Haiku Dialogue: What’s at Hand Week 8

This Post Has 45 Comments

1. So many interesting verses, a great mix of wisdom & wit! I may seldom contribute, but I keep reading these dialogues and hope to absorb some of this word-skill.

2. Thank you Craig and Pratima for your comments on my haiku.
   Interesting selection of haiku, I particularly like Martha’s ‘Spring cleaning, ‘ a haiku I can related to, Marion’s one liner ‘ date night..’,
   Pratima’s witty ‘our special request’, Alan’s relatable ‘I attempt to join up /some of the dots and Hifsa’s ‘fingerprints all over.’

   1. Dear Madhuri,
      .
      Thank you for “Alan’s relatable ‘I attempt to join up /some of the dots” 🙂
      .
      .
      Marion’s one liner aka monoku is very astute, and another great verse capturing the culture of take out/delivery food! I remember a decent company, now gone, that covered cuisine of multiple cultures, and able to mix Japanese and Indian, with something Western, and topped with Japanese beers like Sapporo or Asahi or Kirin, although I’m partial to Indian beers like Cobra too. 🙂
      .
      .

      date night rummaging for dinner in the drawer
      .
      Marion Clarke
      .
      .
      Ah, yes, very handy as a free taxi ride to the wider world! 🙂
      .
      .
      spring cleaning
      I take out a spider
      on a pizza menu
      .
      Martha Magenta
      UK
      .
      .
      And that’s service for you!!! 🙂
      .
      .
      our special request
      that they unknot the noodles
      take away menu
      .
      Pratima Balabhadrapathruni
      .
      .
      So takeout menus can be crime scenes! 🙂 I wonder what a CSI takeout menu or a mafia takeout menu looks like? 😉
      .
      .
      takeout menu…
      fingerprints all over
      the discount offer
      .
      Hifsa Ashraf
      Pakistan

      1. Madhuri, thank you.

         Alan, I cannot resist this:

         squatted mosquitoes
         on the blue scarf
         who*dun* it

         outtahheeeeer

         1. Ah, squatting mosquitoes, not paying rent, or just bending down? Here, if the scarf is high quality material, it will be clothes moths: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44080884

            1. if so simple, why do we try to solve it Watson? 🙂 cheerios

      2. Madhuri, thank you.

         @Alan,

         squatted mosquitoes
         on the blue scarf
         who*dun* it

         outtahheeeeer

3. Many thanks Craig, and to Laurie for the lovely comments.
   My particular favourites are: Marta’s, for the beautifully etched air of disappointment, and Olivier’s for the heart-warming cold-hot contrast.
   Congratulations everyone.

   1. Thank you so much, Helen, for your kind words.

      1. And I also like your haiku very much, Olivier.

   2. Thank you very much, Helen, for your comment!
      Love
      Marta

4. take out menu –
   his little black book
   her new twitter feed
   .
   B Shropshire
   TX
   .
   .
   It’s always an occasion when Betty Shropshire brings out a haiku!
   .
   This is chillingly brilliant. Is it autobiographical or pure fiction, or observational, perhaps in an take out cafe, with that very long contradictory wait for something called ‘fast’ food. Was Betty talking, during the long wait, to someone who had had enough and was doing her revenge, and all during the time it took for her meal to be bagged up to go?
   .
   How far did she get through the black book Betty? 🙂

5. Thanks Pat – a nice idea about echoes…

   old takeaway menu
   yesterday’s choices
   sweet and sour

   Cheers
   John

6. Craig, thank you for including mine, and for making my coffee break so much more enjoyable reading through these.
   Who would have thought such a common item as a takeout menu could produce so many ideas?

7. Thank you for including mine and your precious work.

   Love Joan B’s haiku:

   driving through rain
   for No. 27
   hot chicken soup

   it’s true and intimate

   Elisabetta

   1. Elisabetta, thank you for your kind comment.

8. this is such a collection and there are more amusing ones, and there are more of those that are deep as stories, but some are fascinating for me because I never guessed that was an angle too …

   date night rummaging for dinner in the drawer

   Marion Clarke

   I love the multiple pauses in the one-liner and how it changes the aha element with each changed read for me

   date/night rummaging for dinner/in the drawer

   is my most favourite way to read it, because I cannot but let my imagination lead me into various side lanes that offer different and mysterious often fantastic turns as to what night is looking for, what it will find, what is that date, …I come up with the chilling friday the 13th? and then laugh.
   Marion, I love love love your one liner,

   —

   surf’s up
   aware of Neptune’s sighs
   the fish dish

   Adrian Bouter

   i find this one funny, like Hagar asking what is for dinner and the answer being – yesterdays leftovers…
   but also possibly
   the fish that swam the sea and all the sighs of the sea were once part of its environment

   —

   takeout menu
   I attempt to join up
   some of the dots

   Alan Summers
   Wiltshire, England

   the ubiquitous dots that link the name of the dish to the price on the right side of the takeaway flyer
   the speaker is trying to see what is pocket friendly, perhaps…
   is the speaker also trying to think something else and is the speaker joining the dots to understand even as the choice of what to order is being made?

