Pamela Alexander

LONG AFTER HE IS GONE

All the summer’s night
I dream I am awake reading,
following sentences that follow
a woman who finds her husband
by following his footsteps
in snow. She needs
to forgive him, to be
forgiven. When I wake

the street beyond my window
is white and banked
with sunlight.

LAST OFFER

I’m the top of the food chain.  I eat
ice cream and the cow it came from.

I eat trees.  I eat fertilizer that makes bad
dirt good.  I eat badgers and big cats

and wolves.  I eat moths
and frogs and the herons that eat them.

What’s an ouzel?  Is that a joke?
Give me a chance here—I can

make you very comfortable.
C’mon, drink this river.  It’s free.

Author: Pamela Alexander

Pamela Alexander’s Left, winner of Beloit Poetry Journal’s 2024 Chad Walsh chapbook award, is forthcoming in the fall. She is the author of four previous collections of poems, most recently Slow Fire. Earlier books were awarded the Yale Younger Poet and Iowa Poetry Prizes, and her work has appeared in many periodicals and anthologies. She taught creative writing at M.I.T. and Oberlin College for many years, and served on the editorial board of FIELD magazine. Her honors include fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center and the Bunting Institute. She lives in Maine.

Plume: Issue #75 October 2017