responsive and linked poems
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One Dusty Trail Ends Where One Begins
Vicki Miko
“Follow those wagon ruts, Hickory, you take the lead.” She patted his mane, “a lazy soakin’ is what we need.” With her dangerous habit of talking out loud, “I swear on my grave, Muldoon, you won’t last the day, not even a sidewindin’ rattler can swag with a fat rat in its belly.” Over a mile Annie and Hickory take a shortcut, the mugginess was thick, but she knew they were close.
her gentle friend
all of fifteen hands tall
leading past a shallow knoll
she knows he won’t drink
from a bad waterhole
she slides from the edge
into the cool spring
scrubs down with a pine bough
a bar of lye, castor oil
and pounded sage
the warmth
of mid-morning
dries her glossy skin
Annie and her Hickory
roll wild in the yarrow
(an ongoing saga from:
“Shadows of the Saguaro
The Wiles of Cactus Annie May
and Bad Jack Muldoon”
by Michael H. Lester and Vicki Miko)
Tanka Society of America
Ribbons
Liz Lanigan, Tanka Prose Editor
Spring/ Summer Issue 2024
Desiderium
Vicki Miko
Michael H. Lester (italics)
screen cleaning
the way she looks
through windblown curtains
flickering candlelight
the delicate skeletons
imagining the rhapsody
of the first time
a steady rush
of mayflies
sea breeze
caught in a web
of indecision
Split Sequence
The Taste of Sunlight
Sothern California Haiku Study Group
Anthology 2023
Mind Full
Vicki Miko
Michael H. Lester (italics)
I never knew
summer regrets
and youthful indiscretions
he too was young once
Daddy knew their name
blue convertible
the shimmy
of her red hair
wild hollyhock
spring equinox
he fills the vase with flowers
from the meadow
Split Sequence
The Taste of Sunlight
Sothern California Haiku Study Group
Anthology 2023
Settling in for the Night
Michael H. Lester, Los Angeles, CA
Vicki Miko, Costa Mesa, CA (italics)
Bad Jack lays his weather-beaten poncho on the ground, smooths it out with his rough, sun-browned desperado hands, and sits cross-legged on one corner, depositing rocks on the other three corners to keep them in place in case one of the occasional gusty winds comes down from the pine-encrusted slopes of the Sierra de Guadalupe. He glances up at El Capitan through squinty eyes, one hand pressed against his brow to shield them from the brilliant red-orange glow of the setting sun, the other reaching into his pocket for a box of matches. He finds a stogey in his satchel, strikes a match, and lights up.
that scratching itch
again he laments
now to find himself
a waterhole for a hated bath
a waste of easy time, he says
After a few leisurely and deep drags, which Bad Jack exhales out of his nostrils, he snips off the hot ashes with his calloused brown fingers and puts the two-inch stub back into his satchel, removing at the same time a ratty old deck of playing cards—a trusted companion, along with his stolen horse, Eduardo, for a solitary bandito always on the run, such as Bad Jack Muldoon.
coffee brews
in a banged-up tin can
over the campfire—
you can’t win at solitaire
with a 51-card deck
in an instant
his keen hand detected
one missing card
in his first spread he saw
it was the Queen of Spades
it stood for
strength and clever dealing
to keep him sharp, he was told
to remember the map
and where he hid the stolen gold
the scent of pine
and freshly laid manure
waft gently
past Bad Jack’s aquiline beak
Eduardo snorts and flicks his tail
MacQueens Quinterly
Tanka Tales
Clare MacQueen, Editor-In-Chief / Curator
Issue 21, January 31, 2024
A Painful Reminder
Michael H. Lester, Los Angeles, CA
Vicki Miko, Costa Mesa, CA (italics)
Tucked in a side pocket of Annie’s saddlebag, the Queen of Spades from a ratty old deck of playing cards, the upper right corner missing. She had found the card in the shack where she tracked down Bad Jack, who escaped through a back window while Annie was busy relieving herself in a prickly cactus patch, the nearest thing to a private place she could find.
