Angels&Angles*
Michelle Greenblatt
And why not?
Erasing letters off a chalkboard, my kindergarten
writing sloughed off, my 22 year old hands trembling,
while you transmute to angel, to angle, equal&extreme
opposites of cherry preserves&nighttime spreads of glistening,
glistening irrupted...
Why not drop this here, unfinished, let it fall to the beige&green
tiles, let it crack a little, let it know the meaning of pomegranate seed,
tell it it’s alone, though we are watching, though the ants
come from crackling slices of uneaten toast on your plain china white
plates to the porcelain bits of...
Why not do nothing different this time?
Hold me close then drop me
down, unfinished, let me crack a little, let me know the meaning of
alone though you are watching me, my equal&extreme opposite,
erasing eight years of letters off a chalkboard—sloughing me off,
angles of a plan I wrote&lost at the age of 13...
12.13.2004-
title taken from a Muriel Rukeyser poem, 'Theory of Flight'
