By: Christopher Brooks

Streetlights

My neighborhood at night
is haunted by ghosts
of children playing stickball in the streets.
When a car approaches,
they yell, “car!”

But the car cannot see them;
they are ghosts—
people of no color whatsoever.

The car continues to careen
madly through the dark,
blinding the empty sidewalks
with its halogen headlights.

In the distance,
a solitary figure walks a dog.

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Old Snow

Old snow,
gritty, pocked with footprints
and scraps of litter, marked
by dogs with brown and yellow,

has lost the charm it had
while drifting through the sky
like mystery.

A few piles will persevere ‘till spring
in shaded nooks, under rocks and porches,
hard, sooty, and forlorn.

Old snow,
no one loves you anymore.