Lo:
why
is it
the angel
bodiless power
the herald of the mysteries
enters time and space—suffers to speak—on the blade’s edge
of day and dark—and being come in, at once acquires
a winged body, sexless image—
leaves behind only
a girl’s word,
taper
burnt
low.

*

Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, forthcoming 2024) and Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022), selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry. Her poems appear in three chapbooks and in The Massachusetts Review, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Shenandoah, Beloit Poetry Journal, 32 Poems, Southern Indiana Review, At Length, Plume, and elsewhere. Carolyn lives in Massachusetts. Her website is carolynoliver.net.