Haiku Garden: Poems from Earth
by Harryette Mullen
Fine royal garment
fashioned for a butterfly’s
fragile dominion.
Every flower, a
reminder of all that we
miss when not looking.
Maize that natively
dresses delightfully—not
ever uniform.
Turn on an onion
to shine light on the roots of
whatever you dig.
As if a sunburned
sunflower would turn away
from the blazing sun.
Future monarch, in
caterpillar nursery,
nuzzles milkweed leaf.
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 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 2022 from Edinburgh University Press. She teaches courses in American poetry, African American literature, and creative writing at UCLA.