Gary Young's most recent books are Days and Braver Deeds, which won the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize. These two books and the final volume in his trilogy, No Other Life, will appear in a single volume next year from Creative Arts Books. He edits the Greenhouse Review Press from Santa Cruz, California.

o It isn't hard to love the world. There are birds in a lea?ess tree outside my window. Each bird is crested, and each crest is a different color. These birds are beautiful. We have even named them: Cardinal, Waxwing, Jay. o The passion ?owers have bloomed at last on the chain link fence behind the bar. Bamboo rustles in the ocean breeze, and a palm tree sways slowly left and right. Inside, everyone's talking; everyone's telling another sad story. A cypress tree, ancient, enormous, towers over the bar, and every Friday night I step outside alone to look at it. o My son was possessed by the Devil. Beelzebub had entered his body, and distorted his tiny features. His face was red and twisted; he gnashed his teeth, and struggled in my arms. I rapped his forehead with two ?ngers to drive the demon from his body, and woke up shouting, get out, get out. I lay in bed and listened to my wife's heavy breathing. I could hear the boy calling softly in his sleep. A hard rain fell steadily against the metal gutters, then it stopped.