by Joshua Gage

My heart is a stone drunk with angels
who file their wings against the ribbed carapace
of my sky. They feast upon my dust, stroke
my soil until my veins are a harp of blood.
The hard gleam of their voices convenes
into the ordination of my pulse. Now I am tuned,
my solo chord an epitaph strummed over
and over, my breath an anagram of discarded feathers
and chattering rosaries. Still, God’s forgiveness
incubates the frozen cerement of my skin.

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Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. His newest chapbook, blips on a screen, is available on Cuttlefish Books. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, Ethiopian coffee, and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs.