2025 Touchstone Awards for Individual Haibun – Long List

The Touchstone Awards for Individual Haibun recognize excellence and innovation in English-language haibun published in juried public venues during each calendar year. In 2025, we received 278 distinct entries, submitted from 43 journals , books, or contests by 76 individuals and 15 journal editors.

The Touchstone Awards are a truly international haiku affair, as English-language haibun nominations came from 15 different countries/territories:  Australia, Canada, England, Scotland, Germany, India, Northern Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States. Our heartfelt thanks to the editors and poets who nominated haibun!

In the second round, the panel ranked their top selections from the Long List; the top nine became the Short List, which will be shared on April 10th.

In the final round, the panel selected the top three haibun from the Short List, which will be recognised as the Award winners for 2025 and will be announced on April 17th, as part of The Haiku Foundation’s celebration of International Haiku Poetry Day.

Many thanks to the distinguished panelists — Lorraine A Padden, Billie Dee and Richard L Matta. They put much time and effort, and especially careful thought and evaluation, into this challenging selection process.

Vandana Parashar
Coordinator, Touchstone Awards For Individual Haibun

Below is the longlist, followed by the haibun.

How to Enter the Confessional
— Cherie Hunter Day, Modern Haiku 56.2, Summer 2025

Visitation
— Kristen Lindquist, HPNC Haibun Contest 2025 (Honorable Mention)

The Wild Wood
— Barbara Sabol, Winner, Rachel Sutcliffe Memorial Haiku-Arts Contest 2025, Drifting Sands Haibun, Issue 31, March 2025.

Southern Comfort
— Peg Cherrin-Myers, contemporary haibun online, 21:3, November 30, 2025

No Universe Deep Enough
— Dylan Stover, Frogpond, 48.2, August 2025

The Soles of My Feet
—- Gerry Jacobson, Kokako, Issue 42, March 23, 2025

Into the Night 
— John Budan, Drifting Sands Haibun, Issue 31;March 2025

Lucky
— John Barlow, First Place, Haiku Society of America Haibun Awards 2025

Dandelion Wishes
— Rich Youmans, Frogpond Vol. 48.3, 2025

The Far Shore
—- Sandip Chauhan, haikuKATHA, Issue  43, May 2025

Lantern
— Kala Ramesh, haikuKATHA, Issue 46, August 2025

Full Son
— Dylan Stover, cattails, October 2025 

Checkout Girl
—- Farah Ali, Modern Haiku, Vol. 56.3, Autumn 2025

Hungry Little Girl
— Peg Cherrin-Myers, whiptail Issue 13 June 2025

An Interview for Floor Manager at the Haiku Factory
— Kat Lehmann, MacQueen’s Quinterly Issue 30 Sept 2025

How to Enter the Confessional

Any wooden closet will suffice. House in a church hallway or a tree’s hollow. I remember one large pine gutted by lightning with enough room for two to crouch within the survivor’s scar. Finding a listening heart shouldn’t be too hard.

          opening this chapter of thought white lilies

Nuthatches make good confidants. They look the part: tidy gray and black vestments with sharp white markings. They move with confidence and are diligent. A quick probe of a crevice yields results. Clean for now.

           dispensing absolution redwood grove

— Cherie Hunter Day, Modern Haiku 56.2, Summer 2025

Visitation

Acadia National Park, May, before the real crowds arrive. Blackbirds teed up on last year’s cattails. Skunk cabbage leaves unfurling, ferns, purple blooms of rhodora humming with bees. On a trail to the sea, pitch pines forest ruddy bedrock scraped bare by the last glacier. Resinous scent of bark, of needles underfoot. 

sunlight singing in the boughs a pine warbler 

Moving closer, the cacophony of a flock of crossbills shifting among the trees, prying apart last year’s cones. Here and there a fallen cone waits for summer’s heat to crack it open as effectively as any beak, unloose its tiny seeds. 

sun-warmed granite slowly opening a spring azure

— Kristen Lindquist, HPNC Haibun Contest 2025 (Honorable Mention)