   —

   the trifold flyer
   of a chinese restaurant
   becomes a paper crane

   simonj
   UK

   oh yes, and tulips and what not, real observation of a fun moment

   —

   bacon flavoured
   vegan option –
   second thoughts

   Madhuri Pillai
   Melbourne, Australia

   yes indeed…very much in sync with the vegan world

   1. Thank you pratima,
      .
      .
      takeout menu
      I attempt to join up
      some of the dots
      .
      Alan Summers
      Wiltshire, England
      .
      .
      You said:
      :the ubiquitous dots that link the name of the dish to the price on the right side of the takeaway flyer
      .
      the speaker is trying to see what is pocket friendly, perhaps…
      is the speaker also trying to think something else and is the speaker joining the dots to understand even as the choice of what to order is being made?”
      .
      .
      Great breakdown!
      .
      I don’t think I was much for one having take out meals when I was single. My main memory was when I met Karen and she became too ill to manage her own meals. I’d get proper Indian take out from a small Indian corner shop, all nicely frozen and homemade, no weird additives, just beautifully made.
      .
      When my mother fell ill, and no one else would help, Karen managed to help, and we’d often, after being burnt out with 24/7 care, phone a company (now gone) that could take orders from any kind of restaurant. The food was often restaurant made to a good standard unlike the companies that now specialise in this. It was a lifeline, but of course it’s still not homemade.
      .
      Years later in another town our fridge, when we officially lived together, was dotted with take out meals, if we were to burnt out to cook. The dots are as you say, checking prices, and thankfully we had a gas station dead opposite for a decent bottle of wine and not too expensive.
      .
      We prefer to home cook as junk or trash food is not only expensive on the level of luxury food, with out the quality, but filled with excess salt etc…
      .
      The best ‘take out’ food was when I was doing conferences and conventions where the head of the security team was Indian, and we had a big team of amateur cooks bringing legitimate authentic Indian food better than any Indian food restaurant could wish to aspire to.
      .
      Indian food, when done authentically, is medicine, is home, even for a non-Indian, and goes beyond comfort, it’s ‘need’ and warmth and safety. My greatest desire was realised when I met my half-sister, and then my birth mother, a few years ago, and found out the father’s family ran a Pakistan/Indian food restaurant, and although geared mostly to British immigrants, called ex-pats, it was done with expertise and love and attention.
      .
      Not many take out food meals are done with joining up the dots of family and good obligations, hence the deaths that have occurred with corporate companies demanding high commissions. So support directly your own take out restaurant that puts safety and the family first.

9. Love, CRAIG, your apt observation that a “takeout menu makes a decent metaphor for modern life.” Thanks for including mine.
   .
   Felt kinship with traces of our humanity in:
   .
   VESSISLAVA’S hiding ‘the shopping list/for my new diet’ when spying a ‘take away menu’ —which even structurally takes first place with its opening-line prominence;
   .
   VANDANA’S ‘slip[ping] her phone number’ inside the menu, while ANTHONY noted ‘her phone number/ on the takeout menu’ itself
   .
   and MARION’S ‘rummaging for dinner in the drawer’ something we’ve all done in a pinch, if not other times.
   .
   Enjoyed the ubiquitous smudges of our human condition in:
   .
   ROBERTA’S ‘circling takeout/ on the menu’ while perhaps circling the other on a ‘first date’ encounter;
   .
   MARK’S ‘some sample splatters’
   .
   LAURIE’S wonderful one-liner, ‘stickymenusnewfusions,’ which feels gooey even to read,
   .
   KATHLEEN’S recognizable ‘soy stained…menu,’
   .
   JOHN’S ‘numbered list of things/ she says I don’t do’ which, it seems, shows up on one of the things he does do: order from take out
   .
   MARTHA’S ‘spider /on a pizza menu’
   .
   HIFSA’S ‘fingerprints all over’
   .
   CEZAR-FLORIN’S ‘mosquito’ that ‘tastes first’ and
   .
   ALAN’S perhaps doodling in his ‘attempt to join up/ some of the dots’ on the ‘takeout menu,’ we don’t know why.
   .
   Found pathos in
   .
   KIMBERLY’S ‘he used to call me / his little dumpling’ perhaps inferring she experienced herself as nothing more than an item on ‘a take out menu’
   .
   SERHIY’S solo McDrive
   .
   STEPHEN’S also solo ‘dinner for one’ on ‘Valentine’s Day’ which is not unlike
   .
   ANN’S ‘Friday night Chinese / the choices/ for one.’
   .
   JOAN’S ‘drinking through rain’ to pick up the very specific (and solitary?) ‘No. 27 / hot chicken soup’
   .
   CHRISTINE’S (at least for me) partly shadowed ‘he always was / on your takeaway menu’ with its concluding query, ‘cutlery for one?’
   .
   and ARVINDER’S ‘chair’ now ’empty’ of ‘grandma’ who ‘always insisted/ on her mccrum potatoes’
   .
   Almost giggled over
   .
   KATH’S ‘fried ice cream/ so good I write/advertising haiku’
   .
   MARTA’S ‘a mooching stray goes off / with my wings’
   .
   SARI’S ‘my stepmom orders/ the Happy Family’ and
   .
   SUSAN’S ‘I hold the menu /over my head and run—“ which I myself did in a recent downpour, and no doubt will again, it works so well
   .
   and B’S ‘his little black book’ juxtaposed with ‘her new twitter feed,’ different means to the same end.

