Peg Cherrin-Myers — Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun Winner 2025

Peg Cherrin Myers is the recipient of a Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun for 2025 for the haibun:

hungry little girl

after putting in                                                                            s
my contacts,                                                                                 t
i feel                                                                                                i
the weight                                                                                    l
of a soft                                                                                          l
wetness under my right eye
and imagine                                                                                s
an upside-down                                                                         k
hot air balloon                                                                            e
teardrop-sized,                                                                            l
hanging on                                                                                  e
in the dark                                                                                    t
sunken bed                                                                                 a
of my eye.                                                                                     l
i apply retinol cream
to pointy cheeks,                                                                        b
chin, forehead,                                                                            o
and bend                                                                                     d
at the waist                                                                                  y
with my head still up
not looking                                                                                   c
down, balancing                                                                         h
the tear                                                                                          e
while lathering                                                                            c
cherry blossom                                                                           k
lotion into atrophied                                                                  i

calves and thighs.                                                                       n
i’ve never                                                                                       g
held a tear this long,
how proud                                                                                    l
my father                                                                                      o
would be,                                                                                      v
how he’d like                                                                                e
me now, becoming
the son                                                                                           i
he didn’t know                                                                            n
he already had. i didn’t let
the tear spill,                                                                                t
didn’t let it win,                                                                           h
only to look                                                                                  e
at myself realizing
this tear,                                                                                        m
a fallen lens,                                                                                  i
dry and wrinkly,                                                                           r
sitting upright                                                                             r
full                                                                                                  o
of emptiness.                                                                               r

— Peg Cherrin-Myers, whiptail Issue 13 June 2025

Commentary from the Panel:

Every once in a while, haibun come along that elevate the genre to new levels of creative innovation. 

hungry little girl is just such an expression. It is a joy to recognize and relish the extraordinary gestures in this winning haibun.

The piece opens with our narrator involved in highly relatable habits of care – lenses, lotions –  those daily moments that generally unfold in front of a bathroom mirror. An unexpected sensation interrupts this routine, and an intimate journey ensues. Emotional control, profound transformation, aging, and complicated relationships all arise to be held in tender and precarious tension as we read our way down a rather narrow column of prose. At the bottom, we learn that an uncooperative contact lens inspired the protagonist’s deep reflection. 

While an errant lens might be a slight irritation, here it plays an outsized role in the construction of meaning. Beyond contact lenses’ literal impact on visual clarity, we can imagine that our human capacity for healthy loving relationships also relies on clear-eyed perception and understanding of self and other. How achingly poignant then, is the protagonist’s admission that ends the prose – that such a slight yet enormously important device is full of emptiness. 

Emptiness as a conceit plays well throughout this haibun; it underlies a highly effective concrete design that offers negative space with ma resonance. In addition to its evocative title, there are two areas of text in this piece – the aforementioned prose that flows in a column down the left hand side of the page, and a single sinewy haiku that drips vertically, letter by letter, on the right. These areas of text bracket a vast white space in the center of the page – empty, indeed. hungry little girl is actually a rather short haibun that intentionally takes up an entire page, effectively drawing our eyes in multiple directions. Perhaps the most striking path takes us from left to right, as if the narrator is looking across the void at a bone-thin rail of letters that may double as an actual mirror, reflecting what’s hoped for but unavailable.

A final word on how these various innovations work together. The title of the haibun utilizes a strike-through to intimate what the reader will discover half-way through the prose; as a voiceless gesture, the strike-through points to but does not name. Nor does the haiku summarize the story. Instead, it offers a visual imagining that takes the narrative one step further – in this case, into emaciation – that has no room (despite the expansiveness of the page) for wholesome love and acceptance. Combine these with intriguing spatial dynamics and a story well-told, and we have an exceptional haibun that conveys much more than the sum of its parts. A deeply moving experience to read and admire.

THF strives to maintain a safe and friendly environment for our readers and site participants. Participation in our offerings assumes respectful and appropriate behavior of all parties. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason, at any time. 

If you see something you feel may violate our Code of Conduct, please report it to the appropriate moderator or the President here.