Farah Ali — Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun Winner 2025
Farah Ali is the recipient of a Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun for 2025 for the haibun:
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
Commentary from the Panel:
An exceptional haibun—raw, unrelenting, and formally inventive—“Checkout Girl” immerses the reader in a conveyor belt of observation, dialogue, and interior monologue. The prose accumulates fragments of customer interactions, self-talk, ambient sound, and bodily awareness, all punctuated by the insistently irritating “beep” of scanned goods. This repetition becomes structural as well as sonic, shaping the rhythm of the piece while enacting the mechanization of identity.
The title situates us within everyday retail labor. What unfolds is anything but ordinary. The language is driven by hard consonants—c’s and k’s—that echo the clatter and collision of objects: “basket stack precarious clatter.” This sonic texture arises organically from the scene rather than being imposed upon it. The sparse punctuation further reinforces the effect, the text moving in an unbroken stream like items along a checkout belt, each moment briefly registered and then displaced.
The “beep” functions as an intrusive metronome, fragmenting thought and dialogue while collapsing distinctions between inner and outer experience. In this way, the prose challenges the reader formally and conceptually, mirroring the psychic disorientation of repetitive labor in contemporary life. The closing monoku—“solar plexus unknotting the milky way”— offers a striking expansion. After the density and compression of the prose, this line opens into a luminous, almost cosmic awareness. It does not resolve the tension so much as reframe it, shifting from constriction to boundlessness. This juxtaposition elevates the haibun beyond social realism, contributing meaningfully to the genre by stretching its formal and emotional range.
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Comments (4)
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Brilliant, of course.
I had the luxury of writing in real time, entering a building, using its elevators etc… A kind of stream of consciousness surveillance notes, that I first practiced with Van Gogh. Why? There’s a special and different atmosphere at a Van Gogh exhibition
Van Gogh’s combat fatigues (Tate Britain)
Publication credit:
Weird Laburnum ed. Michael O’Brien (August 2019)
Note:
Published on the morning of the last day of the exhibition with thanks to editor Michael O’Brien
https://area17.blogspot.com/2019/11/van-gogh-painter-artist-haibun-by-alan.html
The People of Van Gogh
Publication credit: Blithe Spirit Vol. 29 No. 4 (November 2019) editor Caroline Skanne
https://area17.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-people-of-van-gogh-hybrid-writing.html
I’ve been in various widely glorious, dangerously weird aspects of retail and so I can imagine, through my eyes, and that of colleagues, what goes on.
I can assure you that whether fictive or blend, I can relate to everything in the haibun, as myself (as a piece of meat) or through my other gendered colleagues, and it gets more fantastical, but due to laws of the land, best not go there, go further. (smiles)
IT IS AUTHENTIC
The beep is genius!
It’s both the cash register, and blocking out sweary words just like on live television!
If you do a search on “beep” and leave them highlighted as you do a screenshot/screengrab you’ll see further genius. It also transforms to haibunga!
Pure social realism, as retail is much much wilder and weird, if you have been a participant rather than a brief customer.
Experimental haibun need not be gimmicky, just innovative, capturing the underside of the consumer process.
Yay!
Congratulations to Farah Ali on her Touchstone Award. On behalf of Modern Haiku, thanks for sending ‘Checkout Girl’ our way.
Hypnotic beeps a master-stroke. Raw, unrelenting, yes.
I guess other poetry lovers might recall Robert Francis’ innovative Silent Poem (1974) as a staccato, noun-rich prototype, in a way. But much, much tamer than Checkout Girl.
A magnificent haibun, in so many ways – a worthy winner. And if I may add, another insightful and thought-provoking commentary. Congratulations to the poet, and to the panel.