Graceguts: Michael Dylan Welch's Blog, 2021

My thanks to Michael Dylan Welch for including the following collaborative work in his trifold, City Rengay, published in 2021:

Winnipeg Wind

by Michael Dylan Welch (in normal type) and Debbie Strange (in italics)

Portage and Main—

the wind whipping snow

after my missed bus

Assiniboine Forest at dusk

a deer flicks its tail

in the ruin

of St. Boniface Cathedral

a crushed snail

another heatwave—

Leo Mol nudes recline

in the garden

the Golden Boy

still pointing north

at Fort Whyte

the snowshoe tracks

of humans and hares

Note: this rengay first appeared in The Bamboo Hut's Hands Across the Water - A Journal of Collaborative Poetry, December 2018.

Failed Haiku - A Journal of English Senryu, Vol. 6, Issue 69, September 2021

Guest Editor: Hemapriya Chellappan - Linked Forms

Darkroom

duality

the shadows and light

inside memory

    exposing yourself

    for what you are

negative strips

I am nothing more

than a ghost

    changing your colours

    before my eyes

chemical bath

it would be so easy

to drown

    red light

    you stop at nothing

contact prints

these permanent reminders

to forget

Presence, Number 70, July 2021

resident owl

the rabbits that lived

under our shed

thirsty

for all the little things

we've missed . . .

brackish water fills

an elf-cup stone

Droplets

rengay with Jennifer Hambrick & Debbie Strange

empty street

rain falling louder

then softer

    time slows down

    to a drizzle

dripping eaves

a lone house sparrow

takes shelter

puddles of light

a raccoon rinses

its hands

    a wash of stars

    keeping their distance

petrichor

the earth lets go

of its breath

 

Mariposa, Number 43, Autumn/Winter 2020

white squalls

appear in the distance

without warning

this vision of something

I do not want to know

This issue includes the results of the 2019 San Francisco International Rengay Competition:

Rengay written with Jennifer Hambrick (in normal type) and Debbie Strange (in italics):

In the Key of Grey

hydro lines

the sixteenth notes

of grackles

morning

in the key of grey

the lullaby

of wind through grain

empty silo 

high lonesome

a crush of midnight

shadows

barbed wire

the descant of coyotes

curving

into the distance

a train's lament

Third Place (tied)

Excerpted from the judge's comments:

...It was one of very few rengay with a double theme. And the music references are skillfully incorporated into each verse, all of which relate very nicely to one another. I found this rengay to be very aesthetically pleasing.

—Seren Fargo

San Francisco International Rengay Competition, 2019

Rengay written with Jennifer Hambrick (in normal type) and Debbie Strange (in italics):

In the Key of Grey

hydro lines

the sixteenth notes

of grackles

morning

in the key of grey

the lullaby

of wind through grain

empty silo

high lonesome

a crush of midnight

shadows

barbed wire

the descant of coyotes

curving

into the distance

a train's lament

Third Place (tied)

Excerpted from the judge's comments:

...It was one of very few rengay with a double theme. And the music references are skillfully incorporated into each verse, all of which relate very nicely to one another. I found this rengay to be very aesthetically pleasing.

—Seren Fargo

The Bamboo Hut: Hands Across the Water - A Journal of Collaborative Poetry, December 2018

a poetry of place collaborative rengay

by Michael Dylan Welch (in normal type) and Debbie Strange (in italics)

Winnipeg Wind

Portage and Main—

the wind whipping snow

after my missed bus

Assiniboine Forest at dusk

a deer flicks its tail

in the ruin

of St. Boniface Cathedral

a crushed snail

another heatwave—

Leo Mol nudes recline

in the garden

the Golden Boy

still pointing north

at Fort Whyte

the snowshoe tracks

of humans and hares

 This rengay also appears on Michael's site at:

https://www.rengay.com/city-rengay/winnipeg-wind

Prairie Fire - A Canadian Magazine of New Writing, Vol. 39, No. 2, Summer 2018

Celebrating 40 Years

Taking the Pulse of Winter

(solo rengay)

a large day . . .

the prairie fills

with sky

          curled in the toe of my boot

          a barn kitten

hoar frost . . .

a barbed wire fence

snags the sun

snowdrifts . . .

the cattle flank-deep

in stars

          the silver flash of our blades

          frozen slough

northern lights . . .

an old windmill stirs

up the night