no birds but smoke

from a fire. the air is

cold sun melting snow

on asphalt. shopping

carts spun out in the

slush and exhaustion.

HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?

when I have no cash

and some leftover fish

there’s a lesson in that, isn’t there

I needed to make it to a lake. My friends were waiting. I

knocked on a door. An old woman answered. “Yes?” she

said. She sounded like my dead grandmother. She looked

like my dead grandmother. She was not my dead

grandmother.