Tobi Alfier Verse-Virtual 2016 January

January 2016

I am a tired mom, who crunches numbers during the day to give people good retirements, and writes at night. I have been writing poetry for thirty five years or so, but only started reading and publishing in 2005. Occasionally a piece of micro-fiction sneaks in, but I am 99.9% a poet. Along with my husband, poet and photographer Jeffrey Alfier, I publish chapbooks for poets we love under our Blue Horse Press imprint, and co-edit and co-publish the San Pedro River Review, a semi-annual national and international journal of poetry and art. I am delighted to see some of our SPRR contributors in Verse-Virtual’s impressive and lovely list of poets.

101 North

He was already dead when the car flipped.
Looking like a kite, or a spinning top or a
crushed paper bag in the wind it flew
across the wide grass median
before finally stopping just in front of me.

An unbelievable sight even now difficult to accept
I had only the foresight to stop and stare.
Inching slowly around what almost came to rest against me
I was the last car through without thinking.

Hundreds of people dialed 911, a woman with heavy
arms and authoritarian thighs stood between two lanes
and unafraid, she directed traffic as though born to do so.

Man strangers came together to turn the car one
last time to rescue the wife, woman strangers
cradled her shocked shoulders and lent
her a sweater. I stopped just past and waited for help but
I didn’t look. The car was white.

Previously published in Ballard Street Poetry Journal