Coyote Run

Another day’s closure and they are back
ululating through long limbs of dark
yippee yaa yaying & yodeling as night grew

this was their jam I often listened to
wild ukulele sonatas impervious to us
as the pack let loose howls stirring the pitch-

black, the whole caravan out for a cruise
catching scent of deer while wild cherry trees
held squirrels holding their breath

as that tribe moved in self-proclamation.
Now lights of new houses across the valley
are like eyes blinking open where they shouldn’t

making nights less and less dark
I lean against my window, mad desire
seizing me it is all I can do to stop

from flinging the back door open, from
running to join them in the yawning obsidian
with my furious lust for life for

doing the doing of living I’d forgotten
how to do between a pandemic making
of new housing developments gradually

enveloping. I reign my self in, let the fever
pass, as their last throaty serenades
linger smoke on rain

touching many panes other faces peer out of
into the late-hour wide awake now
for a moment everyone remembering

the wild drumbeat of our rib-caged hearts.

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Eman Hassan received a PhD in poetry from the University of Nebraska. Her collection, Raghead, was Editor’s Pick in the New Issues First Book Award (2019) and a finalist in the 2021 Oregon Literary Awards. She has work published or forthcoming in Blackbird, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mizna, and in the anthology, We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Descent, among others. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.