Speech’s surf
is wavy,
water’s rift
moodshopping
a Babel
more oblong
than unintelligible.
The rain
before
the sun
and the darkness
before
the moon.
Looking
for any,
only finding
some,
this train is
made of colorless swathes and swatches,
deaf each passenger’s
stammerings and—
great gout of self and loneliness—
alive, alive.
Jeff Alessandrelli’s poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, The American Poetry Review and Poetry Northwest, among other journals. He’s also the author of the full-length collection This Last Time Will Be The First (Burnside Review 2014). Jeff is currently working on a book-length essay examining and commemorating the 20th anniversary of rapper The Notorious B.I.G’s death, which will be released by Eyewear Publishing in the fall of 2017. Additionally, Jeff directs the vinyl record-only poetry press Fonograf Editions; in 2016 Fonograf put out albums by Eileen Myles and Rae Armantrout and in 2017 it’ll release albums by Alice Notley and Harmony Holiday. 
