Strange Flowers
—after Tom Waits
In that deep uncanny
world, dark blue clouds
ride low,
raining all night—
The crowded metropolis
is long hushed.
Everyone there is
an orphan leaving behind
their opulent palaces.
They’re all out
on the stormy streets, roving
and wordless.
Black ivy
grows over empty chapels
where crows fly in
through broken stained glass,
nesting in the high
rafters. Hooded figures kneel
in flooding gutters,
with their snakes
and torn prayer books.
And flowers never seen before
grow up through
cracked concrete
in ruins of the great
city
where every sound
but the rain
is extinct.
Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Museum of Americana, Ink Sac, Welter Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022. He is the author of, God Said Fire, and the forthcoming, Snowfire and Home.
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THE CITY KEY 