Advent of an Angel & Late December
By Charles Hermesmann
Advent of an Angel
It was strange the way it arrived
like a bird to a nest a thief to a door
the radiance was so bright it caused me to feel
a hard tug far inside myself and
my breath the only real necessity, finally escaping—
I could only exist through a body and I did
as if everything around me were some sick invention to be
delighted in— I tasted the fruit drank from the cup
imagined life with many lovers I forgot which parts were
imagined I wanted to blot the ink of myself away
touching a stranger’s cheek I kept searching, swimming
Even in those deepest parts I could not find
the city I had been promised
Late December
A few spinach leaves remain in the garden.
My father, a war scientist, hits golf balls across the yard
where the last of the snow is spread out in pieces like countries on a map—
Charlie’s been dead over a month now. On my drive home yesterday
I saw they had removed his memorial
but I’m not sure why. I never noticed
the barrenness of brown winters, the fields crumpling in on
themselves, emptying like a held breath. Today a gas station worker
called me brother. In the mirror, I saw myself in my corduroys,
put my hands in my pockets and pictured
how I once looked, when my face was all bare skin and freckles,
my posture more upright. I had filed fingernails
and chestnut-colored hair you could braid
down the center of my head easily, like ropes. I spent a month, no, I spent
half a year in pain, and now I feel the illness
returning to me like a mother who abandons her newborn son
and comes back years later to meet him again.
For the first time, the world feels too small.
Charles Hermesmann grew up in a New Jersey exurb outside of Philadelphia. A writer since childhood, he now lives in Chicagoland and has been published in The Chiron Review and Carpe Bloom, with work forthcoming in Jam & Sand.