POSTCARDS IN SEARCH OF: SEARCHING, EILEEN SENDS POSTCARDS

To Tom Beckett (Kent, Ohio), July 2025:

To Rachielle Sheffler (San Diego, California), July 2025:

To Ella deCastro Baron (La Mesa, California), July 2025:

To Sandy Hansen (Torrance, California), July 2025:

To Mini Mac Mahfoud (Fresno, CA), July 2025:

Text of Card:

Dear Mini,

It’s lovely to hear of your expanded family which you took to a European holiday. Because your family is large, you made me think of the concepts of “bounty,” then “quantity.” So I thought I’d share a new poem “Monostich (i).” A monostich is a one-line poem. This is inspired by the concept of a large number, like your family—I hope you like it:

Monostich (i)

Stars outnumber even mosquitoes

Have a great summer!

Eileen

To Jean Vengua (Monterey, California), July 2025:

I have a lot of respect for poet-artist Jean Vengua, and thought she would comprehend the message of my hay(na)ku poem (whether or not she agrees):

POETICS (2025)

age into

form, not content

To Leny Strobel (Santa Rosa, California), July 2025:

Since Leny Strobel and the Center for Babaylan Studies introduced me to the Filipino indigenous trait of “kapwa,” I’m glad our postcard exchange allows me to share my “kapwa-tid” poem that was published as part of the artist France Viana’s efforts to add the pronoun “siya” to the Oxford English Dictionary. Be Kapwa!

To Aileen Cassinetto (San Mateo, California), July 2025:

Of course I had to response to Aileen’s postcard with its “American Sentence” poetry form with my own such sentence:

Color is a Narrative: The Black Rose

White reveals marriage leads one to become widowed from one’s self.

A Background to creating my poem for Aileen:

My novel The Balikbayan Artist (Penguin Random House SEA, 2024) features chapters beginning with color-related meditations. I thought I’d mine those meditations for something I can turn into an American Sentence. I opted for the meditation that begins Chapter 19: “The artist thought, ‘Colour doesn’t control its meaning. White is worn by widows in South Asia. Thus, white can imply to marry is to become widowed from one’s self.’”

This particular meditation made me consider something I’ve long observed: color is a narrative. Thus, I wrote my poem which I first structured as a haiku before deleting line-breaks to create an American Sentence. Since the American Sentence is a minimalist form, I thought the haiku—which is even more compressed due to its line-breaks—might help me push the minimalism:

Color is a Narrative

White reveals marriage

leads one to become widowed

from one’s self.

I turned the poem into an American Sentence but because it began as a haiku, I wanted to incorporate some element of nature. So I thought of the black rose which I’d once read doesn’t really exist in nature. I thought the black rose would be apt for the poem’s persona turning away from its true self. So I edited the sentence to look like

Color is a Narrative

White reveals marriage leads one to become widowed from one’s self—like a black rose.

Still, I wasn’t happy with the ending. It feels artificial to me. But I still wanted a reference to nature through the rose. I ended up then with this final (for now) version which moves the reference to the title:

Color is a Narrative—The Black Rose

White reveals marriage leads one to become widowed from one’s self.

As a writer, I’ve long experimented with the idea of color as a narrative. So I’m pleased with this result that also taps into my long-held interest. I hope readers enjoy it as well.

To Michael Leong (Columbus, Ohio), July 2025:

MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION is a book offshoot of my project “The MDR Poetry Generator.” I thought its multi-layered conceptual underpinnings would be of interest to Michael, who's also an excellent conceptualizer, so I sent him the book.

To Alex Golden (Palm Springs, California), July 2025:

For my postcard to Alex, I wrote a “Mother” hay(na)ku because whenever I think of Alex, I inevitably think of his generosity that includes giving me a doll that once belonged to his mother.

Mother

—a Hay(na)ku for Alex

You are so

wonderful, I

even

came to love

your wonderful

Mother

You can see Alex’s mother’s doll--of Marilyn Monroe--on the left corner of this desk that contained the start of my Miniature Book Library.

Thanks Alex!

To Marianne Villanueva (Redwood City, California), July 2025:

It was lovely to briefly reminisce over the days when Marianne and I were just starting out as writers--for that alone I'm glad we traded postcards. Because Marianne sent me her new book Residents of the Deep, I also sent a book to accompany my postcard--my flash fiction collection Getting to One, created in collaboration with harry k stammer. Exchanging words can be fun!!!