   1. Thanks, Christina 🙂 It happened to me on the street in London (with a sandwich) many years ago!
      Marts

   2. Thanks Christina,
      .
      You said:
      .
      “ALAN’S perhaps doodling in his ‘attempt to join up/ some of the dots’ on the ‘takeout menu,’ we don’t know why.”
      .
      .
      takeout menu
      I attempt to join up
      some of the dots
      .
      Alan Summers
      Wiltshire, England
      .
      .
      It covers all kinds of things. When I was in my teens, take out places slowly emerged. It was a thing for teens, but out of my price range. In my twenties, I think a few of us ordered pizza but it was daftly expensive, for just a bit of flat bread with thinly scraped topping, meanness in extreme. It would have been cheaper to have gone to a restaurant perhaps. Joining up the dots.
      .
      Of course leaky ball point pens will leave their mark (dots of blue or black ink, smears and smudges, indentations, a history of indecision and knowing I didn’t want to do any washing up, which I’ve done since 6 years old).
      .
      We don’t pin take out menus on the fridge anymore. We don’t phone up dodgy companies that cover take away places nationally, so phone direct for a fish supper, or a curry, or better still, I can pop out and have a couple of pints of Kingfisher while waiting at the local Indian food restaurant. But lately, we stay in the place together, and fun interaction with the staff, and made their first female waiter very welcome on her first big day (I’m ex-catering).
      .
      Take out menus are histories. I wish I had saved them all over the decades, joining up even more dots of my past.

   3. Thanks Christina!

   4. Christina, thank you for your comment!

      1. And thank you back, Joan, for recognizing my focus on your ‘No. 27/ hot chicken soup.’ Its number added to its specificity for me — gave me the feeling it had been tasted and savored before, that it wasn’t just some generic dish. What you didn’t mention was my error in substituting ‘drinking’ for ‘driving’ for which I apologize.
         Someone who would drive through rain (often a put off) to pick up a very particular soup seems to have wanted it to work its magic again. A pointed, sparse and wonderful haiku, Joan.

         1. Christina, thank you. Coincidentally, two days ago I had some dental surgery done and have twice driven to the store for hot chicken noodle soup. My haiku got ahead of me!

10. One of those magical haiku that just like Salinger, could kickstart a short story or more! 🙂
    .

    takeout
    she slips her phone number
    with the menu
    .
    Vandana Parashar
    .
    .
    Is she a moped or van deliverer, the customer/deliveree, or a chance customer, or does she like the person at the shop counter, or the counter person?
    .
    .
    J.D. Salinger (author of Catcher in the Rye) created a number of haiku, and one haiku in particular became the catalyst for a famous character for a series of short stories, that of Seymour Glass:
    https://area17.blogspot.com/2018/10/taking-out-important-in-haiku.html
    .
    Amongst a bevy of incredible senryu and haiku, which I expected with this wonderful theme of ‘to go’ food, this one has that I want to know more tease that is wonderful.
    .
    Vandana Parashar, I feel you should start work on a haiku novel now! 🙂

11. John Hawkhead. Loved last weeks and this one!

    1. Thank you Rich, that’s made my day!

12. Friday night Chinese
    the choices
    for one
    Ann K. Schwader
    Westminster, CO

    This one resonates with loneness .

