Your ghost finds my dream
and I have braved the apparition
like a medium’s fool grasping
straws to the other side.
I am the boy gathered in
for absorptive sounding
for the last observation
within the moral aura
before the world and he himself
are released upon him.
I have tamed the fierce temptation
to circle in the ring
so that even the beautiful girl
who smiles so demurely
and holds her head so conscious
of how her hair is parted
has to be gently
said nice discouraging words to.
Maybe I can haul
the lounge chair out tonight
gather up the sticks and light
the fire I have earned— 
I’ll keep it small
let it flicker
and let the stars imagine
how long ago I burned
before the light could reach them.

—Finalist in the KYSO Flash Triple-F Writing Challenge

Charles Hansmann

has recent fiction in Crack the Spine and Star 82 Review. He’s the author of five poetry chapbooks, most recently Apostasy of the Wayless Poet (Tebot Bach, 2013) and Poem of the Ahead Places (Kattywompus, 2013). His haibun and haiku have appeared in numerous haikai magazines and anthologies. A native of rural Wisconsin, he lives with his wife in Sea Cliff, New York.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Haibunesque, 3700-word article by Hansmann on working prose into lineated poetry for his chapbook of linear poems, The Loneliness Jacket; includes five poems and appears in Haibun Today (Volume 5, Number 2, June 2011)