Enter the City

The train moves far below this tower room
with a sound like a slowly drawn-out gunfire,
a strangely underworld story
unfolding—a question to an answer, coming apart
inside the mind. In the landscape of God’s ceaseless
memory, human thought grows backward and turns
from snow into time. In those outer fields, forgotten prayers
are common as dustgrains, and shreds of hope
define themselves on a background of burning seeds
and jagged hail. At a certain point, joy becomes an answer
to ongoing silence, like the peace of a star as it begins
collapsing, a spellbound amnesia returning to the heart,
and leaves of grief becoming rain on the rail line.

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.

Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for this poem.

I can see what I want in people—You, stranger,
I think to myself, you with the empty gaze

are the beautiful Eden snake, and you with the sad eyes
are an apple from the one forbidden tree.

I can see in the world another world.
I can dream up apocalypse or creation

in any landscape, corner, or shadow of the city.
Why else should I go anywhere, and why else

should I look into anything? I bring with me everywhere
a few grains of nightmare and paradise, I keep them hidden

in my pockets with my pen and my crumpled paper. What now
gives me faith in anything? The barely discriminating love

of dogs, the judgelessness of dusk and dawn,
the absolute indifference of black empty galaxies,

and all that exists without a question—
Even in the punishing chill of my mind,

I can find a shred of love, a thread of
compassion—they live there without a doubt,

or need of gratitude. I pray they imprint onto me
their pure design, their ancient elegance,

even in fields of hail, or on mountains of frost—
In the ongoing cold I look for salvation. Find me,

I say, find me even now, where I’m without name
or shape, or even a memory of light.

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.

Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for this poem.

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.

Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for this poem.