Alexandra “Zan” Delaine Hailey – Innisfree Poetry Journal

Broken Spilling—Spilling Broken

Sassafras yellow coffee mug—
fallen from hammerspace shatters
against cemented sidewalk,
beneath an unlit light post, dressed
in thirteen feet of blacked iron—turns

questioning heads. If a tree falls
to the forest floor and no one
is there, does it make a sound?
If kilned clay crashes

and no one is around, was it dropped
at all? If nanos displaced vibrations,
would heads even turn? Technology
is destroyed at the source only
to find backups lingering—corporate

classifieds—behind unspoken doors,
as founders hourglass exponents above

never speaking familiar tongues,
even to the neck leading to a fiction

unknown. But when incurables record

cured—deadly cells commit the deadliest
sin, inhibiting APCs, CD97s, WT1s—unbalanced
chemicals settle equilibriums, remaining
steady, technologically satisfied

epigenetics transcend, research
conclusive becomes the id: uncracked,
rescoping the eye reformed. Looking
back, maybe a hand lost grip all along.

Alexandra “Zan” Delaine Hailey (1992-2018) served as the inaugural poet laureate in Prince William County, 2014-2016. Her writing appeared in The Northern Virginia Review, A Wreath of Golden Laurels: An Anthology of Poetry by 100 Poets Laureate, Written in Arlington, The Poetry Society of Virginia Centennial Anthology, New Departures: Write By The Rails Anthology, and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Focused Inquiry Textbook. Her chapbook, Intrastate Lines, was published by Finishing Line Press.

Innisfree 40