a rise
from the heaps
if ever was a card, she believed
so fortuitous of meaning
of fettle and cunning
After confirming that Bad Jack had flown the coop, Annie spends the next three hours in the abandoned shack removing more than one-hundred cactus spines from her bottom. The deeply embedded ones she couldn’t get out herself would have to wait for the doctor when she reaches Laredo to resupply.
never squat
in a prickly cactus patch
and never
turn your back on Bad Jack
things Annie learns on the trail
MacQueens Quinterly
Tanka Tales
Clare MacQueen, Editor-In-Chief / Curator
Issue 21, January 31, 2024
Not All Good Things Come in Threes
Michael H. Lester, Los Angeles, CA
Vicki Miko, Costa Mesa, CA (italics)
a stone cairn
marked with a warning
birth, time, death
through the eyes
of a banshee
They call them the inseparables, joined in body and spirit, that unholy trinity of gunslingers and gamblers, womanizers, and drunks, who leave a trail of blood and destruction from saloon to brothel in every dust-covered outpost from El Paso to Nogales. Their mustachioed faces appear on wanted posters everywhere offering a fortune in dollars or pesos for their capture, dead or alive, but no man, woman, or child has yet to claim the reward, receiving only a bullet in thegullet for their trouble.
Pa Walt taught her early
how to trigger a Renette
and how to use
those second eyes
in the back of her pretty head
Ma Willa always said
have your way with money
gird it just enough
hide some in a trusted spot
and give the rest away
Annie rips three posters off the crumbing cork bulletin board of the pony express office in Tucson, stuffing them in her saddlebag and adjusting the rifle snug against the mare’s rib cage. It’s been a while since she’s dragged an outlaw by the scruff into the sheriff’s office to collect a bounty, and the total for these three reckless, feckless, and neckless banditos adds up to a mighty tidy sum—enough to buy her a shack in Chihuahua where she can settle down and grow cacti
and yucca for potions to sell to the natives and to the medicine men and women on the reservations. And there is that pair of snakeskin boots at the trading post in Tombstone with her name on it and a whole lot of leather for notches with the hunting knife she wrestled off a drunken hobo that tried to stab her with it for no apparent reason.
bartering spider whiskey
for silver, saltpeter, gunpowder,
her Derringer
tucked inside
her diamondback boot
MacQueens Quinterly
Tanka Tales
Clare MacQueen, Editor-In-Chief / Curator
Issue 20, September 15, 2023
What Happens in the Desert
Michael H. Lester, Los Angeles, CA
Vicki Miko, Costa Mesa, CA (italics)
When the dust settled, no one ever knew if Annie was bringing in Bad Jack, or if Bad Jack was taking Annie for a long walk to the desert’s end. The shadows kept quiet, as shadows do, vanishing into the dusk without a trace, keeping the secrets that lay buried under the windblown sand, close to the vest, like Aces and eights. Graves, marked by the occasional saguaro, where iguanas stare glassy eyed into the blinding, blistering hot sun, waiting patiently for a sandfly or dragonfly to happen by, punctuate the dead silence, as the wind whistles past whipping up eddies of centuries old sand. Even the Bad Jack Wanted posters are no more than shadows of the man, a face masked in jet black stubble and sun-scorched skin, with lines and creases deep as a scrub-covered ravine.
waking to the sound
of a throaty chortle
Annie lies heavy on the cot
“be still, sora mea,” she said
“you’ve been shot”
in her delirious state
she calls, “Sable, Sable”
adjusting to her pain
inside her burning dream
she’s lost her reckoned claim
the last she recollects
sojourned at the gypsy camp,
“my name is Tala Rosalee,”
she said, “you and your mare
were all but dead”
MacQueens Quinterly
Tanka Tales
Clare MacQueen, Editor-In-Chief / Curator
Issue 20, September 15, 2023
A Place Among the Dingos, Jack Rabbits, Diamondbacks, and Vagabonds
Michael H. Lester, Los Angeles, CA
Vicki Miko, Costa Mesa, CA (italics)
hidden between
the skin of her canteen
Annie’s secret stash
the hinterland map, a note
and a wad of ransom cash
she has no need for legacy
a lichen etched name
on a herbaria marquee
only to find her love daughter
Tala Rosalee
more than one seek
the outlaw’s reward
Annie’s last bit of cash
now lies at the bottom
of the gorge
No one has seen Annie since she left Tucson full of bourbon and mind-twisting memories of Bad Jack before he turned bad. Annie’s mare shifts from hoof to hoof, tied to a yucca in the middle of nowhere. There must be a billion stars in the night sky, and the moon hangs precariously, tethered to nothing over this godforsaken hell hole of a two-bit dustbowl town. A horsefly buzzes the mare’s tail incessantly.
