19 November 2007 | Vol. 7, No. 3

from The Diaphragm Knows One Motion Only

by JANE ASHLEY

In this episode of angels, a mortal couple strolls, hand in hand, down a hall, around a corner on a cruise ship when a door shuts, a gas leaks, and a frantic couple is sealed in a tunnel, in a vessel, on the high seas they thought they could weather with each other, but a man breaks apart from a pair, looks like he should be on a stage somewhere attempting to come to terms with loss through some incessant sweet song sung low and long and a woman screams, bringing it all back to her ugly lips where a song becomes a siren embodied by the not long for life, a siren heard only by another and another holds her there as she bends back and creeps seaward in lifelessness, in the dire arms of a man, in the soft curves through which he extends himself to her, reaching and rounding, a woman descends.