Fragment: Long Island City Spring

by JC Alfier

This is what goes on when nothing else will.

     Broken memories stepping lightly.

Fissures in April ice. Photos that come loose

     from an album no one views today.

Now the sudden gush of wakefulness —

     insomnia prying open the small hours again.

Take to the streets to see what neon

     has left me. Doesn’t help my slumber return,

but shoves the night fears aside.

      Restive streetlights and pedestrian signals

trigger nothing save ghosts. A drifter

    shouts the name of some missing soul —

a name that travels enough to echo

     into the newborn limbs of locust trees.

BIO: JC Alfier’s (they/them) most recent book of poetry, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Press (2020). Journal credits include Faultline, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, Raleigh Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Vassar Review. They are also an artist doing collage and double-exposure work..