​​                                                                         Men arrived on horseback and held


            their heads                    So much to behold

in the world that wasn’t theirs was theirs in their eyes


                                                                         So much to be held        by an eye



Off the battlefield                     the trick so slight

                                                                         (spying)

            most magnificent made
            most insignificant made
            most underfoot



                                                                          Aye! To tread the desert
                                                                          To tromp unseen

hoofless              snakeskinned            dreaming of Alexanders
eyeing their corner of the ziggurat



—a sleight of man         Napoleon


                                      in riches             Napoleon
                                      in rags                Napoleon
                                      obliterated          Napoleon
                                      blown apart


                                                                                              After several images in Description de l’Egypte
​A poet and installation artist, Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer is the author of the poetry collections Well Waiting Room (Fordham University Press, 2021) and Cleavemark (BOAAT Press, 2016), as well as the children’s book The Cloud Lasso (Penny Candy Books, 2019). Her work has appeared in Bomb, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, Iowa Review, AGNI, Washington Square, Ploughshares, and the Poetry Foundation. Schlaifer’s work has been supported by the Regional Arts Commission and the Mid-America Arts Alliance. She was the runner-up for the 2019 Iowa Review Prize and served as the 2016 Greyfriar Writer-in-Residence + Living Literature Series at Siena College.