Our sequences, collaborative tanka, and tanka prose reach from Neolithic Ireland to medieval Vietnam to memories of modern childhood. Mythology is a common theme, with poets finding inspiration, lessons, secrets—and terror—in the ancient stories. The bones of Jewish children become a plaque in a Paris street; in New Mexico, a woman finds oblivion under the fiery skies. No longer are monsters hidden in the mists; they enter our veins and run openly, but invisibly, through the streets of our cities. M. Kei is a tall ship sailor and award-winning poet. He is the editor-in-chief of Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, and the author of Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack (Recommend Reading by the Chesapeake Bay Project). He is the editor of Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka and compiler of the Bibliography of English-Language Tanka. He has published over 1400 tanka poems.