WELL DONE! INDIGESTION by Barbara Anna Gaiardoni

WELL DONE! INDIGESTION by Barbara Anna Gaiardoni

It was not hard to find... a gigantic swath of torn-up ground extending to the horizon, but under that surface, there was something else. Perhaps the sea. The detection of salty ice indicated a reservoir of liquid water beneath its surface. Hard to know what that clue means. Crossing that border meant risking one's life. I took a step forward, and another, until I was walking steadily on a stretch of water. It wasn't what I saw that stopped me, but the sound of my footsteps and a loud noise in the background. A pandemonium of human cries choked by deformed sea creatures.

“I'm hearing the human cries yearning to be King”, I heard whispering. Panicked, I ran away to escape it. It got dark and then nothing more.

paper lanterns

breakfast milk weighs

on the stomach

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni is winner of the First Prize 2023 “Zheng Nian Cup” National Literature Price and finalist of the Edinburgh “Writings Leith” contest. She received two nominations for the Touchstone Award 2023 and recognized on the Haiku Euro Top 100 list for 2023.

Her Japanese-style poems have been published in The Mainichi, Asahi Haikuist Network, The Japan Society UK and in one hundred and twenty other international journals.