EXODUS: A HISTORY

by Carol Alexander 

People wandered streets with net bags of oranges,
spooked by the lonesome traffic lights. Each grew a compound eye.
Birds waxed tenacious. God willing they sang.
Apartment houses feigned cataracts with china pugs, ormolu
(gilded in desired shapes) while dog-walkers walked alone.
No one trusted fingers, floats of fleshy cut flowers; there were little crimes.
Sometimes they dreamed of the lost, how a coffin should gleam
when an unwilling heart was shocked into submission at last.
Seven o'clock marked an anniversary of quarantine and temperature.
The remains of the day—they held each other wordlessly, lawlessly
and on mild days the infection spread, over narcissus and forsythia.
Wind blew through the firehouse. Park benches said remember them.

Carol Alexander (on her fifth week of Covid infection, as is her husband) is the author of Environments (Dos Madres Press), Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press), and Bridal Veil Falls (Flutter Press). Her poems appear in various anthologies and in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, Chiron Review, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Hamilton Stone Review, One, Seattle Review of Books, Southern Humanities Review, Sweet Tree Review, and Third Wednesday. She is a past contributor to TheNewVerse.News.  Recent work is forthcoming this year in Denver Quarterly and Raintown Review.

FOR THE DARK

by Carol Alexander

A tsunami as high as 20 feet was triggered September 29 by a 7.5-magnitude earthquake and hit two cities and nearby settlements about 800 miles northeast of Jakarta, Indonesia. Here, a ship is wedged between buildings on a street in Wani, Sulewesi. Mast Irham/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock via The Washington Post, October 2, 2018

Dusk that is woven of sighs and a bomb of sparrows
shooting over the grass: a mild explosion before the thunder breaks.
For us the sighs, the birds, the thunder spin a little drama out of air,
while in the interval of eastern waves, a wall of ocean wipes out
even the shadow of the fisher hawks.  We glimpse the water,
hear cries tamped beneath thick mud in someone's cellphone video.

A group of women scream and disappear,  breath mingled with the wind.
So close to the edge, has this documentarian survived?

On the beaches they say lies anything, everything touching the human sphere.
Imagine tangled skeins of clothes, smashed up festival lights,
a wooden pipe sluiced of ash. Still bodies of the swimmers, beach strays,
amid the bamboo and pottery tiles. Bodies carried from the wreckage
either by the sea or living hands.  And as the rain comes down 9,000 miles away

we think of those frozen figures of Pompeii going about the quotidian
in their easy ignorance, and relic ourselves with open mouths upon this frieze.

Editor's Note: Global Giving, which funnels donations to local organizations, has raised $248,000 of its $1 million goal to help people in Sulawesi. The effort centers on emergency supplies such as "food, water, and medicine, in addition to longer-term recovery assistance to help residents." Global Giving has a 96 rating on Charity Navigator.


Carol Alexander is the author of the poetry collections Environments (Dos Madres Press, 2018) and Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press). Her chapbook Bridal Veil Falls is published by Flutter Press. Alexander's poems appear in a variety of anthologies and journals, most recently Aurora Poetry, Belletrist, Bluestem, Cumberland River Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, One and Third Wednesday. She is a past contributor to TheNewVerse.News.

DREAMING

by Carol Alexander

The dreams unspool like newsreel in the night.
They patrol great rifts with somnambulist grace,
afraid to wake. Winds snatch up small fires.
Ships jam the locks; albatross float in the wrack.
We learned to sing the places of our origins.
Baggage mounts and scarves restrain long, blue-black hair,
 scarves  so beautifully shot with metallic threads.
The same dream dreamt, newsreel of the stunning night,
shows us  rifles, faces bearded with green foam,
the nausea of stale food in the hold.
Overnight, we learn the taste of shame.
Names pile up on documents; the syllables howl.
We thrust our bodies against the dream,
test its give, mallow stickiness of the web.
In attics children hide, clutching an almond or a fig.
Rooftops blacken in fallout; mushrooms sprout in morgues.
After the war, survivors creep outdoors like ghosts.
And in the breadlines, there is ersatz.
A giant mouth is yawning, stuffed with crooked teeth.

Carol Alexander's work has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, Bluestem, Boston Literary Magazine, Canary, Caesura, Chiron Review, The Common, Driftwood Press, MadHatLit, Mobius, TheNewVerse.News, Poetrybay, South Florida Poetry  Journal, Red River Review, Split Rock Review, and THEMA. Her poetry collection Habitat Lost will be published in 2017 by Cave Moon Press. Her chapbook Bridal Veil Falls is available from Flutter Press.

DANIEL

by Carol Alexander

What we know of spirit and visible ink,
the human voice raised in remonstrance
against bloodshed and greed

we learned from you, and from your small birds
glimpsed at twilight,  and the ubiquitous coat
shrouding flesh against plague.

They are walking against this morning's rain,
and the habit of skirting the terrible questions
that imbue the bomb and splintered cross.

The fountain will not die with you
but frame its steeple with the greater strength
and yes, waters will upward rise

in the memory of you.

Carol Alexander's poems have appeared in such journals as Bluestem, Caesura, Canary, The Common, Chiron Review, Illya's Honey, Mad Hatter's Review, Mobius, TheNewVerse.News, Poetry Quarterly, Poetrybay, Red River Review, The San Pedro River Review, Sugar Mule, THEMA and Zymbol, as well as in various anthologies including Through a Distant Lens (WriteWing Publishing) for which she received the award for best poem, and Proud to Be, for which she was a poetry finalist. Alexander's chapbook, Bridal Veil Falls, was published by Flutter Press (2013).  Recent work appears in Split Rock Review and Clementine Poetry Journal.