The Wild Wood

Mid-winter darkness is already falling as I trek through a foot of new snow, searching for my dog, Lumi. Venturing off-trail through the woods, I hold out my lantern, the only source of light this moonless night. The park ranger says, “Coyotes probably got her.” I’d rather imagine that she has entered an enchanted kingdom where a rabbit, seeing that she is lost, snuggles her in its burrow or that she has found shelter in the bole of a tree.

hobo spider
i too
spin my web

This morning, a call from a hiker who spotted a dog matching Lumi’s missing dog picture. I drive to the edge of the park, miles from where I lost her three days ago. Atop a steep hill that arches down to the river, I call her, long and loud, the way my mother would sing my name when the street lights came on. A white form takes shape at the bottom of the hill―a snow swirl or my small, white dog? My rib-thin, mud-slushed, exhausted dog comes limping toward me. I scoop her up, cradle her under my jacket and together we bow to the benevolent mysteries that move through the forest.

second bloom
frost flowers
glaze the field

— Barbara Sabol, Winner, Rachel Sutcliffe Memorial Haiku-Arts Contest 2025, Drifting Sands Haibun, Issue 31, March 2025.

Southern Comfort
wind chimes the absence of yesterday’s flutters

I’m ankle deep, wearing nothing
but a robe, house shoes, and
a headlamp while exhuming
graves directly below my family
tree. A row of headstones, my one
and done’s. 

     I dig each one up, sever
    their pulsating roots with the blade
    of my shovel, carry each baby
    in their whiskey-soaked blankets and
    gently lay them on the kitchen table
    where my son’s bris took place
    years before.

Shaking off the moist dirt and unrolling
their 8.5 x 11 bodies, I stack one hand
on top of another, lace my fingers,
and begin chest compressions 
on stanzas two and three, give
mouth-to-mouth to their bolded titles
and memorize every line, reciting
them morning, noon, and night
like prayer.

     I swaddle my newborns in clean
    blankets, place each one into Moses
    baskets, release them down the rivers
    of submissions and only after they’ve
    been taken, can I let go.

born again sober feeling a little life in me

— Peg Cherrin-Myers, contemporary haibun online, 21:3, November 30, 2025

No Universe Deep Enough

  “Ai! Ai! the petals say…”

  — Ovid

 Shattered them. The lilies, last night:
 lashed by inches of eye-stinging rain,
 gusts to 50. Sheetflood from the cove
 slope; April’s radical topography. Soft
 stems don’t stand chances. Even the
 maples began to measure space in
 lumens: exploding white filaments
 in the twig-thrashed dark; the exact
 velocity of a petal as it crashes into
 soaked earth—fill in the thunderclap.

    CAPTCHA
    select all squares
    with beauty

— Dylan Stover, Frogpond, 48.2, August 2025

The Soles of my Feet

The southwest corner of Tasmania is ‘wilderness’, uninhabited since the genocide of the 1830s. I finish my field work there and C flies in to meet me, bringing food for a 10-day walk. We sleep that night in the button grass plains near the Melaleuca airstrip. Bounding down the ridge to Southwest Cape I sprain my ankle. We bandage it up and rest for a couple of days on a remote beach, eating mussels off the rocks.

bleached shells
litter the sandhills…
inheritance

Then we head back to Hobart around the South Coast Trail. Bothered by a heavy rucksack, I stand in a boggy patch and bury ‘spare’ gear including towel, toiletries and tinned food. Stamp all this stuff down into the bog; anything to lighten the load. Limping out for another week gives me planta fasciitis. I don’t walk again for six months.

footprints
of our first peoples
fading away

—- Gerry Jacobson, Kokako, Issue 42, March 23, 2025

Into the Night

The Trappists have been around for hundreds of years. But the monks that live in the abbey near my land have dwindled down to a handful of ten elderly residents. Today there are few candidates who want to enter the order, not enough to keep the 1300 acres active. I arrive before dusk, just in time to visit the fresh grave of my friend, Brother Martin. He was the first to die this year.

The ducks on the pond have settled for the night. It is so quiet that I can actually hear the Willow leaves falling on the water. The last rays of sun are disappearing into the oaks, signaling the call to vespers. A small group of men make their way to the Cisterian designed church. As they shuffle along the corridor, flickering candles cast shadows of stooped broken bodies, followed by a couple of battered wheelchairs.

