Our hostess meets us at the Los Cabos airport. It’s over an hour to her place on the Pacific coast, down dark and deserted roads. Suddenly—a barricade. A gang of ragtag young men, heavily armed, motion for her to stop. Instead, she speeds up.

striking distance
the easy prey
of nightsnakes

Ordered out of the F150, my friend and I stand stock still while our expat driver yammers in Spanish. They can’t get one word in edgewise. Gesturing wildly, tossing her blond dreadlocks, she takes on the air of a lunatic.

two steps back
black magic bruja
casts her spell

They let us go. Why, I’m not exactly sure. From that moment, we enter an unspoken pact—she doesn’t tell, and we don’t ask. Later, in her open-air palapa palace, I lie awake listening to the roar of the waves.

Día de Muertos
the grimaces
of sugar skulls

Cynthia Anderson

A California resident and poet for more than 40 years, Cynthia Anderson is the author of eleven books, most recently a collection of haiku and senryu entitled Full Circle (Cholla Needles, 2022). Her poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies, and she has received multiple nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. In 2020, she took up short-form poetry including haiku, senryu, cherita, haibun, and split sequences. Her recent work focuses on the natural world and her family history.

Cynthia is co-editor of the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens (Green Poet Press). She makes her home in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park.

Author’s website: www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com

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⚡ Formerly Known as Ion, haibun by Cynthia Anderson which was nominated by MacQ for the Red Moon Anthologies, and selected for publication in Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022).