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.

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.