by Anne Cheilek
The Guest
Lord, how I love the broken angel,
her cheap gold wings snapped off,
love her with no halo, no face
on her faceted glass head, love the hard
folds of her blue robe, an early blue—
the rim of sky before the first
star shows. Each darkening season
I make a place for her quietly
apart from the lights and jangles
for she is not the fire and smite, not
the mighty radiance? No, Lord, here
is the angel of missing, the angel
of despair, what’s left of the angel
I’m walking with into the night.
Joannie Stangeland is the author of several collections, most recently The Scene You See. Her poems have also appeared in Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other journals. Joannie holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop.
Anne Cheilek is an artist, writer, and musician living in Silicon Valley. Her work has appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, DMQ Review, Gone Lawn, Reed Magazine, and elsewhere. She is an MFA candidate at San José State University, where she is currently serving as the Poetry Editor for Reed Magazine.