Season of the Fear Angel
I remember when I died,
but the two dimensional door
that presses your life away
also through its sorcery
thins your dying. I don’t know. What season
was it? There must have been people
troubling the street, trees making supplication
to clouds for rain. And the grand shout
of the sun, which you can depend on
every morning when you’re alive.
I don’t remember anything
but words, knife, but not its physical
being, only that it flags death’s
entry. Voice, spoken message with no substance,
not tenor, not baritone, not whisper or snarl.
The fear angel’s dead deadly voice empties you
from the clothed red universe, warm, busy,
belling with its shining satisfaction.
You must row the boat awash
with frozen sweat, back
through shaken silence. Believe
your earth will obey you again. Believe
your throat open again, to syllable, to sound.
That street accepts your walk’s casual telegraph.
Glass in your front door promises to armor you
like steel. And a shadow voice tells you again
the other door caves
between two ribs.
Mary Elizabeth Birnbaum was born, raised, and educated in New York City. She has studied poetry at the Joiner Institute in UMass, Boston. Mary’s translation of the Haitian poet Felix Morisseau-Leroy has been published in The Massachusetts Review, the anthology Into English (Graywolf Press), and in And There Will Be Singing, An Anthology of International Writing by The Massachusetts Review, 2019 as well. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Soundings East, I-70 Review, Ibbetson Street, Spoon River Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
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