The Angel Reflects on the Afterlife
I.
The lines are long;
the border often closed.
The dead queue with proof of person-
hood:
a boatman’s coin or metro card.
They sketch flags in the dirt.
Though if you
were to ask [why would you?]
the dead would respond:
there are no nations here,
only widowers of absence.
[Of course these also
might be considered
nations.]
II.
We angels renew our visas
just to visit the oceans—
there are fish
[no birds though]
some extinct some too ill-
remembered to ever be dead.
No—we don’t catch them
[anymore].
Once, angels ate trout
with scales tender
as morning
and flesh like a thunderhead.
Now each night
firing squads assemble
in our throats.
III.
Was this really what
you hoped to know?
Or did you mean to ask
about the hospital?
The taste of laughing gas?
The death threats against your father?
No? A last story instead:
The sunsets are beautiful in hell;
all living colors forgotten.
Even from the lowest shore
you have never seen
a sky
like death.
Zachariah Claypole White is a Philadelphia-based writer and educator, originally from North Carolina. He holds a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where he was a Jane Cooper Poetry Fellow. His work has appeared in Southeast Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus, amongst other publications. He has received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Writer’s Digest, and Disquiet International. His awards include Flying South‘s poetry prize as well as two nominations for the Best of the Net and one for a Pushcart Prize. He teaches at the Community College of Philadelphia and Saint Joseph’s University.
