Milk Carton Haikus

when 17 syllables is just too …, uh, syllable-ly

artist: Shannon VanDenHeuvel

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

Have You Seen The Missing Syllables?