13. Another marvellous line-up, congratulations to all poets

14. Thank you so much, Craig, for including my take on the takeout menu haiku! And your perceptive comments too. So many excellent choices here! Thanks also to all the haiku poets here for these morsels. Anthony Rabang’s haiku made me think of the old brush-off trick of giving a takeout restaurant’s telephone number to a man who asked for your phone number if you did not reciprocate his feelings. Vandana Parashar’s is a bold move of giving your real telephone number to a customer that you are interested in dating. Both creative uses of takeout menu theme.

15. Thanks again , Craig! After reading through the posts, new ideas for a wide variety of hybrid recipes…

16. Great insights from Craig and the featured poets so far, I’m looking forward to reading more as they come. I enjoyed John Hawkhead’s for the surprise with many possible echoes in Line 3.
    takeaway menu
    the numbered list of things
    she says I don’t do

    1. Thanks Pat – a nice idea about echoes…

       old takeaway menu
       yesterday’s choices
       sweet and sour

       Cheers
       John

17. Thank you Craig once again for your thoughtful curation and this time, for including mine.

    Andrew Shimield’s skillful allusion to Brexit impresses me with both it’s ‘largeness’ and simplicity:
    .
    .

    Brexit debate
    arguing over
    the takeaway menu
    .
    andrew shimield
    .
    .
    As Craig observes, Andrew’s haiku brings up images of debates over food choices in a menu or perhaps while eating a takeout meal. These images ground the haiku but the use of the word ‘takeaway’ instead of ‘takeout’ allows our minds to take another leap to the agony of Brexit..on many tongues in news broadcasts, in homes, public places and of course in British Parliament.

    1. thanks Craig and Janice for your comments.
       Takeaway is the more common term in the UK. Our kids get obese on takeaways, not takeouts! I did consider both terms and takeaway seem to fit best.
       John Hawkhead’s and Hifsa Ashraf’s stood out for me.

18. Enjoyable poems all ! Thanks for including mine . Needless to say I feel in notable company. Yes,i agree with the melancholy bit. For me,it always works. Like…

    Friday night Chinese
    the choices
    for one

    Ann K. Schwader
    Westminster, CO

    McDrive
    snow on the car
    with myself

    Serhiy Shpychenko
    Kyiv, UA

    her phone number
    on the takeout menu
    midnight wine

    Anthony Rabang

    Found ‘special request’ very amusing.

19. Thank you for publishing my haiku Craig. By far the funniest for me is:
    .
    Karachi fast food
    on today’s menu
    ‘student burger’

    Ingrid Baluchi

    I was unsure about this weeks topic. I began drafting a haiku about a crow feasting on some throwaway fries, then I had a rethink and decided the topic must be the actual ‘takeout menu’ rather than dishes or food. My crow will have to wait for another day.

    1. Thank you, Martha! I can’t help seeing the funny side of things…
       Your ‘take out’ may have a couple of meanings these days, but I hope the spider found a more comfy place to stay:
       .
       spring cleaning
       I take out a spider
       on a pizza menu

       Martha Magenta
       UK

20. Thank you, Craig, for including my poem in this tasty selection.

    Love Joan B’s haiku:

    driving through rain
    for No. 27
    hot chicken soup

    Food temptation is hard to resist indeed!

    1. Olivier, thank you for your comment!

21. Laurie Greer’s monoku…so appropriate as you can just see everything stuck together including the fusions of new tastes.

    There is so much to savor and appreciate. I need to return to sampling all the tasty treats.

    1. Thank you for noticing, Nancy!

       And thanks to Craig for including it. Another batch of great poems this week.
       Especially loved :

       chill night
       extra chili
       to go

       Helen Buckingham
       Wells, Somerset, UK

       the repetition really clinches it–and so hard to use repetition in a form as tight as this
       masterful

       *

       spring cleaning
       I take out a spider
       on a pizza menu

       Martha Magenta
       UK
       nicely done–for wording and surprise
       *

       date night rummaging for dinner in the drawer

       Marion Clarke

       love the “d” drumming through–someone determined not to be disappointed
       *
       snow flurry
       in my takeout bag
       hot spring rolls

       Olivier Schopfer
       Geneva, Switzerland

       for the deft seasonal shift

       *
       so many choices
       we settle for pizza
       again

       Peggy Bilbro
       Alabama, USA

       for being so true
       *

       1. Thank you very much, Laurie, for your kind words.

22. Craig, thank you for choosing my haiku and for the insightful comments. Chicken soup is indeed the best cure for maladies physical and emotional!
    Joan

Comments are closed.