Frank J. Tassone

Tag: haibun

  • Enshadowed

    Somewhere in the dark, the wrong wolf smiles. He gorges on the warm flesh of a fresh kill. I keep tossing him easy game. Somewhere in the light, the right wolf snarles. His belly growls as the bones of his last meal crumble. I keep failing to toss him any game. Thus, my own personal…

  • Apologia

    I’m sorry. You deserved better than for me to disappear without a word. I did not intend to ghost you, but that is what I did. I understand if you have moved on. There’s no sense in awaiting new content when it has not come in almost three months. You deserve an explanation, at least.…

  • Under Pressure

    The omega. Always the last to feed, despite my part in the hunt. Always the butt of snickers, warning growls, scuffles—and the bites and flesh tearings that drive me apart. Always the omega. All because I run to my own heartbeat. Because my howl is my own. Because the pack would rule me when I…

  • Solstice Sorrow

    First light arrives before five in the morning. The birdsongs arrive with it. A cacophony of twittering, and avian arias, shatter my sleep, and any hopes of returning to it. By afternoon, however, a scattering of songs—at well-spaced intervals—may arise. This abundance of radiance—so close to the end of the academic year. This longest day—followed…

  • 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).…