The Kursk: A Valediction

Amusing some dark mistress of silence,
one poet sang the mirth of shipwrecks. But
witnessing the irreducible lives
sink beneath the wake of the ship of State,
your orison ends, 'I am writing blind'...

Upon Observing a Birth in the Sonora Desert

Unbound to hooked, electric wind you race
from arcing wheels of wings and claws to script
the red insistent circles in the dust
where speed hails-down the sharpening focus
you turn - De Profundis - to mournless eyes.

The Tanque Verde Wash at Night

Here, Time dreams a dark retreat of silence.
Halting like men who stumble into ghosts
- or poppies that bloom at the Door of Sleep -
they remember another earth. These wolves
wade rivulets, speaking our dead language.

The West Wind Forsakes Hyacinthus

I thought you'd be one to seed the light years,
your flesh forged behind Clio's drapery --
that velvet reign; a dawning solipsist.
Yet when you leapt, and your sweet flesh sparkled
I nearly abandoned the east-bound fleets.
But you ignored my breath upon your thighs.
You proved too boundless to be my captive
so I blew the tainted discus off course.
For you loved instead your god Apollo.
To keep his lips from you I smashed your brow.

^

Biography

Jeffrey Alfier lives in Tucson, Arizona, USA, holds an MA in Humanities, and has served as an adjunct faculty member with City Colleges of Chicago – European Division. He is a member of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. His publication credits include The Columbia Review, Conspire, CrossConnect, Electric Acorn, Melic Review, Niederngasse, Penwood Review (2002), Stolen Island Review, and War, Literature and the Arts – An International Journal of the Humanities. His poetry will also appear in an anthology to be published by McGraw-Hill in November, 2001.