Your Love Inhabits

Love Sedoka #1

Your love inhabits
my brain, fills me with thoughts of
your kiss, your touch, your hips be–

–tween my thighs, sinking
in, reaching out, exploring
the places that make me melt.

—Nortina

This poem was originally going to be a tanka, but that last line wouldn’t go away, so I did some quick research on other Japanese poetry forms and discovered the sedoka, which is a pair of 5-7-7 syllable katauta, or half-poems. In this form, the two katauta would address the same subject from different perspectives and could stand alone.

I read somewhere that the katauta form was often used to address a lover. So, in a way, the sedoka could be a call and response between lovers, though technically that would be a mondo, but sedoka sounds more sophisticated. Besides, Mondo was the name of my pet fish in college.

Learn more about Japanese poetry here!