The Coyote by Jennifer Shneiderman

Running through thick chaparral 

the Coyote

weatherbeaten smuggler 

of human cargo

abandons

exhausted, tattered families

like desert trash.

He knows

the children always die first

of painful exposure 

to dreams and elements.

The Coyote’s guilt howls 

at the moon

life dripping

seeping

an upturned canteen.

He finally rests

the branch of a fallen tree 

his pillow

misgivings and bark dig into his cheek

until the blood money smelling salts arouse.

The Coyote follows 

a broken compass

as time runs out

for his soul 

and for the hopeful.

Jennifer Shneiderman is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a writer living in Los Angeles. Her work has been published in Indolent Book’s HIV Here and Now, The Rubbertop Review, and the Poetry in the Time of COVID-19, Vol 2, anthology. Her poetry will be featured in upcoming issues of the Variant Literary Journal, the Bright Flash Literary Review and Writers Resist. 

She is the recipient of a Wingless Dreamer flash poetry prize.