Tobi Alfier’s credits include Arkansas Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Cholla Needles, Gargoyle, James Dickey Review, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Louisiana Literature, Permafrost, Washington Square Review, and War, Literature and the Arts.  She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

This Undulant Sky

Her high soprano cuts the air
like a sniper. This isn’t the song
of a fallen angel, though
she saw one once,
in a graveyard at city’s edge.
One wing broken and the other
bedding a feral kitten, she was
a concrete Madonna. And everything 
was broken.

Her full voice rang out over balconies
in the almost-dusk, in the almost-shadow,
the heartshock of his sudden departure
rendering her nearly spineless 
with grief. Music you hear only
when dying, the fusion of grace and dust,
and broken angels.

The night has no blind eye—
it will find out all our sins. The barkeep asks           
what’s your pleasure, what’s your poison. 
She says whatever it will take
to gladden this broken heart. 
The bouncer’s toneless laughter
makes everyone cringe, put anything
on the jukebox, even the song
of broken angels.

She hoards shoes that no longer fit,
the tight toes make her hit the high notes.
She hoards bad choices
and tendrils of smoke.
Ghosts recognize her as theirs,
singing above their ambient voices,
singing muffled in wind.
The ties that hold her down
are fraying. She is broken.

A Table in the Wilderness

You prepare a table before me

            in the presence of my enemies

                                                Psalm 23.5

Wind shook the doors like a locked-out husband
and oh lord, she remembered that sound.

How the sky was dark, clouds to the ground,
leaves flying about like Halloween witches.

She’d been angry, oh so angry,
hissed his name with devastating clarity.

She’d told him to consider his sins,
to return chastened or not at all. 

In reality it was she who left,
seeking solace at rest stops from No Where

to No Place, in churches she found
hidden along the way.

The highway stretched on
lined with the beautiful poison of oleander.

The days stretched on from pale rising dusk
to the endless glow of neon,

and she found her own table in the wilderness
the crowd around her cobbled from other lost places.

She never went back, let him prize
his next sin. Let him remember.

Moira at the Armstrong Theater

The sky colors itself cold and languid.
The theater is full—the smell of dog-wet
overcoats and heated cleavage. Pearls
reflect all that’s shiny—eyes, sky,
chandeliers…

On the stage a single Steinway—black,
shined to no-fingerprint brightness
by a lucky, humble, house-manager,
and a microphone. Souvenirs wrinkle
on impatient laps…

Moira appears stage left. Graceful,
silent, emerald-green evening gown
off her white shoulders, black
hair curling down her back.
A slight nod…

She sits delicately, waits
for the theater to quiet down.
Her arms rise like the wings of an eagle,
fingers slam down hard on the keys, her prey.
Jaw-dropping excellence. She is 17.