HAIKU DIALOGUE – Poet’s Choice – Gourmet Gallery – taste & intro to Social Issues

Welcome to Poet’s Choice

Let’s talk about haiku!

This is the final installment of Poet’s Choice for now… next week we welcome Guest Editor Lori A Minor for a new series on Social Issues:

It’s no secret that the entire world has been divided since the beginning of time, whether that be by race, class, religious beliefs, or even cliques in high school. There’s only one way that we can learn to love unconditionally and that’s through empathy and understanding. Over the month of November, I’d like to take some time to get to know one another by sharing our diverse life experiences on the theme of social issues. Everyone has specific social issues that affect them.

The importance of social awareness in haiku is not to change opinions, but to show the opinion from our own perspectives. What personal experiences have we had to make us passionate about that particular issue?

For the month of November, each poet may send one or two haiku/senryu on the week’s theme via our Contact Form.

There will be a selection process in which I will briefly comment on a few of the selected pieces.

The haiku appear in the order in which we receive them. Please note that by submitting, you agree that your work may appear in the column – neither acknowledgment nor acceptance emails will be sent.

next week’s theme: Social Issues – Basic Human Rights

We will explore basic human rights. These include, but are not limited to: freedom of religion, healthcare, the right to education, the right to work, the right to a private and family life, the right not to be mistreated or wrongly punished by the state etc. Although I have provided suggestions, I leave this as open to interpretation as I can.

The deadline is midnight EST, Saturday November 9, 2019.

Poet’s Choice: Gourmet Gallery – taste

Here are the submissions for this week:

Big Mac Meal®
only son’s mouthful
of mother’s milk

Mark Gilbert
UK

 

high fever
lemon pickle – tongue’s
first crave melted soon

Radhamani sarma

 

this cabbage soup
as sweet as
mother’s love

M.S.Chintak
Kathmandu

 

his coldness
the sting of ginger tea
on chapped lips

Anitha Varma
Kerala, India

 

pumpkin pie
a slice of mother’s love
on my tongue

Kumarendra Mallick

 

Autumn evening
The strong spicy taste
of chicken roast

Dennys Cambarau

 

chili peppers ~
call the fire department
fire on the tongue

Goran Radičević

 

merlot
an oak barrel
fills my mouth with plums

nancy liddle

 

casa lontana…
in pentola l’alloro
e la castagna

home far away…
in pot the laurel
and the chestnut

Francesco Palladino

 

sweet memories –
savoring together
bitter chocolate

dolci ricordi –
assaporando insieme
il cioccolato amaro

Angela Giordano
Italy

 

the crunch
I thought was a roach
fallen tooth

Jackie Chou
Pico Rivera CA USA

 

mushroom satay
the umami taste
of eryngii

Christina Chin

 

taste of childhood
biting into a piece of
freshly baked cake

Anjali Warhadpande

 

dinner party
my tears from the too spicy mutton curry

Nuky Kristijono
Indonesia

 

banana bread
right out of the oven –
a hint of honey

Roberta Beach Jacobson
USA

 

crispy pie
made from apples and dried grapes –
the taste of cinnamon

Zdenka Mlinar
Croatia

 

digestive fire…
cumin seeds
at it’s best

Lakshmi Iyer

 

guests arrival –
tasting kofta curry
with fingertips

Muskaan Ahuja
Chandigarh, India

 

spicy enough
to know you ate
Korean beef soup

Judith Hishikawa
NY

 

heavenly nectar
who can remember it’s taste
mother’s milk

Vishnu Kapoor

 

pilgrims trail…
with a beginner’s mind
I pack my sandwich

Kanchan Chatterjee

 

