Book of the Week: tenement landscapes

Paul David Mena is one of the first haiku poets to make a smooth transition from primarily internet exposure to the print world. This, his first book (A Small Garlic Press, 1995), affords glimpses of many of the themes he would subsequently make his own.

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library.

Do you have a chapbook published 2010 or earlier you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details.

Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by Jim Kacian, and are used with permission.

    in the taxicab
      a goldfish
restless in his bowl

      Tompkins Square:
an old man teaches Tai-Chi
  to a crowd of pigeons

 unable to escape
the subway station
   of my dreams

     after the fireworks
the thunder and lightning
       of the IRT local

        an old cop
who would rather not
  wake up the drunk

      punching a hole
through the Soho night —
        amber moon