Joy McCall has the peculiar effect on people that, living or dead, they decide to speak to her. Whether a tattooed woman sitting down to write tanka with her at a cafe table, a blind man asking her to describe the night sky, or a ghost drifting up out of the earth to compliment her for the music, or the crooks (offenders and ex-offenders) who build, fix, and carry for her, she is as likely to be found having a conversation with a rabbi as a homeless man. Children and dead people confide their secrets to her, and so do witches, madwomen, criminals, and whores. Joy passes no judgments. All are human beings to her, each with their own stories, their own pain, their own demons, and their own gifts. Joy's gift to all of us is her ability to open the door between the planes so that we too can step through and experience the world as she experiences it, conveyed to us through the medium of tanka and prose.