Suburban Haiku: Poetic Dispatches from Behind the Picket Fence

That Whole Foods trail mix/is for this Friday’s playdate./Just have a Pop-Tart.

At Target for socks/but we do need a blender/and patio chairs.

Peyton Price, author of Suburban Haiku, says, “If I can help just one parent through karate class, it will all have been worth it.” Her collection of haikus on suburban life is hysterical, spot-on and skewering the fond lies people tell themselves with accuracy and wit.

I’m kind of new to the suburbs. I raised my children in Mauritania, in the Sahara desert (don’t feel bad–no one knows where it is). They played soccer on the streets with neighbourhood kids too, but those streets were unpaved and choked with trash, leftover bits of slaughtered goat (mostly the horns), and there were packs of feral dogs roaming around. No one worried about peanut allergies but we had to be careful to avoid anything with pork and alcohol so as not to offend our Muslim friends. So sort of the same, sort of different. When we moved back to Oregon, we decided to settle in the suburbs because of the schools, just like so many others. It’s been over 3 years now, but my family has definitely gone through a period of adjustment. We are now suburbanites ourselves, although we still sometimes feel we don’t quite fit in.

Her name is Kaylee/spelled C-a-g-h-l-i./By whom, exactly?

Price says, “People who live in cookie-cutter suburban houses shouldn’t write haikus about people in the neighbouring houses because when your kids are about 12 years old, they will become familiar with the meaning and proper use of the word ‘hypocrite.'” (p 92) But, as she goes on to point out, she has really done all of this for us. Her brave exploration of the world behind Pottery Barn curtains and perfect lawns, her intrepid forays into PTA meetings and organic cafes, have allowed her to show us their secrets, bare to us their souls.

Ladies at the spa/moaning “I soooooo deserve this”/most likely do not.

Suburban Haiku is delightful. I laughed my way through it, then found that my daughter had already read my copy and tweeted certain haikus to her friends.

She used her friend’s phone/for an emergency call:/”Mom! I need a phone!”

Peyton Price’s skill will have you in stitches, recognizing the foibles of human existence in this wild new world called Suburbia. I highly recommend it.