A Baked Potato

Here’s the very first poem from my index card boxes for poems that start with the letter A:

a baked potato

wrapped in aluminum foil

the cold campfire

I wrote it on 17 June 1994 in Foster City, California, where I was living at the time. Starting in 1998, I had submitted it without success to Modern Haiku, Presence, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society’s Haiku Journal and later their annual anthology, then to Frogpond and South by Southeast. But no bites. This was probably because the poem is not much more than a report. The poor potato was seemingly forgotten after the campers left, so perhaps their absence and forgetfulness is something unsaid in the poem, but that may be rather slight for a successful haiku. I next submitted the poem to Geppo, where Yuki Teikei Haiku Society member poems are always accepted, and then voted on anonymously, and it was finally published in the summer of 2007, about thirteen years after I wrote it. This poem is hardly a hero, but it is unsung, and I offer it as a quotidian example of many poems in my boxes of index cards.

I confess that Geppo is often where I’ve sent some poems to die, although surprisingly quite a few still received a substantial number of votes and appreciations (see “Geppo Commentaries”). In fact, the following three poems each received the highest number of votes in their respective issues, despite being previously rejected by six, nine, and ten other journals or contests, respectively, and were featured in The Best of Geppo (San Jose, California: Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, 2025):

first morning light—

the comb’s broken tooth

down the drain

roadside stand—

I ask the farmer’s daughter

to reweigh my potatoes

winter morning—

the dog sneezes

on my bare foot

The success of a poem is somewhat subjective, and maybe even happenstance, as these examples may attest. For better or worse, I hope you’ll enjoy exploring the poems itemized on my pages for “Haiku from Index Cards,” with these selections hopefully giving each poem a new lease on life.

—17 May 2025 (previously unpublished)