Haiku Tribute: Onibaba

Mask among moonlight,
grimace with a lacquered gleam
and a pox beneath.

Bare-breasted mother
nurses demons with the milk
her dead son once drank.

The pitfall awaits
in the midst of envy’s chase;
a hole unsated.

Samurai are stripped
like carrion in the field
for handfuls of rice.

Japan is haunted
not by the ghosts of the dead,
but of the living.

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