Windfall Apples:
Tanka and Kyoka

About the Book

The venerable tanka and her upstart cousin kyoka mingle with Kerouac’s American pop haiku in five-liner imagist poems and linked sequences. In Windfall Apples, Richard Stevenson mixes east and west with backyard barbecue and rueful reflection.

About the Author

Richard Stevenson teaches English and Creative Writing at Lethbridge College. His most recent books include a lyric/narrative collection of poems, Wiser Pills (2008), and two collections of haiku, senryu, and tanka: The Emerald Hour (2008) and Tidings of Magpies (2008).

Download the eBook

Copyright: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.

MARC

Download the entire book

Richard Stevenson reads "Riding the Dragon" from Windfall Apples

Riding the Dragon ^{listen to audio}

(for Diane & Gepke)
first annual Dragon Boat Race Festival, Lethbridge, AB, 2002

dragon boat races —
breast cancer survivors toss
petals on the lake,
pray for their fallen sisters
while witnesses hold their boats

*

"feathering" it's called —
cocking the oar ever so
slightly left or right
to keep the boat straight, on course.
Oh, that treatment were that sure!

*

a rose is a rose —
the team named Chemo Savvy
know it in their bones;
still, their muscles must ache less
when they cross the finish line

*

stand on the gunwales
the coach advises steersmen —
get part of the blade
out of the water and you

*

we're all paddlers here —
those in the dragon boats who
row furiously
against fear's metastases,
those on the sidelines who yell

*

Dig! Dig! One! Two! Three!
the drummer yells to my mates.
power ten on three…!
I draw a bead from ball cap
to lamp standard peak and hold

*

Six/sixteen! she yells —
six deep strong strokes followed by
sixteen quicker ones.
engine room, power house lift
us up until we glide free!