I Sit Up Nights Hunted by Jay Passer

I sit up nights hunted
Among spirits of departed

the woman beside me sleeps
As searchlight moons panic the windowpane

Outside in the jackal cold
I chase the pump kicking frost for a john

Pigeons hop to the clatter of old hypo
Cosmic rut reflects ghost face

strained veins of loaded players
pondering the next move, eye of Fatima

at the Outsider or Loaded Aces or the Ha Ra Bar
Clack of pool ball

Jay Passer’s work was first published in Caliban magazine in 1988. He lives in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, the city of his birth.