The Angel

snags its left wing on the drunk’s shoulder
swaying as the chill pushes through. Then still—
she sleeps sagged across the railing,
her heart a warehouse beached by the dock
bridges knocking, the water absorbing threats
for tenderness, deals with doubles,
the face that never intended to be
an accuser, tin and use
a bereft lover forgets as the deep eddies,
as ashes, ashes, then the empty pack tossed,
a red-striped raft bobbing. This is not a prayer
nor a testament to explain why
an assassin weeps because he heard a click
after the revolver’s cylinder spun
like a busted clock unable to stop
his fall into the whir, his words for this
limited to silence
interrupted after the hit was done,
an unhinging of darkness from night.
Two eyes peering like cauldrons emptied
yet throbbing with the force of law
broken, enforced because of witness,
eyes opening all over the angel’s form
so that nothing is hidden, not even the face
of the water as it reflects nothing, as its mouths drink
the echo of running footsteps
that suddenly stop, a man’s alarm
cab drivers pass because they’ve heard it before
from the wild-eyed junkie who ran out.
*
It was an accident. It was seen.
A man runs through the train station,
his black ripped shirt fluttering like a flame
he could not put out, could not stop flickering
in a straight line like a fuse heckling the end,
the end is now beginning, the end
of when he began ticking,
which is also a way to tell time
time, the same story, and the one not from memory
about an angel that walks among us,
walks then crawls up bank buildings and bridges,
peers into tenements in which laundry hangs
above stoves busted and reported, follows
the potholed road that bit off a truck’s wheel,
passes through turnstiles that lead to a prophet
legless and smelling of a whale’s gullet, descends
stairs between train light rattling against halogen glow
as citizens pose waiting for someone to stare,
does not watch, does not care
but rather searches for the address.
*
It gives its name to no one.
So don’t ask about who talks or doesn’t
break a pencil tracing an outline for how
the body landed, how pavement couldn’t cushion
to protect itself from the body flying wingless,
terrible because its wingless
madness makes it human and inexplicable.
This is math, a naming through symbols
drawn on an alley wall with a brick,
the equation stretching the length of the block,
raccoons digging through restaurant trash
still fresh, skinned, lid rattle, teeth scraping
a fish head seized then dropped
when he threw the brick laughing
and began to dance
like a scarecrow hopping round in a dust storm
grinding a world, a kernel
in which life unspools its solitude
to strike through and make a door
so the hunger inside
his rivened face is a metal pan
beating his swollen cheek,
the other cheek deflated,
his mouth a swamp
cleared of stumps and dry with rage,
the kind that waits under an overpass for a sign,
waits and learns to hear
crystal chiming in the rumbling traffic,
dirt smudge while the design shivers
as he presses his ear closer
to the air’s movements, imperceptible shifts
of light within light,
knife glint or the eye fluttering
then still with ninety-nine others
or a rage that studies the numbers
overheard from a scroll rolled up and latched,
a scroll heard in the rustling
sleeve of evening pulled down for the night.
*
As if it could confess anything other than its form
bolted to its name
drawn on the wall in a code it never speaks,
because its form is the witness
or accomplice suspended upside down,
cutlass face pressed to brick,
neck yoked with ice, four wings spread,
glass crunching as the wind blows through,
as he whispers and touches the chilled
scarred eyes trembling to open
their intelligence to call down fire,
trumpets muted, confused by buzzing
which is his life recited, the full swoon
of his abandoners, those who betrayed
his loyalties, would not help, would not listen
when he begged, would not even look
at the nothing in his hands, love unanswered,
love that pulls his arms up to scissor the air,
to embrace the stuck abacus,
this kingdom of rot
in which a lamp like a nerve ending throbs
his heart’s command unsaid,
but the angel hears:
Find happiness, and take us there.

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs