Angel
Angel - Joelle Taylor
Angel
When Angel looks in the mirror / it looks away first /
star fist open jaw / how the shine becomes you / clean
friend / taller than yesterday / spine an unravelling plot /
you odd insistence / my king of the blue tattoo / eyebrow
pinned like a butterfly / when you walked in the room
/ it became you. How you brought the silence in with
you. How you brought the night to its knees. back there.
where the quiet ones go. / & now / the night won’t stop
texting / how many times have we walked home / you &
I / only to find home walking / softly behind us / I have
seen you leap over language / to push a man back inside
himself / throw pint glasses like seeds / speak to every
woman as though she were your mother / I have seen
your fists sob / at the centre of every boi/ is a bare room
/ & inside a swinging lightbulb / a wire thin girl dances
/ stays with you even when you look away / angels don’t
fall from Heaven / they leave at closing time / unscrew
their fucks in the backs of black cabs / abandon their
bodies / beneath a girl beneath a duvet beneath the wet
dilated night. on fire.
from C+nto and Othered Poems (The Westbourne Press, 2021), © Joelle Taylor 2021, used by permission of the author.