Warm Enough to Live - M. Shayne Bell

after Mao Tse-tung’s poem, “Loushan Pass”

—for Debbie

In Salt Lake City,

some friends

are homeless.

One sleeps in a doghouse

she heats

with candles.

I said: winter

with

me,

but we have no

money

for a bus ticket.

Here, north in Rexburg,

leaves still cling to trees,

though snow

has covered the ground.

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M. Shayne Bell received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1991). His haiku have been published in Modern Haiku, The Heron's Nest, The Wales Haiku Journal, Journal of the British Haiku Society, Stardust, Tinywords, Sunstone, Shot Glass Journal, haikuniverse, and Mainichi Japan (where his haiku were listed among the best English-language haiku of both 2015 and 2017). Bell has also published poetry in The Ghazal Page, Cathexis Northwest, Fibonacci Review, High Shelf, Typishly, Dialogue, Asimov’s, and Once Upon a Midnight (an anthology commemorating the 150th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”). Mr. Bell and his four cats live in Rexburg, Idaho.