Brian Hugenbruch
…like breaking glass
…………Oceans of mirrors—
…………the tide rushes toward us
…………like breaking glass
The waters ebb and flow through a nocturne of lunar pulls and scorching suns turning the silica floating there that used to be a beach a place of intersection introspection occasional resurrection before the water won || now there are no boundaries no commas no place for two-legged creatures to rest their feet save for plates of mirrored glass that form when scalding starlight strikes the waves just right — and just as well the bipeds didn’t live to see this mirrored hell for when would they have held themselves to looking inward seeing clearly how distorted their point of views might have been? All that remains are blackened goldfish near-poached in their shallows and those that would devour them if broken mirror shards weren’t apt to carve those on approach.
……………………………………………………………………………..Tide pool minnows
……………………………………………………………………………..mirror smiling sharks
……………………………………………………………………………..blood clouds in water
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Brian Hugenbruch is the author of more than sixty speculative fiction stories and poems. His poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling, Pushcart, and Best of the Net Awards; he has most recently appeared in Analog, Baubles from Bones, and Dreams & Nightmares. You can find him online at https://the-lettersea.com. No, he’s not certain how to say his last name either.
Author’s Backstory: I wrote this poem in 2024 in the middle of a horror kick, and it’s not the first inverted haibun I’ve done, but my goal here was to push the prose-poem portion in the middle, past more generic prosody into something more lyrical. The haiku both came naturally, and came first, with their themes on the dangers of reflections being taken for granted; but then I had to tie them together. I spent a while listening to slam poets because I wanted to bind the images together with something that felt like it was recited and escalated toward apocalyptic image, until we finally reached the remnant tide pool and the blood therein. (I don’t have enough experience doing slam poetry to do the middle justice, so I encourage readers to record their own versions and see how far they can push the poem viscerally!)
Editor’s Comments and Image Credit: The piece is a variation of a Haibun, where a piece of prose is complemented by a Haiku. Here, Brian bookends a prose poem with two Haiku. Though difficult to image, I managed to settle on (after ten different inputs) a Wixel image. This is what gave the best results: “Tidal pool full of minnows in bloody water, sharks in the shadows.” (A Reverse Image search produced no suspicious connections, nor were any of the images half as good as this one.)