Slum Archangel
The velocity of her fall must have
been excruciating / blackout-inducing.
Tracing the arc of the angel’s nosedive:
deadlift-dropped like Heaven metal and sparking
all the way down, uranium-heavy,
she would have cleaved the evening sky in two.
Then, molten from friction, crawling beyond
her crater, bones reform before moonrise.
A new wingspan flares. Her raw material:
lightning voltage, forest fires, charcoal.
Blue from down here looks so much darker…
There is no angel that can be touched
who isn’t remade in the diamond-crushing
gravity of hurtling earthside.
Quite an experience to crash on the world
as if through stained glass, to collapse into time:
serration is the sky we are fated
to drop through to understand how grace works.
I guess we must be sliced apart to reveal
the cold metallic core of grace within
and then feel its trembling pour down skin.
But I’m not so sure about its value.
Grace’s slow attainment looks like bleeding
just to make the claim you didn’t drown beneath
the bleed. Unseemly to think devastation
is our only flight path towards perfection.
Hauled down at night like a burning Lockheed,
every angel is born to land hard.
Abjex
Twist away the gates of steel
Unlock the secret voice
Give in to ancient noise
Take a chance on a brand new dance
Twist away, now twist and shout…
—Devo, “Gates of Steel”
The rogue’s gallery: two tattoo artists,
two bartenders, and me. This band was a
nosebleed miracle. All my amplifiers
died in separate fires (too much voltage). At
showtime we exploded like landmine shrapnel.
There were some real bruisers in that unit,
dressed like Hell. Bullet belts, engineer boots,
burned leather, unending appetites
for damage. Harrison swallowed a lit
cigarette as a party trick. Allie had
angel language on her face. Bad Wes
coughed and bled blackly under a moon that held
still like a sharpshooter. Josh had this strange
magnetic animal charm practically
sewn into the skin-side of his life.
I just bore witness, wrapped in my battle
jacket and doing my best to keep up.
An audience member spit on Allie
one time so she broke his nose. If any
member of the gang yelled “Go!” it was all hell:
we’re throwing hockey punches ’til it’s lights out.
We kissed goodbye with our hands taped. The band’s life
burned at the speed of head trauma. This is
how I learned to pounce on the world boots-first.
Zack Carson
Zack Carson is a poet and musician from Asheville, NC. He is pursuing an MFA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His work has been (or will be) published in The Shore, Soundings East, All Existing, and Inscape, among other places.
