XENITH

Thorns Upon the Alien Corn
by David Kowalczyk

Here, in the city of jazz,
the tigers in my dreams
weep neon tears.

I awaken each morning
to the soft moans and
murmurings of the restless dead.
Fine hard snow falls upon the city.

The world strikes
a single note:
C flat.

This has nothing
to do with sex,
or the Kabbalah,
or the nature
of irrational numbers.

***

David Kowalczyk lives in the one-stoplight cannery town of Oakfield, New York. His poetry and fiction have appeared in seven anthologies and over one hundred journals and magazines, including The Buffalo News, California Quarterly, Maryland Review and Istanbul Literary Journal. He taught English in Mexico and South Korea as well as at Arizona State University.

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