The Fallen Angel Poem by Deborah DeNicola

after the photograph by Duane Michaels

She's leaning up in the island of her bed,
knees flung open through her French cut teddy
as if she had expected his arrival

through the huge room's starry window
where the radiator glows,
awakened, like her throat

with the sudden host of his tongue in her mouth.
Naked, he's climbed astride her, pulpy wings
strapped to his back and belted round his belly—

If that's a drawback, well,
that's how he got here, winged it—
through a down draft in the alley

and you take what you get sometimes.
She's up for it anyways, up on her elbows,
her many fingers, gasping fish, replenished

by new waters, and God, I'd take him
whoever he is—Zeus, Apollo, Hermes—
gold ringletted hair, maple tree of a torso,

left hand, a wand, casting a spell across her nipple—
But what do I know from sex?
It's been a while. Are angels safe?

Can that plaid woolen blanket maintain
room temperature beneath their weight?
Or will it steam and hydroplane like a magic carpet

launching—Watch those falling pillows
tilt the floor
as if some prime mover

ordained a radiant resurrection,
sun coming up, white-out backdrop,
already the eight foot windows burning.

Her soul is sold,
though dressed in down-home wings, she thinks
he may be an imposter—Still,

Manhattan slumbers there
suspended like heaven
And his webbed fingers probe

the dimple in her chin,
propping her sweet face eternally under his
so this moment might never end

though if it does—
she'll have this sky-scraping simian
in the loft of her memory. This horny dream,

this shifty apparition, luciferous
spectre in diaphanous flesh—and yes,
God yes, I'm jealous.