Litterae Humaniores
Rent from DeepDyve- Litterae Humaniores
"Hello," she called out breathlessly, pulling off her wide- brimmed hat, setting on the mantlepiece the baby wrapped in green tissue- paper and fern, not noticing until she spun around that the room behind her was infested with angels. An angel lounged on the Victorian sofa. Another stood, arms crossed, beside the mantle mirror. Still another loitered in the doorway of the dark vestibule, leaning on the handlebars of a bicycle.
All were identically dressed in the manner of a boy she had known in school whose phobia of germs had caused him to wear only white. They wore white cotton shirts and white denim pants fastened at the ankles with bicycle clips. Each had a black leather band strapped around one wrist. All wore dark glasses the color of a river in the shade. Their handsome, muscular faces were somehow too clean- shaven.
The bicycle clips recalled another kind of angel—not these handsome young men, but the cupie with wings who rides the back of playing cards. Someone had once told her the name of that angel. Remembering it, she went to the one who stood at the mirror, his body poised in an attitude of perpetual readiness, like a cardboard cutout in an advertising display.
"Hermes," she said, holding out her hand; immediately he sprang to life. [End Page 468]
Belle Randall has been poetry editor of Common Knowledge since its inception. Her poem "A Child's Garden of Gods" is included in the anthology The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of "Poetry" Magazine. Her books include 101 Different Ways of Playing Solitaire and Other Poems; The Orpheus Sedan; Drop Dead Beautiful; and The Coast Starlight. She is coeditor (with Richard Denner) of Exploding Flowers: Selected Poems of Luis Garcia. A recipient of the Inez Boulton Award of Poetry magazine and the Anthony Hecht Prize of Waywiser Press, she has taught in several creative writing programs, including Stanford University's, where she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow.
