Carol Alexander

Anniversary with Busted Taillight

There remain the Pleiades, dark filling stations
deer crossing signs, waspish hum of planes departing Teterboro.

She belongs to the permafrost when we close her eyes
that final touch a perfected abandonment.

Time of death’s a smudge on a sheet, white irises
unfurling for their bow.  The taillight blinking its blind lens

then a summons calling us to court. Night is parable & salt
scourging the throat. Officer, forgive the last of too many lapses

through those days, months of her quiet dying.
So many things unattended to— musty cabinets, withered grass

though not, dear heart, thermometer, lozenge, tablespoon
or stars that follow you from the Palisades, sugar crystals sifting down.

Could we say grief’s pitch shattered the oculus while we tried on prayer?
We will be called to account for that breakage, by & by.

Carol Alexander is the author of FEVER AND BONE (Dos Madres Press) and two other poetry collections, ENVIRONMENTS (Dos Madres) and HABITAT LOST (CMP) as well as the chapbook BRIDAL VEIL FALLS (Flutter Press).  Her work appears in numerous print and online journals, such as About Place Journal, Canary, Denver Quarterly, The Common, One, Pif, Split Rock Review, Southern Humanities Review, Stonecoast Review, South Florida Poetry Review,Third Wednesday, and Verdad. Recent work appears in Another Chicago Magazine, Delmarva Review, Free State Review, Mudlark, Narrative Northeast, Potomac Review, San Pedro Review, RHINO, Sweet Tree Review, and The Summerset Review. With Stephen Massimilla, Alexander is co-editor of the award-winning anthology Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press, 2022).