phanaerozoic

“Blue-winged Angel” An ekphratic poem inspired by artist Carl Dahl’s porcelain “Blue-winged Angel, Female.”

You open your wing

explosively, as if cyclonic

winds had whisked your smalt-blue,

your Delft blue, your ultramarine blue,

your essential-essence-of-blue cloak,

had thrown it out as if it were

the only sky in all the world,

your un-pigmented body suddenly,

blindingly, lightning-white, and

cracked as if by thunderclap.

The vacuum left by that whip-

snapped mantle exposing breasts,

ribs, navel, thighs, letting us know,

oh, God, letting us truly know, that angels

are only all too human.

~Roy Beckemeyer

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Artist Carl Dahl’s work may be found on his Website.