Tanka : take a seat

plop down on a squab
rest beneath a gambrel’s beam
an air con’s cool breeze
door splits summer heat outside
sip iced liquid for a spell

tanka by M. Nakazato LaFreniere

I thought squab was a fat little bird, roasted and tender.  Rather surprised to find out it’s also a stuffed cushion — which explains some confusion I felt upon reading a Victorian novel.  They did not have a pooping bird on their gorgeous divan after all.

Being in Arizona, “summer heat” always feels inadequate.  I thought of using “blasting heat” or “furnace heat” because  a dry heat at 110F/43C feels like a furnace blasting your skin off when you rush from air conditioned car to similarly cooled buildings. It’s a little intense here in the summers.

Weejars challenges us to work with commonplace words but to use their synonyms rather than the word itself.   It’s always fun to read a thesaurus for synonyms because it’s like “oh, yeah, I forgot that means the same thing” plus you often learn a new word like “gambrel.”  I habitually search a thesaurus for one or two syllable alternatives because haiku/senryu/tanka has limited syllables and it’s a challenge to make each line a sentence/complete thought.

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MLMM’s challenge words & synonyms used

cushion: squab
roof: gambrel
fork : split
water : liquid
for a time : for a spell

References:

Same Same But Different, 19 May 2018
Saturday Mix
Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie

Liquid
Weekly Photo Challenge
Daily Post

©2018 photograph by M. Nakazato LaFreniere
long tall lemonade at Zinburger, Tucson, AZ
blueberries, vodka, lemon, elderflower

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