TARNISHED ANGEL

Though they’re slightly eroded, one still might surmise

the commanding force in those tensile coppery legs,

their responsive bent, their brutal extent. I draw up

into myself at their coming; I stumble as one cast out.

Look down on me. I, fallen, would meet him, fallen,

in the blunt blue light of morning. My angry god

would contest his angry god, to clutch at sheer cloth

and recompense of lean, fusible flesh. Once lost wax.

I long to know his vulgar tongue. To feel the cool verdigris

of his shanks, the clasping down upon my own extremities.

I want to be with the one who will not have me. Will not,

despite our mortal errors, which seem terribly to twin.