a stone cairn 
marked with a warning 
birth, time, death 
through the eyes 
of a banshee

They call them the inseparables, joined in body and spirit, that unholy trinity of gunslingers and gamblers, womanizers, and drunks, who leave a trail of blood and destruction from saloon to brothel in every dust-covered outpost from El Paso to Nogales. Their mustachioed faces appear on wanted posters everywhere offering a fortune in dollars or pesos for their capture, dead or alive, but no man, woman, or child has yet to claim the reward, receiving only a bullet in the gullet for their trouble.

Pa Walt taught her early 
how to trigger a Renette 
and how to use 
those second eyes 
in the back of her pretty head 

Ma Willa always said 
have your way with money 
gird it just enough 
hide some in a trusted spot 
and give the rest away

Annie rips three posters off the crumbling cork bulletin board of the pony express office in Tucson, stuffing them in her saddlebag and adjusting the rifle snug against the mare’s rib cage. It’s been a while since she’s dragged an outlaw by the scruff into the sheriff’s office to collect a bounty, and the total for these three reckless, feckless, and neckless banditos adds up to a mighty tidy sum—enough to buy her a shack in Chihuahua where she can settle down and grow cacti and yucca for potions to sell to the natives and to the medicine men and women on the reservations. And there’s that pair of snakeskin boots at the trading post in Tombstone with her name on it and a whole lot of leather for notches with the hunting knife she wrestled off a drunken hobo that tried to stab her with it for no apparent reason.

bartering spider whiskey 
for silver, saltpeter, and gunpowder, 
her Derringer 
tucked inside 
her diamondback boot

—From Shadows of the Saguaro: The Wiles of Cactus Annie May and Bad Jack Muldoon, a series of responsive tanka tales by Lester and Miko

Vicki Miko

is a retired television producer. She is a widely published poet in the haiku and tanka communities. Her illustrations have been featured in Billboard Magazine and displayed on Nagle Outdoor billboards. She was nominated for the McKnight Foundation Art Award for creating gardening workbooks for the JD Rivers’ Children’s Garden in Minneapolis. She lives in Southern California with her humoring husband.

Author’s website: http://www.vickimiko.com/

Michael H. Lester

is a CPA, attorney, and poet who lives in Los Angeles, California. His writing has been widely published in prestigious poetry journals, has been translated into several languages, and has won numerous awards worldwide. Michael’s recent publications include two illustrated children’s books, Cassandra and the Strange Tale of the Blue-Footed Boobies and Johnny and Frankie’s Summer Sleepover, as well as a book of poetry, Notes from a Commode: Volume I. A fourth book, The Squeeping Catterwhip, is now available on Amazon.