"Anguish floated on the breezes blowing through New York City as we tried desperately to keep ourselves alive. Some of us awoke to the sight of refrigerated trucks waiting outside hospitals to receive the dead. In upper Manhattan, some awoke to 'Flower Flash, ' installations donated by Lewis Miller Designs. Black trash baskets, old telephone booths, subway entrances appeared stuffed or garlanded with flowers. The florist's night work became altars of mourning and remembrance."

Writers have responded in many ways to seeing the cities in which they dwell become places of crisis and mass mourning. In this somber and elegant collection, Jacqueline de Weever roams Brooklyn and Manhattan to glean darkness and light as a city confronts the COVID pandemic.

Jacqueline de Weever, born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), was educated there and in New York, earning a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. She is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, where she taught English Medieval Literature for 29 years. Her poetry has been widely published in Blue Unicorn, The Cape Rock Review, Sensations Magazine, Tiger's Eye, Tribeca Poetry Review, Vanitas, among others. She is also a watercolor painter, and lives in Brooklyn. This is her fourth Poet's Press edition, following Trailing the Sun's Sweat (2015), Rice-Wine Ghosts (2017), and Seed Mistress (2020).

This is the 307th publication of The Poet's Press.