MJ Cunniff

Plastic Hour

When the raccoon knocked the trash over in the black mid-March wind,
they scattered, plastic bottles skittering and clicking on the pavement,
and running, now, little clear raccoons, bottle-capped and bright-eyed
with Nutrition Facts tails, growing stubby legs as the wind screeches louder
and the raccoon herds them all through a break in the chain-link,
scuttling her new-mother's body down after them, into the grass and dark.

MJ Cunniff is a poetry editor for Strange Horizons, a grad student at Brown, and definitely not an autumn wind trapped in a jean jacket and combat boots. Follow them howling through the trees at @finishmywords.