The silence is broken by the sounds of medieval style chanting which echoes and resonates off the walls.   Deus, in adiutorium meum intende. 

Soon these monks will also be lying here beneath simple crosses near my friend. Who will pray for them after they pass?

chill of dawn
a stone pathway
polished by sandals

— John Budan, Drifting Sands Haibun, Issue 31;March 2025

Lucky

Lucky wants to do it. Birdy does too. We’re in the boys’ bogs, Lucky swinging from the frame of the cubicle door. The priest’s just asked if we’d like to be altar servers, and Sir made out it was an honour, an expectation even, like a rite of passage. Birdy’s by the pissers, his shirt still sticking through his open fly. I’m by the sink, just far enough away not to get my face shoved into the manky tap. The water is warm and tastes disgusting. The sense of guilt weighs heavily, but I tell Lucky and Birdy that I’m gonna say no.

                        the heat of 45 summers what we know now

— John Barlow, First Place, Haiku Society of America Haibun Awards 2025

Dandelion Wishes

Early Stages: The Visit 

She told me to have another and held out the box of chocolates,  the name of each on the raised lid. It had started to rain again,  softly, the high windows becoming teary and the room taking on  a ghostly pale. I picked one and she smiled. “Mom liked pralines  too,” she said, her voice bright. “They were one of her favorites. Remember how, every anniversary, Dad came home from work  with a box of pralines and a single rose, and Mom kept the petals  as they faded and fell.” “Just like Mom,” I said, and we stayed  quiet for a bit. She then smiled and talked about my nephew,  Danny, her only child, who was studying to be an architect. She  brought up the old neighborhood, each rowhouse identical as if  it were a clone, and how we’d ride our blue bikes around the  block and not ever tire. “Mom would wave from the front porch  every time we sped past,” she said. “Imagine, sixty years ago,” her  voice as soft as the rain before turning bright again. “Remember  when I was nine and sick in bed with jaundice—my eyes had  turned yellow. You brought me a fuzzy dandelion from our lawn  and told me to make a wish… I remember so clearly, it was the  middle of May—May 16.” I laughed. “I wish I had your mind for  dates.” “I wish I still had the dandelion,” she said, looking at me  with that face she sometimes got. Just as I was about to ask when  Mom died, the nursing home attendant appeared and said  visiting hours were ending.

Middle Stages: The Fading 

She told me to have another and held out the box of chocolates,  the name of each on the raised lid. It had started to rain again,  softly, the high windows becoming teary and the room taking on  a ghostly pale. I picked one and she smiled. “Mom liked pralines  too,” she said, her voice bright. “They were one of her favorites.  Remember how, every anniversary, Dad came home from work  with a box of pralines and a single rose, and Mom kept the petals  as they faded and fell.” “Just like Mom,” I said, and we stayed  quiet for a bit. She then smiled and talked about my nephew,  Danny, her only child, who was studying to be an architect. She  brought up the old neighborhood, each rowhouse identical as if  it were a clone, and how we’d ride our blue bikes around the  block and not ever tire. “Mom would wave from the front porch  every time we sped past,” she said. “Imagine, sixty years ago,“ her  voice as soft as the rain before turning bright again. “Remember  when I was nine and sick in bed with jaundice—my eyes had  turned yellow. You brought me a fuzzy dandelion from our lawn  and told me to make a wish… I remember so clearly, it was the  middle of May—May 16.” I laughed. “I wish I had your mind for  dates.” “I wish I still had the dandelion,” she said, looking at me  with that face she sometimes got. Just as I was about to ask when  Mom died, the nursing home attendant appeared and said  visiting hours were ending.