EXTREMIS

by Carol Alexander

Your voice in Saint-Germain-de-Prés is pastis
in a glass of fog, held by an invisible hand.
How phrase this in a nomenclature vivid
as a lipstick smeared at the bar?

In the hotel lobby, Arab girls and boys
praise a wine never to be served
and potted palms are sleeping, curled and dry.

That great beast, the wind, noses pavements
soaked in blood that dries before the world's eyes.
Raised on every bridge are unwavering lights
where once smoked oil lamps strung on narrow streets.

My camera pinches off lanterns and loaves,
a pink dress hung in the galleries
while your meeting, not to be postponed,
is soup and cigarettes under martial law.

Dogs off-leash bare teeth and wheel
at the unfamiliar smells of men.
Muted leaves that missed their moment
when September made an oven of the streets
mostly now have fallen into loam.

I've a little forgotten disaster in these months;
it could be the sound of wind through husks
or a tremulous breath breaking in mid-song.


Carol Alexander's poems have appeared in such journals as Bluestem, Caesura, Canary, The Common, Chiron Review, Illya's Honey, Mad Hatter's Review, Mobius, TheNewVerse.News, Poetry Quarterly, Poetrybay, Red River Review, The San Pedro River Review, Sugar Mule, THEMA and Zymbol, as well as in various anthologies including Through a Distant Lens (WriteWing Publishing) for which she received the award for best poem, and Proud to Be, for which she was a poetry finalist. Alexander's chapbook, Bridal Veil Falls, was published by Flutter Press (2013).  Recent work appears in Split Rock Review and Clementine Poetry Journal.

BALANCE

by Carol Alexander

KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip -- The Al Haj family never heard it coming: An Israeli missile smashed into their home in the middle of the night, destroying the structure and killing eight relatives in a matter of seconds. A survivor said all the dead were civilians. --CTV News, July 10, 2014

You write, this is not fun. Two rockets arc above Tel Aviv
and in the streets, sirens and rubble. I forget you for weeks at a time
until you write about a trip to Mount Hebron, bellflowers, mignonette,
the grandchild's bit of tooth, a logy rock agama in the sun.

I hope you're getting a balanced view. There are bodies in red rags,
pensive cups of coffee after dawn, the drawing heat of the day.
Ordinary death proceeds with its modest civilities, prayers in shul.
In Khan Younis, a family shatters like a crystal cup; no prayer
will bind flesh to soul, no cool wind tame the burning of the coast.

Tell how it is for you, a garden with tall weeds, a son in the hills.
On your land, figs are slowly ripening despite the spider mites,
despite the lack of rain, the sirens louder than a mullah's call.
Heat underlies the very ground where traders shook out silk.

You hope the dusty rocks and rags will be reported truthfully.
You hope, worried by tomato rot, to grow old.

A writer for trade and educational publishing, Carol Alexander has authored numerous children’s books, served as a ghostwriter for radio and trade publishing, and taught at colleges around the metropolitan area. In 2011-2012, her poetry appears—or is scheduled to appear-- in literary journals and anthologies published by Avocet, Boyne Berries (UK), Chiron Review, Cave Moon Press, The Canary, Danse Macabre, Earthspeak, Eunoia Review, Fade Poetry Journal (UK), Fat Daddy’s Farm Press, Fried Chicken and Coffee, The Mad Hatter’s Review, Mobius, Numinous, OVS, Red Poppy Review, Red River Review, River Poets Journal, Sleeping Cat Books, The Whistling Fire, and Write Wing Publishing.

FOR THE REPOSE OF SOULS

by Carol Alexander

A Berkeley, CA vigil held to remember the victims and families of the Newtown, CT, massacre. Photo: Jeremy Pollack/Creative Commons

A pair of peafowl floats down from the trees,
the wan hen and florid cock picking their way
while the river slowly slips back in its banks.

The boy in his tall wading books creeps after,
licking rust from the muzzle of his gun.

The juddering of a turquoise fan perhaps will be
as close to flame of phoenix  as spirit will draw.
But we were born in fire, and to fire will come.

The woman with the small communion dress
rocks in her chair in her ordinary room
room with its proportions rudely skewed;
shocked feathers of the peafowls gently float down.

With their saintly calendar of woes,
country men and women walk in sober twos.

Still the shops stay open; trees blink red and green,
children dash across the street, cars swerve,
we hear the Morse code of the coming snow,
birds in starry park all the news that we can bear.

A pallid smoke in its helix twists and frays,
as if to question who to go and how to stay?
You mummers in a masquerade of death
shoot off your pop guns, begging cakes and ale.

Neither the country nor the quiet grave where we lay
our old ones down in the lightness of their years,
is this cold town where we have just begun to pray.

But unicorns and little maids remain entwined
(in sable trees an archer waits and strings his silent bow).


A writer for trade and educational publishing, Carol Alexander has authored numerous children’s books, served as a ghostwriter for radio and trade publishing, and taught at colleges around the metropolitan area. In 2011-2012, her poetry appears—or is scheduled to appear-- in literary journals and anthologies published by Avocet, Boyne Berries (UK), Chiron Review, Cave Moon Press, The Canary, Danse Macabre, Earthspeak, Eunoia Review, Fade Poetry Journal (UK), Fat Daddy’s Farm Press, Fried Chicken and Coffee, The Mad Hatter’s Review, Mobius, Numinous, OVS, Red Poppy Review, Red River Review, River Poets Journal, Sleeping Cat Books, The Whistling Fire, and Write Wing Publishing.