Reggie Scott Young, a native of Chicago’s West Side, is a scholar and writer who most recently served as Professor of Creative Writing and American Literatures at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His poems, stories, and works of nonfiction have appeared in Fifth Wednesday Journal, Louisiana Literature, Oxford American, and African American Review. He served as guest-editor of Obsidian Literary Journal’s special issue on Jeffery Renard Allen, and he also co-edited Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays by Ernest J. Gaines and This Louisiana Thing That Drives Me: The Legacy of Ernest J. Gaines. His poems in this volume are excerpts from his recent book of poetry, Yardbirds Squawking at the Moon.