How much pain and anger can a good poet pack into just a few words? A lot, in this 15-word haiku by Laura Foley from her 2019 collection of poems from Headmistress Press entitled “Why I Never Finished My Dissertation,” her seventh book. Foley lives in Vermont.

Black Belt

Her husband in a coma,

she in the dojo,

learning to kill with her toes.

— American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It also is supported by the department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Introduction copyright 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. Unsolicited manuscripts are not accepted.