail

I slowly
scratch my beard
for new ideas—
an old
Philosopher’s trick

my eyes
fly to the moon
and back—
they still can’t see
that old man up there

caffeine
so much to do
caffeine
so much to see
caffeine