Frank J. Tassone

Tag: haibun

  • In Absentia Ponderings

    A sweltering heat arises. The muffled hum of window-unit air conditioners from other classrooms penetrates the relative silence of the one in which I currently sit. Lights and AC off: I have need of neither, yet. The intricacies of this profound writer’s block continue to challenge me. True, the competing concerns of work and volunteering…

  • Bird song sonata

    Before sunrise. Before even the break of day. The first robin begins the overture. Others soon carry the melody. Soon, the sound of their choral arrangement shakes away the last hope of sleeping in. Before sunset. Before even the hint of twilight. The last robin refrains the coda. The harmonies have ended. Only the last…

  • I, Chicken Parmesan

    I rise from a corpse of poultry. Cold steel flays the fat off of me. Yellow yoke bathes me, before immersion in flour and breadcrumbs completes me. I first face the fire in a vat of boiling oil. Every impurity scourged from me, my texture a golden brown, warm marinara sauce pours upon me. The…

  • Mythic Menagerie

    The last traces of blue sky shrink away. A mass of moist gray swells in its place. Still, the budding maple leaves on the trees across the street reflect the golden hue of setting sun. For a moment. across this mad inscape purple tigers for dVerse Poets’ Poetics: Naming the Rose (pubtended by Merril Smith).…

  • Patience

    The frozen, dry earth slowly thaws and quickens in the gathering heat of spring. The pandemics that ravage the world slowly contract until the last cases become memory. The defeaning explosions of missle strikes and shell fire, the rumble of collapsing apartments and hospitals, the screams and cries of civilians: even these fall away to…

  • Miniscule Hope

    Awaiting that flutter of butterfly wings that summons Tsunamis. Yearning for the mustard-seed-sized faith that moves mountains. Wondering what quark will be the lever that lifts the universe. Trusting in the smallest of the small, for in what else can I? hazy moon a single cherry blossom floats to the ground

  • Sakura Amore

    The garden of the Garden State teems with new flora. Mira and I stride the grounds on an unseasonably warm, sunny good Friday. Forsythias and daffodils almost shine as they bask in the afternoon radiance. The white Cherry blossoms have just peaked, while their pink cousins already fade. We stride among giants I could not…

  • Sword in the Stone

    He tells me the sword is my destiny. Crazy old fool! How is a peasant like me the rightful heir to the Pendragon throne? Me—king of the Britons? It’s a cruel joke perpetrated by a frightening crank. Why have I taken my place in this line? I can already hear the jeers from onlookers. What…