"Scattering the Dark" - An Anthology of Polish Women Poets edited by Karen Kovacik

An Overdue Letter to a Pimply Angel

Do you remember the smell of sooty snow
warmed
by the chimney?
and the taste of fir branches?
in the morning you meekly pulled my
rusty
sled to let me the first of the first
leave triumphant tracks
of winter in the yard

in the evening you hung proudly
on the tree in pink
skirts of tissue paper high
and low
I couldn’t count all of you

happiness you said is not knowing
how much of it you have
one winter you stole
behind the Christmas tree
in lacy hoarfrost
stockings the white girdle your first
shackles of femininity wouldn’t leave you
alone you stroked
your thighs under the skirt to make them
real
you were hormonally sad from happiness
just like later in that spring when
your first egg was
fertilized with one divine
life and grew
in your mouth
it stretched your bitter-salty
palate into a balloon
of hopeless December hope
you knew all its parameters

you were still my angel

when you broke into limbs and fell
softly I didn’t hand you
a wing forgive me
I too was a pimply flightless bird

glory to you celestial
bird
from the tree
of life.