Strange Flowers
—after Tom Waits

In that deep uncanny
world, dark blue clouds
ride low,
raining all night—
The crowded metropolis
is long hushed.
Everyone there is

an orphan leaving behind
their opulent palaces.
They’re all out

on the stormy streets, roving
and wordless.
Black ivy

grows over empty chapels
where crows fly in
through broken stained glass,
nesting in the high
rafters. Hooded figures kneel

in flooding gutters,
with their snakes
and torn prayer books.

And flowers never seen before
grow up through
cracked concrete
in ruins of the great
city

where every sound
but the rain
is extinct.


Fable of Dark-Magic Crows
—after Federico Garcia Lorca

Out on the black fields
a red-flowering tree
stands alone in
the center of night,
two crows on its branches.

You can hear
from a distant sea
prayers echoing through
the black blistered fields.
A rider dying with stabs

moves toward the lone tree
flowering red
where two crows wait.
Far away a battle
has left a thousand

dead villagers burning
on a cold beach—
children hiding in palm trees
whisper their prayers
as the horseman finds two crows

in a red shimmering tree
where he will die and
rise again to ride
back to the village,
his arrow quiver full,
his daggers sharp.


Silent Question
—after W.S. Merwin

It was a long time ago now
I was a boy
in a different life
sitting on my grandmother’s porch
staring out at the trees
always staring through
the clear air of seasons
at two towering white elms

They were distant
so I loved them more
I felt they were part of
another world
another age

I could watch for hours their
branches waving calmly in breezes

They asked for
nothing nor answered
any question

except for the one I
knew there were no words for

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998.  His poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Museum of Americana, Ink Sac, Welter Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others.  He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022.  He is the author of, God Said Fire, and the forthcoming, Snowfire and Home.