Fall 2019, Volume 27

Poetry by Bruce McRae

Some Angelology

Angels sifting blood from blood,
exposing their angelic underthings,
aswim in light’s high beams.
Angels writing Death a mash letter,
romping among day-glo altocumulus,
breaking weather, baking sorrow’s bread.

Angels of swamp and ghetto,
hovering beside a fogbound car crash,
possessing a flower’s temperament and temper.
The angels of indigestion and football.
The angels of stones dropped
in the ocean or flung at the sky.
The angels moonlighting as messengers.
Mobs of angels rioting, rebelling,
flashing ethereal handguns,
in sharp skirts of leather and chrome,
the Lord’s will the last thing in mind;
angel-mind part foam, part thorn,
rank humans their emotional betters.

Because angels argue with time
they have inexhaustible dudgeons.
Angels are filling up the hollows
with the rainwaters of form and energy.
Pulling on the starlings’ advances,
drugging our well water, dervishing always.
They consume their weight in thunder,
blushing like a blackened rose,
half-drunk, smoke issuing from their loins,
on the wing and gliding to the far end of Forever,
riding the celestial zephyrs
that blow this way and that way
on the back of the moon.

You’re sitting on their communal lap.
They run their fingers under your sweater,
tugging on their heavenly bits,
knotted to God’ infinite locks –
oh, the mention of God,
which has them twisting their haloes,
burning as martyrs burn, pawning feathers,

hurling devilish invectives,
throwing the bricks and bottles of tantrums,
huffing and stamping their feet;
their small and perfect footsteps
making the sound of snow when it falls

 

 

 

BIO: Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,400 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are: The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press); An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy; (Cawing Crow Press); Like As If (Pski’s Porch); and Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).