Astropoetica: Archaean Sea, by David Jalajel

     Lightning she wields in one hand and the Sun’s
wrath in the other. He is a forge.
     Where she does not
boil herself away with acrid bellows,
     nor encrypt herself in icy purity, where he

     wavers on shorelines of sanity, she works
his craft, rusting the skies with her exhaling,
     corroding his parched
bosom on the acid dregs of her toil, layer upon tarnished
     layer. His industry, wrought on sulfur

     and foam, casts forth her fury onto the sky. Then heaving
and surging, he labours on,
     infusing her salty demons
with his caustic sweat, until woman and man
     and unfathomable dryad bear her scalding brand.

David Jalajel is originally from Baltimore, Maryland and a graduate of Morgan State University. His poetry has recenty appeared in Amaze: the Cinquain Journal, Forgotten Ground Regained and The Ghazal Page.