Six tanka by Andrew Hamlin

• If you’ve thrown open
• the window in winter,
• stuck out your head
• to behold only whiteness...
• it still isn’t me

• He simmers,
• legs over arm of his chair
• and I took him first
• for a femme...
• save, of course, thin sideburns

• From somewhere
• a song reaches the bathroom
• His love is like
• a hypersonic missile
• ...I zip up and wash

• My nights,
• strangely fractured--
• ah, but the hard part
• (says my brain to my soul)
• is defining “strangely”

• Old loves in frames,
• in photo albums, keepsakes...
• but shrouded now,
• green-black of the garbage bags,
• last load to the dumpster

• And I’ll have to hope
• for some distance, from the blast,
• silent roiling
• the hole in the middle
• swallows all named souls...

Andrew Hamlin likes to photograph shoes and write about dog shit. He was born and raised in Seattle, where he resides today. He attended the Evergreen State College, where he wrote and edited arts coverage for the Cooper Point Journal. He is the film critic for the Northwest Asian Weekly, and he’s published arts coverage and criticism in the San Diego Reader, Village Voice, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, Goldmine, and other publications. He misses Helen Wiggin. Hamlin’s website is www.andrewhamlin.org.