Thanksgiving Day
pumpkin pie tastes
like in childhood

Serhiy Shpychenko
Kyiv, UA

 

sweet-sour
hot-mild
– the middle road

joel

 

memories of taste
draws me closer to it –
sweet curd

Aju Mukhopadhyay

 

candy tuiles
my new recipe inspired from
Gulliver in Lilliput

Neelam Dadhwal
India

 

there’s no hunger great enough to make me eat my wife’s cooking

Franjo Ordanic

 

taste and judgement
set aside
hotdog eaters belly up

Garry Eaton

 

green bug –
the crunchy taste
of an apple

cimice verde –
il sapore croccante
di una mela

Angiola Inglese

 

sliced raw porgy
good with mustard sauce –
midwinter

Teiichi Suzuki

 

family dinner
dessert always includes
some bitter chocolate

Kathleen Mazurowski

 

love in a crust
sweet and sour
lemon meringue

Debbie Scheving
Bremerton WA

 

coffee reading
the bittersweet taste
of unknown

Vandana Parashar

 

stygian coffee
dunking my doughnut oh oh oh
mmm

simonj
UK

 

good taste in his mouth
before delivering hot
holiday dinners

Sherrod Taylor

 

head cold
the flavor of chai tea
there if I think about it

Laurie Greer

 

first taste
for mama
my homemade bread

Pat Davis
Pembroke, NH USA

 

beautiful
big red pepper
without taste

Slobodan Pupovac
Zagreb, Croatia

 

Another blind date
Chinese restaurant – the taste
Of sweet and sour

Margie Gustafson
Lombard, IL

 

grape –
the taste of his lips
in each berry

Maria Teresa Piras

 

smooth wine
the taste of
this fall

Maria Concetta Conti

 

shepherds –
their gourmet lunch of onions,
bread and tangy goat cheese

Ingrid Baluchi
Macedonia

 

eve’s pudding
I spoon my way
through sweetened apples

Joanna Ashwell

 

hard to distinguish
between flavours
dinner in the dark

Olivier Schopfer
Geneva, Switzerland

 

orange tomatoes
fresh from her mother’s garden
the taste of sunlight

Susan Rogers

 

Lent –
shape of a fish with a taste
of the roast pork

Tomislav Maretić

 

sweet wheatish pancakes
waft through the air
a childhood memory

Eva Su
Indonesia

 

from just reading it
homemade brownie recipe
such a contact high

wendy c. bialek
prescott valley, az usa

 

a cinnamon candy
sweet and bitter
late autumn

Tomoko Nakata

 

in the teacher’s desk
last year’s Halloween candy
chalky aftertaste

Sari Grandstaff

 

on a diet the bittersweetness of chocolate

Lori Zajkowski

 

savouring every sip
of my morning cuppa
dawn solitude

Madhuri Pillai

 

orange marmalade –
the taste of mother’s hand
long after

arvinder kaur
Chandigarh, India

 

games of tongue –
the pleasure of love
with the taste in the mouth

vincenzo adamo

 

smoked mountains
mornings first speech
aftertaste of maple

Ron Scully

 

lingering campfire
the flavors of one more
s’more

Steve Tabb

 

ripe grapes…
the sweet taste of his words

uva matura…
il gusto dolce delle sue parole

Rosa Maria Di Salvatore

 

winter’s night
dog star dances
with my breath

Veronika Zora Novak

 

black chocolate:
All Souls’ Day
even more bitter

Elisa Allo

 

beech nuts
a taste of the forest
in my hand

Xenia Tran

 

step-land…
savoring the terroir
of the wine

Michele L. Harvey

 

strawberry mouth:
sweet red words precipitously

bocca di fragola:
dolci parole rosse a precipizio

Giuliana Ravaglia

 

I love sugar cubes
they go really good
with honey too

Paul Geiger

 

raspberry drizzle
the sweet warmth
of her tongue

Rich Schilling
Webster Groves, MO

 

shredded and devoured
the cat’s craving for
packets of parmesean

Kath Abela Wilson
Pasadena, California

 

first taste
it was gentle
remaining so

Saša Slavković
Slovenia

 

Dobar jutar, kruh
i putar, čaj od šipka
Okus sjećanja

Good morning, bread
and butter, rose hip tea
The taste of memory

Zrinko Šimunić

 

chilly afternoon
in the creamy pumpkin soup
the taste of summer

cezar ciobîcă

 

whipped cream
makes me weep –
encore

nikita c.

 

still on my tongue
the crisp of peppermint
meringue cookies

Greer Woodward

 

hidden surprise
among the greens
jalapeño

Peggy Hale Bilbro
Huntsville, Alabama

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. A novice haiku poet, she lives in New York City.

Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She is Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019).