Alexander Booth
Late Summer-like, Stuttered
Silent water-striders skirted
Brackish film, and silent
One
thumbed the grain
Amid skins abandoned, splinters
And the hiving of August’s air
Considering creation’s linkage
Was it lymph, semen, blood
Aflow – with salt, water, and earth
Figure trope of the forge
Oneself at the anvil forging oneself
And the world as it was in the beginning
The taste of sun
The taste of flint silted within the mouth
Dyad
Boughs bare but
For two
Gray breast
On black: morning
Pale behind the hill
Alexander Booth lives and works in Rome, Italy. Poems and translations have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Dear Sir, halfcircle poetry journal, Italian Poetry Review, Konundrum, and Poetry Salzburg Review. He intends to see his first book of poems accepted for publication in the next year and is currently seeking a publisher for his book-length manuscript of translations of the Italian poet, Sandro Penna. He also volunteers at the historic Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome and keeps a (mostly) literary weblog on Rome in literature and Roman literature, Misera e stupenda città.