Late Stages: And Yet 

She told me to have another and held out the box of chocolates,  the name of each on the raised lid. It had started to rain again,  softly, the high windows becoming teary and the room taking on  a ghostly pale. I picked one and she smiled. “Mom liked pralines  too,” she said, her voice bright. “They were one of her favorites. Remember how, every anniversary, Dad came home from work  with a box of pralines and a single rose, and Mom kept the petals  as they faded and fell.” “Just like Mom,” I said, and we stayed  quiet for a bit. She then smiled and talked about my nephew,  Danny, her only child, who was studying to be an architect. She  brought up the old neighborhood, each rowhouse identical as if  it were a clone, and how we’d ride our blue bikes around the  block and not ever tire. “Mom would wave from the front porch  every time we sped past,” she said. “Imagine, sixty years ago,” her  voice as soft as the rain before turning bright again. “Remember  when I was nine and sick in bed with jaundice—my eyes had  turned yellow. You brought me a fuzzy dandelion from our lawn  and told me to make a wish… I remember so clearly, it was the  middle of May—May 16.” I laughed. “I wish I had your mind for  dates.” “I wish I still had the dandelion,” she said, looking at me  with that face she sometimes got. Just as I was about to ask when  Mom died, the nursing home attendant appeared and said  visiting hours were ending.

—- Rich Youmans, Frogpond Vol. 48.3, 2025

The Far Shore

It began with small things — a misplaced word, forgotten keys, a pause before my name. You laughed it off — tiredness, nothing more. But the forgetting deepened, carving through you like water through stone.

By autumn, you were a river thinning at the edges. Hindi and Punjabi unravelled into each other, words folding over words. You forgot your grandchildren’s names but spoke of a childhood courtyard, of kites rising hard against the monsoon wind. Some days, you mistook me for your sister. Other days, you smiled at the empty chair beside you, speaking to your mother as if she had never left. 

low tide
the imprint of egrets
filling with water

At the nursing home, we sat near the window, where you pressed your palms against the glass, watching the world move beyond you. We brought your favorite dishes — lentil soup with cumin, warm rice pudding with saffron — but you only took a spoonful, tasting without swallowing, as if memory itself had become unfamiliar on your tongue. The broth cooled, rice congealing at the edges of the bowl. I held your hand, tracing the veins beneath your skin — blue, fragile, receding.

The last time I visited, I brought along the scarf you had left behind on your bed — burgundy with golden thread — and wrapped it around your shoulders. For a moment, it felt like tucking a child into bed.

wind through cedars
a falcon vanishes
into the white sky

—- Sandip Chauhan, haikuKATHA, Issue  43, May 2025

Lantern

under one roof

we played, ate, and most often

fought, but quickly resolved issues

for we needed one another. As we grew older,

moving in separate ways, we built walls higher and higher,

the interiors grew dark. Out of nowhere, a ceiling appeared,

a summit of opinions that refused to allow any redeeming

sunlight to freshen up our lives. Sadly, we are now only

moving in the opposite direction. So gradual a shift, we

fail to see it. In the sanctum sanctorum, I stand

before my Goddess with this

nagging thought

I am

a

l

o

n

e

ground fog:

in front of my eyes

things blur

pleating sunlight

did a cormorant skim across the lake

— Kala Ramesh, haikuKATHA, Issue 46, August 2025

Full Son

                   For mom, who made the garden grow  

            April sunlight warms              a bed of black

soil and dust between                the brick wall and our cracked

           cement path, the same           plot where the pansies

failed last year.                           She pointed to a packet

            in a drugstore display             and said, “Easy

to grow, see?” Sow                    in full sun, keep moist; 

           wait one to three                     weeks until the seed 

leaves spear loose soil.             Blooms attract butterflies.

            “C. sulphureus: It says           the Spanish conquistadors

discovered the species              while searching for gold

            in the New World.”                 Better than coming home

empty-handed, I’ve come          to realize, as I squeeze

            the trowel handle                   to part the dark earth.        

