Haiku About Humor

Humor in haiku succeeds by keeping a straight face. Ray Scanlon sends a WOMAN WINTER-WRAPPED scurrying on SEA LEGS, and the poem saves its punch for the final line, A PENGUIN IN BLACK SPANDEX AND PINK. The comparison is unkind and exact, and the title, Shape-Shifter, lets it land without apology.

The police blotter

Nancy May writes in the voice of a crime report: a SPATE OF BURGLARIES in the garden pond, with MISSING GOLDFISH. Nothing is exaggerated. The humor comes from the official tone applied to a pond. Valentina Ranaldi-Adams does something similar with a single word: IN SUBURBIA A LIVE GOOSE STANDS ON THE ROOF. The word live is the joke, because it implies that the neighbors were expecting a plastic one.

The grade that never comes

Judith Kerman’s poem is titled English Teacher Haiku, and the occupation is the setup. The poem begins with an essay written on a frozen pond, a bird-footprint essay, and ends with a refusal: I WILL NOT GRADE THIS. Only a reader who has marked papers will feel it fully, and everyone else will enjoy it anyway.

When the joke is also a sadness

Miriam Sagan describes how an old couple fight, with the verb CAN'T hanging at the end of one line and REMEMBER arriving alone on the next, the word the whole fight forgot. It is funny because the quarrel goes on without its reason, and a little sad for the same cause.

Questions readers ask

Is a funny haiku a senryu?

Usually, in the strict sense. Senryu is the cousin of haiku that turns to human nature and often to humor, while haiku traditionally looks to nature and the seasons. In practice the line blurs, and this journal looked only to the content of each poem.

Does a joke need a punch line?

In three lines, the last line is the punch line by default. Notice how many of these poems hold their funniest word until the end: spandex, goldfish, grade.

Does humor weaken a haiku?

No. The form has always had room for comedy, and short, exact observation is how comedy works anyway.

More themes to read

AnimalsWriting and PoetryFood and DrinkFamilyCity LifeAll themes

Last reviewed November 2026. Poems are the work of the poets credited and link to their pages in the original issues.