Alexander Etheridge

Night’s Valley

There’s fire, then later on,
antifire—I don’t know how else
to describe it, the way snow
falls into the mind.
I don’t know where I am 

anymore, and all the roads 
are buried in ash.
Blindness now

is seeing.  There’s a trail I dreamt of 

where light collapses.
Being lost everywhere is 
home—life, then antilife,
out here

under dark and dazzled stars.

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998.  His poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Scissors and Spackle, Ink Sac, Cerasus 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.  His collection of poems, Snowfire and Home, will be available from Belle Point Press in 2024.