Milk Carton Haikus
when 17 syllables is just too …, uh, syllable-ly
Here at NCiR’ we have a love-hate relationship with the haiku (ok, some of us, to be fair). We recognize that they can be wonderful little capsules for delivering a dose of wisdom or humor, but there are so many mundane, colorless ones sloshing around.
So Harper Thorpe and I decided to have fun with the form and came up with a more challenging variation. A bout of brainstorming yielded the following:
Rules
- 3 lines, 4-5-4 syllable structure; that makes 13 syllables total — the next prime number counting backwards from 17.
- Subject matter can be ANYTHING! Seriously, anything but falling leaves, please!
- Should be funny, witty, irreverent or all of the above — this is after all No Crime in Rhymin’!
- If you do submit to us, please write at least 3 stanzas per submission. Hey — is 39 syllables really asking too much?
- Rhyming is not required as it isn’t with regular haikus, but if you do rhyme, it’s not a crime.
- That’s it!
Name — Milk Carton Haiku
Credit for the name goes to Harper. Milk Carton, because … “have you seen the missing syllables?”
Call to Action
This is not a time-limited contest or writer’s challenge. Feel free to try your hand at MCHs anytime, and if you do, please link back to this article, or tag your draft with Milk Carton Haikus. Or both. And of course, submit to NCiR’!
Examples
I was thinking must each haiku be five-seven-five?
have always been bit of a po-em iconoclast
imagine it’s haiku less fours bits it’d be the shits
less is more, folks let’s see how far ab- surdity goes
This is Where We Tag Our Haiku-Minded Friends
Slk.🎈, Sherry, Deborah, Giovanni, Guérin, Tracy, Dennett, Indira, David S., Thomas, Gosia, edh, Meg, Mary, Jane, Tre, E. Scott, Kathy, Ré, Christyl, Sarah, Zarina, Aaska, Michelle, Rebeca, Sam, Valerie, Elle, Cole, LB, et. al.
To Hear these Options Again, in Milk Carton Form, Click Below