            joining you the border of orange and yellow cosmos

— Dylan Stover, cattails, October 2025 

Checkout Girl

neon enhances merchandise turns sallow skin
sallower dark circles cheap concealer layers acne
ugly blouse shiver fridges too close. shift starts hi
scan beep boyfriend beep exams beep clothes beep
broke beep pinch belly fat beep check collarbone
beep don’t beep think beep don’t think about beep
things you don’t beep want to think about beep here’s
your change. lonely men talk beep pretend beep to care
beep what does your name mean beep Joy beep pretty
like your eyes Joy beep smile beep cash card receipt
happy-rest-of-the-night watch darkness swallow them
whole. trolley squeal basket stack precarious clatter
splash rain drip overcharged who moved cereal. glass
bottle reflection window blank faces conveyor belt
jerks hi scan beep yawn beep notice everything beep
vegan-vegetarian-halal-lapsed beep comfort eats beep
new diet beep migraine beep addiction beep allergies
beep paranoid beep postpartum beep trying to conceive
beep light-medium-heavy beep angry beep sad beep
rich beep married beep breadline beep would take you
anywhere beep if you touched their hand and asked.
bags coupons baskets crash smirk told you so shelf
stacker tidies numb feet ache homeless bellows huddle
shrink shudder not paid enough to deal with this shit.
restless knuckle temples gnaw teeth scrape glitter nails
first last endless hour. get coat up down aisle marbled
plastic flesh red pink white mince steak thigh breast
liver scales gills reek gag outside stumble sewers bare
concrete trees sirens distant breathe pray ignore grubby
silver coin moon.

solar plexus unknotting the milky way

—- Farah Ali, Modern Haiku, Vol. 56.3, Autumn 2025

hungry little girl

after putting in                                                                            s
my contacts,                                                                                 t
i feel                                                                                                i
the weight                                                                                    l
of a soft                                                                                          l
wetness under my right eye
and imagine                                                                                s
an upside-down                                                                         k
hot air balloon                                                                            e
teardrop-sized,                                                                            l
hanging on                                                                                  e
in the dark                                                                                    t
sunken bed                                                                                 a
of my eye.                                                                                     l
i apply retinol cream
to pointy cheeks,                                                                        b
chin, forehead,                                                                            o
and bend                                                                                     d
at the waist                                                                                  y
with my head still up
not looking                                                                                   c
down, balancing                                                                         h
the tear                                                                                          e
while lathering                                                                            c
cherry blossom                                                                           k
lotion into atrophied                                                                  i

calves and thighs.                                                                       n
i’ve never                                                                                       g
held a tear this long,
how proud                                                                                    l
my father                                                                                      o
would be,                                                                                      v
how he’d like                                                                                e
me now, becoming
the son                                                                                           i
he didn’t know                                                                            n
he already had. i didn’t let
the tear spill,                                                                                t
didn’t let it win,                                                                           h
only to look                                                                                  e
at myself realizing
this tear,                                                                                        m
a fallen lens,                                                                                  i
dry and wrinkly,                                                                           r
sitting upright                                                                             r
full                                                                                                  o
of emptiness.                                                                               r

— Peg Cherrin-Myers, whiptail Issue 13 June 2025

An Interview for Floor Manager at the Haiku Factory

Tell me a little about yourself.

     common blue damselfly
     my name lost
     to the river

Why did you leave your last position?

     morning fog
     the bumblebees and I
     lost among lillies

Why do you want this job?

     mountaineering
     a polite decline
     of the peak

Where do you see yourself in five years?

     at the edge 
     of an autumn wind
     ripe strawberry

How would you define your greatest strength?

     morning meadow
     the scent of chartreuse
     collects a cloud

How would you define your greatest weakness?

     morning meadow
     the scent of chartreuse
     collects a cloud

 How does this position fit with your career goals?

     nightfall
     the crows assemble
     a larger dark

What would you say is your core expertise?

     river walk
     the endless rushing
     kaleidoscope

Describe a time you applied your skills a different way.

    midnight working through the silence owls

Tell me about your last three jobs.

     skunk cabbage dawn
     still making sense
     of the nonsense

Describe a failure and what you learned from it.

     dark forest
     warbles and croaks sketch
     the shape of it

What are your salary expectations?

     holstein dream
     the arc of a day
     outlines my back

Please provide a list of references.

     inviting shapes …
     the constellations
     that might exist

How can we reach you?

     green lake
     a passing trout
     borrows my name

We will get back to you with any next steps.

     beach walk
     my footsteps fade
     into fossils

— Kat Lehmann, MacQueen’s Quinterly Issue 30 Sept 2025

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