The Angels Demand the Straight Goods


The angels are returning to your poems.

Holed up at the last resort (some sullen

little ranch due east) they’re back.

Diagnostic in droves –

harrowing in knitwear.

Sweaters fitted with wing-warmers.

Don’t regale them with jokes

about dogs strolling into bars.

They’ve heard it all.

The place they were

hardened them as places do & you?

Your progress underwhelms them –

how columnar you remain. (They suspect

they’ve got a lemon on their wings.)

They’re commandos, inquisitors –

Report it straight, for once, poet,

the news of this blown place.

They knock: talk.

Graveyard Poem


I think now we most resemble that small graveyard

near Rolla, British Columbia, where the gravel road

vectors onto a lesser dirt lane, where solar

lanterns burnish earth between stones.

An abundance of lanterns.

The notion struck me as eerie, at first –

someone kindling this place –

the dead hauling in sunlight all day, taking it

into themselves to release back to pitchy sky,

hinter-stars. Far-flung exchanges.

Squibs contingent.



These muted torches flicker, staved –

pendants in inky grass. Truly, I found it peculiar.

But now I love the concept – a kind

of posthumous hobby. Project maverick

beyond hope yet

still eking out a living, ray by ray.

Here’s where I should end the poem.

But can’t. Not while the sky’s branding iron

still sears this tract, these crated bones

the lantern-leaver sensed even now

crave transaction. Late gifting.

A rhythmic, candled amity after the fact.

© Copyright, 2015, Jeanette Lynes.
All Rights Reserved.