Gringo Haiku

My fellow writer friend Leah Feldon and I were desperate to come up with something for the first San Miguel Authors Anthology, but we hadn’t been in San Miguel long enough to have written anything about it. Sitting around over a couple rounds of tequila, we wrote a piece on ‘Gringo Haiku,’ based on the traditional Japanese poem form of 17-syllables, in lines of 5-7-5, about the vagaries of San Miguel gringo life, with a faux-academic introduction. It got great laughs, so we turned it into a little book. Here are some samples:

In San Miguel you
never know for whom the bell
tolls, or why, or when.

Carnelian sun slants
on red tiled roofs. I wonder
what it will sell for.

On Vonage wings and
wireless internet I reach out
to the old country.

On jardín benches
a row of stopped geezers eyes
the brown-eyes chicas.

Rain glistens on the
cobbled streets and the arm slings
of fallen women.

More Gringo Haiku coming soon. Contributions welcome, but juried by our panel of critics....