Jeffrey Alfier won the 2014 Kithara Book Prize for his poetry collection, Idyll for a Vanishing River (Glass Lyre Press, 2013). He is also author of The Wolf Yearling (Silver Birch Press, 2013) and The Storm Petrel – Ireland Poems (Grayson Books, 2014). He is founder and co-editor of San Pedro River Review. --------
Motel, Six Miles Out of Palominas
Dawn breaks over the gravel spine of road
that brought you here. In your half-awake eyes
the clock’s red digits blur like crumbling coals.
This close to the border, maids and clerks
ask where you call home, what brought
you this far from where you really live.
The faucet’s icy water stuns your face. Four
doors down, a mother slams a window shut
her son had kept open all night.
Desert wind dusts the nightstand and cup
you took from the lobby last evening, coffee
burnt so dark it was like sipping a shadow.