Four Tanka
she says to copy
the night’s assignment
in my diary
a girl flies off
the point of my pencil
she says to read
the next twenty-eight pages
in the book
he tips on the edge between
tables in the lunchroom
leaving the orbit
of desks, white boards, and coat hooks,
he waves, explaining
black holes are extremely dark
but you can still survive them
raindrops spot the glass
with tiny gray-skied planets
one by one they fall
my outdoor voice is too big
for recess in the lunchroom
© 2012 Elizabeth Ehrenfest Steinglass, all rights reserved
I’ve spent the week exploring tanka. I’m drawn to the idea of two resonating images. I think perhaps tanka lend themselves to expressing some of the dilemmas of being a kid in a grown-up world.
I think it might be fun to do a tanka activity in a class of older elementary or middle school students. I can imagine giving everyone the same first three lines (maybe the first three of the last tanka above) and asking the kids to write the last two. It would be so interesting to see what everyone came up with.
Hi Liz- I enjoyed your tanka! There is a journal called Ribbons that publishes tanka. Have you heard of them? You shoud submit your poems to them. : )
I enjoyed these. It would be fun to see what a classroom of kids came up with from those three lines. Thanks for sharing.