Thanks / May the Fourth Be with You

Friends, a belated thank-you here. Many thanks to my poet buddy and blogger fellow Thomas Alan Holmes, for writing April poems with me all last month. You rock, dude. (Sorry this is so late. My partner Renee was in the hospital from Tuesday through Sunday (yesterday) and so I was distracted.) Everyone, if you're a Star Wars fan, you know that the 4th of May is a fun day because "May the Fourth be with you" is a pun on "May the Force be with you," a classic greeting in-universe. Here's a little poem connected to my Rod Con appearance recently. (Rod Con is an annual comic-con at Rod Library on the University of Northern Iowa campus, where I gave a reading from my book Dragons & Rayguns last month.) May the Fourth Be with You             —tanaga Three weeks ago at a Con Renee and I dressed as Han Solo and Tsuru, from One Piece. Ang araw at buwan. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Renee and I at Rod Con (April 2026) The tanaga is an ancient Filipino poetic form (7-7-7-7 syllables, rhymed AAAA, traditionally untitled but sometimes titled now). The Tagalog phrase in the poem is "The sun and the moon." I'm of Filipino ancestry so I was glad to learn of this form recently. It's a very small space to work in, especially because of the monorhyme. I wrote this poem as part of the Stafford Challenge, where hundreds of poets across the world are writing a poem a day. Today is day 108, so my 108th poem this year. This is my second time doing the challenge, so counting the poems from last year, this is poem #473. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