family meeting

Walter Kitundu

24 Nov 2025 — 1 min read

daytime ghosts
nighttime wanderers
stalking, digging, playing, asleep
ears twitching
toward the nearest footfall,
closed door,
or the swelling silence
of an engine
switched off

some of us are the harms you navigate
historical constellations, points of bad luck
your movements ward off their evil spirits
even as you reclaim the spaces
we inhabit

somehow in those folding canyons of calm
you find sustenance
raise families
apparate and affirm
the myths
we keep building
around you

one day
perhaps we will be in right relation
if only they remember how to
shed your burden,
receive your gift
again

Prey Power

There is a widely held assumption that the power dynamic in a predator prey relationship is uni-directional. Predators are assumed to have power because they exercise it in clear and sometimes gruesome ways. I use the word gruesome for a human audience. A hawk might substitute the word practical, or

Granary

Long ago as settler colonialism crept west, and up the slopes of what would come to be known as the Sierra, unspeakable acts of violence occurred when those settlers came across people already living where the settlers wanted to live, or near where where they wanted to live, or where

Meet the neighbors

What’s it like to be a pigeon living with Peregrines? I wonder if there are only older, healthier, and luckier pigeons downtown. Is that all we see? Do the young, sick, and unlucky eventually meet the talons of a falcon and have their feathers unceremoniously tossed to the wind.

Downpour

A feather bound packet of muscle sinks through the air, powered by appetite and intent. There is a taught tether between the dove’s whistling panic and the dead set black-eyed gaze of the Merlin slipping through the blue. Alulae unfold, pocket knives in the wind, trimming the tether deftly

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Prey Power

Granary

Meet the neighbors

Downpour