Alba

By

After the accident, after the bad date,
the bad year, the bad song, the black-out,
after the six hundred nights of solitude,
in the weak hours of morning, in the long
moment of waking, as I turn toward
the window, this is when it happens.
Everyone with their lovers or in nature,
coming up to touch each other in the dawn
kitchen. My aloneness has a shape to it.
It has a name. It loves the open window.
It expands beyond the statues, past the plaza
and the gardens, the shuttered public library.
My aloneness is spectacular. It burns
like nothing I know. But there is a voice
on the other side of the water. There is a sound
held in the mouth. Light hits the plaza.
My aloneness is a golden horse.
It runs the sidewalk, flaming.

Madeleine Cravens

Madeleine Cravens is the Max Ritvo Poetry Fellow at Columbia University. Her work can be found in Best of the Net, the Adroit Journal, the New Ohio Review, Frontier, and Folio. She lives in Brooklyn.