a ripple
disappears on the rocks
of a stream
where Annie bathes naked
except for her snakeskin boots
it’s a fine sunset
turning the sky blood red
and the faint trail
leading to the horizon
will be gone by morning
MacQueens Quinterly
Tanka Tales
Clare MacQueen, Editor-In-Chief / Curator
Issue 20, September 15, 2023
Where They Once Ran Wild
Michael H. Lester, Los Angeles, CA (italics)
Vicki Miko, Costa Mesa, CA
the wranglers
have long since departed
but their shadows
so much larger than life
remain etched in stone
downed fence
a girl reaches
for the lone mustang
shivering
in the headwind
where wild herds strayed
in the canyon’s sweet clover
beneath her feet
a broken totem
of granite and mountain sage
an omen
in the late afternoon
she knew she couldn’t stay
she stroked the mare’s mane
then slowly turned away
wind winnows
through the rye
a girl’s shadow
in a field beyond
the sylvan and the mire
Tanka Society of America
Ribbons
Susan Weaver, Tanka Editor
Fall Issue 2022
A Bad Jack Rabbit
Michael Lester, Los Angeles, CA
Vicki Miko, Costa Mesa, CA (italics)
devil’s claw garlands slipped around the mare’s neck gypsy charmer
The sun at her back, Annie aims her rifle at the saguaro, both eyes narrowed in concentration, focusing all her attention on the instant Bad Jack comes into sight. Annie waits until the rush of water slowly abates, until it is just a tinkle. She gives Bad Jack a slow, silent count to ten, giving him time to shake off the last few drops and pull his pants back up, but just as Annie gets to seven, she hears a rustling behind her. Turning around to see what it is, Annie takes her eyes off Bad Jack just long enough to lose sight of him. A jackrabbit burrows into the ground a few feet away. There is no telling when Annie will get another shot at Bad Jack, and the sun can get mighty hot around noon in the desert.
a wrangler
wearing a week’s work
of trail dust
barrels through the tavern doors
like a tumbleweed in a cyclone
her fedora flies
over the heads
of the boozy barflies
and lands square on the tip
of the dusty moose rack
quick to her feet
she sidesaddles the bar
to stage a clever magic trick
she plucks one silver spur
from the cowpoke’s ear
Failed Haiku Issue 79 June 2022
The Desert is for Desperados
Vicki Miko, Costa Mesa, CA (italics)
Michael Lester, Los Angeles, CA
midnight balm
she sips on pokeweed whisky
lulled by the scorched wind
her sun always sets
in the east
Being a bounty hunter is no piece of cake, especially for a woman, but Annie’s better with a gun and a rope than any man I know. She’s in the desert right now tracking down a desperado what stole two bags of gold from the money train just last week. The bounty on Bad Jack Muldoon is $5,000 and Annie’s fixing to bring Bad Jack in to the sheriff’s office and collect that reward.
Bad Jack hides out in a shack near the border. A landscape of tumbleweed and sickly saguaro cactus punctuates the rocky desert scrub. Annie lies prone behind a sizable boulder and aims her rifle straight at the front door. If Bad Jack takes one step out, she’ll shoot him in the knee and take him back to town on a mule.
lilts of sage
she polishes the barrel
on her cheek
and carves another slash
on her boot
Tanka Society of America
Ribbons
Liz Lanigan, Tanka Prose Editor
Volume 18, Number 1, Winter 2022