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When the evil army comes it is accompanied
by a deceptively noble trumpet, as a woman
wears white, and believes in it. An angel
is not spiteful without cause, having been flung
from the hand of God whose engine, reportedly,
is love itself. How badly the crippled angel
wanted to be first in everything, God’s
man Friday! The fallen angel is not without scruple,
the angel envies the earth. The earth is just
beyond chaos, and so rests against chaos;
yet everything that comes from the earth’s Garden
can be tended, pulled, made orderly—
blanched and laid before a guest—
the earth has something called an offering.
The story of the Garden is allegorical.
An allegory is like a forked tongue,
an allegory is an infant bastard who is fitful.
The Garden becomes linked with a feeling
of sickness and trepidation: a dream
of taking an air balloon ride over a river,
because the bridge is burning
Alison Powell’s poetry has appeared in AGNI, Black Warrior Review, and Guernica. She teaches at Hunter College.
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