Saving Unborn Privates
by Jeffrey Alfier


Hear the movie sniper, up in his hide,
pray the one-hundred-forty-fourth Psalm,
'teach my hands to war...my fingers to fight,'
pressing eight souls of thirty-caliber
to the perfect syntax of light and breath.

See the nuclear waste -- unvacant hide,
the unborn lured like Iphigenia,
their cells easy prey that divide too quick
in a world still padlocked to a sniper's glare
as we dream windage on borders of ash.





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