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I draw the curtains.     The room darkens, but

the mirror still reflects          a crescent moon.

I pull        the crescent out,          a rigid curve

that softens                    into a length of cloth.

I wrap the cloth around                     my eyes,

and I’m peering    through a crack in the wall

revealing                        a landscape of snow.

This is the address to the station that be playin the news, she say. Imma write to them and they gonna do a story on us.

I’m like, Yo, Kandese, that’s a good idea.

My mama put on the news every night. I didn’t know you could send them letters.

Ain’t no news cameras comin down here, Bernita say. Cops don’t even come here.

She love rainin on parades.

He climbed over the fence surrounding the Queen’s Pond, took off his clothes, and dived in, not caring whether a police squad would approach. The chill of water invigorated him as he waded through the lilies floating on top. He wondered how long it would take, if he allowed himself to sink, for the water to fill his lungs. He thought of monsters with long tentacles that supposedly lived at the bottom, and he imagined them tearing into his flesh. Would his wife be able to recognize the body?

I found a white stone on the beach

inlaid with a blue-green road I could not follow.

All night I’d slept in fits and starts,

my only memory the in-out, in-out, of the tide.

And then morning. And then a walk,

the white stone beckoning, glinting in the sun.

I felt its calm power as I held it

and wished a wish I cannot tell.

It fit in my hand like a hand gently

holding my hand through a sleepless night.

A stone so like, so unlike,

all the others it could only be mine.

The worldess white stone of my life!

but we are still at sea     we climbed into the rocking

boat again     the things that we could not afford

to remember in the vernacular      

                                                                       sun

                                                            sinking backwards into the world’s

                                                            light industry    Eros in idle hands

Still behind him was that damn coyote. A determined critter, he was. He hadn’t caught sight of him for at least an hour, but he felt his presence out there. At first he had feared him. Now he didn’t. If circumstances were different he might have welcomed the company of a coyote on a lonely walk on a snowy night. At best, the coyote’s presence was disconcerting. He was puzzled. Why would a coyote be so determined? Poor animal. It had been such a hard winter for man and beast.