Smote

Smote

Pregnant

with shatterings

ochre clouds

annul

the scripted wishes
of another starless midnight

Misted trellis
of fresh killed vows
and passions'
particulates
Lift up
new morn
Sobs
into the
billows
of
Cimmerian
shroud.

The inevitable
melding.
Slate sky
aerugo dreams.

The graphite canopy
of immolated soul.

--Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the prehistoric epoch of print journals to modern e-times. She is currently a contributing editor to the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven. Her most recent work appears in such zines as Ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. As a political anthropologist specializing in North Africa and a violinist, her influences are multiform. Work in formative years with the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks was seminal, but no less so than Sufi Dervish dancers, and the challenges of mastering Bruch's first concerto.