Our current round of collaboration began when one sent the other a question and a challenge: "Write so the land can read you and finds you beautiful. How do you know?"

The dining room on Congress Street was the place where everything happened. At night it served as my bedroom, where I slept on a twin bed that came with bed bugs, which I hunted down. I attached them to little wooden carts with twine. Well, not really.

The moon conceals herself beneath a mask of sky. A tireless wind tears rust-stained rice-paper leaves from autumn pines. The sun sets in Jatinga, a small cliff-side village on an Indian plateau. Tonight, birds fall like rain.

‘Cause Grandma’s from Jackson, Mississippi, she can go to work on cornbread and buttermilk or cornbread and beans or, well, cornbread and anything all smashed up in a bowl. But you live in Chicago, and are only country by association, so you’ll need something green, like greens or cabbage or spinach to accompany your cornbread. Choose one.

My mother’s father would take me to a cabin to fish in the summers. What I remember is a steep dirt track with branches brushing the Scout as we dropped down to a secret lake. A short dock left to rot, a decent metal johnboat facedown and overgrown with tall grass.

1. Everyone cleared out the bread aisle, so you’ve decided to make your own loaf. Face down, concentrating on the movements, you knead the thoughts that swell within your head, which must be softened, shaped and pummeled into submission. Why hasn’t she called? How much longer do we wait in our houses? Is she okay?