20 November 2006 | Vol. 6, No. 3

And This Is What Happened

by JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM

With an experimental gaze and hobnobbery,

with saintly bad judgment and piss-poor sense,

I pilgrimed to a field in my own dire distance

where above, a billion or more little brights flared up

before they disappeared. That was the year I thought

I was going insane. Help, I said plainly.

I am having a mild case of the heartbreak.

When I looked at the fissure, all was glass and mistaken.

This, I blamed on the Seraphs: their six-fold wingspans,

their swallowtails. I slept on blunted nails

for thirty-odd Septembers. How this won the angels over

I can't say I remember, but something holy groaned

through the bliss of my mischief. And that was enough.

The scruff of a wild man's beard chafed red

my hotbed thighs, and the ache of my tongue intoned psalms

that it heretofore hated. Finally, I was elated. For,

there was no one left but me and God, it seemed.

And I was the woman in His wet dream.