HAIKU DIALOGUE – Intoxication – Falling in Love

Thanks as always to Guest Editor Alex Fyffe! Now for Part Two of Guest Editor Deborah Karl-Brandt’s theme of intoxication – happy writing! kj

Intoxication with Guest Editor Deborah Karl-Brandt

It has been with us since time immemorial, and almost all of us have experienced it firsthand: intoxication. Endorphins produced in the body during exercise give us a feeling of happiness known as a “runner’s high,” and once again we are intoxicated. Intoxicants have been used to awaken our spirituality, make us forget physical hardships, or elevate our imagination to unprecedented heights. And yet intoxication has its dark side. In the coming weeks, we want to explore how legal intoxicants affect us, our brains, and our everyday lives. I invite you to join me on a journey into our everyday lives and our brains to explore intoxication.

Prompt: Falling in Love

A whole swarm of butterflies seems to be living in your stomach right now. There’s an electric shock when your shoulders touch, your hands get a little clammy, and your knees go weak. Congratulations! You’re in love. Now there are three of you: your love, you, and your brain. When we fall in love, the body releases a powerful cocktail of hormones, including serotonin, phenylethylamine, dopamine, and oxytocin. The reward center is activated, euphoria is triggered, and the body is put on alert. Once again, we are high.

Write about what it’s like to fall in love or to have never been in love. Have you fallen in love with the process of falling in love? I look forward to reading your poems.

The deadline is midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Saturday, August 15th, 2026.

Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry. (The Submit button will not be available until the Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in.) In the Poem box, with your poem(s), please include any special formatting requirements & your name & residence as you would like it to appear in the column. Please note that by submitting, you agree that your work may appear in the column – neither acknowledgment nor acceptance emails will be sent. All communication about the poems that are posted in the column will be added as blog comments.

Join us next week for Deborah’s selection of poems on the topic Falling in Love…

Bios

Guest Editor Deborah Karl-Brandt lives in Sinzig, Germany, with her husband, two rabbits, and a sizable collection of books. After completing her PhD in Scandinavian languages and literatures, she works as a freelance writer. Her works have appeared in numerous haiku and short poetry magazines and have earned her several honorable mentions, second place in the haiku competition at the 2021 Pula Film Festival, and the 6th Star Haiku Contest Overseas Grand Prize in 2025. Also in 2025, she was selected as a fellow for confluence. She has also served as a guest editor for Haiku Dialogue since 2023. Her new book, Wild Rabbit Moon, was published in 2026.

Assistant Editor Lafcadio, a former teacher, now works from home writing, editing and proofreading study guides for nursing textbooks. She lives in Tennessee. She has written poetry for a long time but a couple of years ago fell in love with Japanese micropoetry and hasn’t looked back. Lafcadio has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She writes under the nom de plume of Lafcadio because nom de plume is so fun to say. You can read her poems on Twitter (X) @lafcadiopoetry or BlueSky @lafcadiobsky.

Assistant Editor Vandana Parashar is an associate editor of haikuKATHA and one of the editors of Poetry Pea and #FemkuMag. Her debut e-chapbook, I Am, was published by Title IX Press (now Moth Orchid Press) in 2019 and her second chapbook Alone, I Am Not, was published by Velvet Dusk Publishing in April 2022.

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. She lives in New York City and enjoys reading and writing haiku.

Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She served as Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada for ten years, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.

Portrait by Laurel Parry

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Photo Credit:

Banner Photo credit:  Andreas Brandt

Haiku Dialogue offers a triweekly prompt for practicing your haiku. Posts appear each Wednesday with a prompt or a selection of poems from a previous week. Read past Haiku Dialogue posts here.