A Year Spent in Central New York

My neighbor, whose cigarette
smoke wafts up heating vents,
yells at the television, cursing
immigrants//demands a wall.

I used to take my cats outside
to play, but then he set loose
his dog, who I tackled and held
to the ground. He said she liked

to eat squirrels, didn’t know
the difference between them
and cats. He was pleased,
unconcerned by the whining
beneath my body. I whispered

calmly into her ear long enough
for my creatures to get safely inside.
Before dark, I triple check door
locks while sipping hot tea made
bitter by droppers full of weed.

He’s yelling at the television again.
I look out on the snowy darkness,
the ice–heavy tree limb tips as bones
pointing me back to the desert.

Author of the article

Rachel M. Hanson's nonfiction has won Best of the Net and earned Notable Mention in Best American Essays, and her work can be found in American Literary Review, Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, Juked, North American Review, and many other literary journals. She is an assistant professor in English at the University of North Carolina Asheville, and she founded and runs Punch Bucket Lit: A West Asheville Reading Series.