Epigraphs to sections I-III are excerpts from a poem cycle entitled Alford’s Devotional and Guide to Poetry, by Bruce Alford.

Author’s Notes:

In this section, I’m describing the time my car broke down and I had to walk for miles to get home. This is in Southeast Louisiana, in July. Ancient Hebrew, which lacked punctuation, influenced form. I took on the challenge of working with unpunctuated line endings within each section, with the result that words are not haphazardly turned over to the next line. Hebrew also creates a dynamic “white space”.

 

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Bruce Alford’s first collection, Terminal Switching, was published in 2007 (Elk River Review Press). He received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and was an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama from 2007-2011. Before working in academia, he was an inner-city missionary and journalist. He has published fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry in journals such as the African American Review, Comstock Review, Imagination & Place Press, Louisiana Literature, and many others. He currently lives in Hammond, Louisiana.