Suite for Tonawanda

The sickle moon clusters like gauze

in willows that flank roadways

a woman in a dark window gazes down on.

Dusk deepens to the steep blue of her eyes.

She hears her daughter downstairs

tell someone on the phone,

Let me paint you an indigo sky.

*

A townsman’s son in a far-off war

falls to a sniper’s round hearing children sing.

Someone’s missed the Metro home.

Said he’d spotted a Syracuse woman

who’d lied to him years back,

descending an escalator.

He will not be seen in town again.

*

Along Niagara River, a young woman

watches boats throw late shadows

against the harbor. She daydreams

herself into a mermaid gliding fugitive

out to sea. Look her way long enough

my friend, and she’ll wave to you, and the moon

will strike the water into sapphires.

---

JC Alfier’s (they/them) most recent book of poetry is The Shadow Field. Journal credit include Faultline, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, River Styx, and Vassar Review. As a collage artist, their artistic directions are informed by Toshiko Okanoue, Francesca Woodman, and especially Katrien De Blauwer.