Haiku Garden

Abstract

Haiku Garden Harryette Mullen (bio) Find frogs and toads inevery yard. No garden iscomplete without them. Zipped tight in their sleep-ing bags—who could imaginetheir deep black-eyed dreams? Piquant peppers pleasetaunt tease with tongue-piercing taste,igniting desire. Of all edibleovaries, what could taste asluscious as sweet figs? Okra’s baby fuzzstiffens to bristles, loadedmissiles point to sky. Watermelon crossedAtlantic’s perilous waveswith blackseed cargo. Injuries sustainedwhile picking berries: snagged skin,bruised fruit, hurt feelings. [End Page 22] Harryette Mullen Harryette Mullen’s books include Recyclopedia (Graywolf, 2006), winner of a pen Beyond Margins Award, and Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California, 2002), a finalist for a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A collection of essays and interviews, The Cracks Between, published in 2012 by the University of Alabama, won an Elizabeth Agee Prize. Graywolf published Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary in 2013. A critical edition of her poetry is forthcoming in 2023 from Edinburgh University Press. She teaches courses in American poetry, African American literature, and creative writing at ucla. Copyright © 2021 University of Nebraska Press