The Suicide Angels
- The Suicide Angels
Like poppies bending downto clear their heads of rain—
too swayed by emptinessto rise again—
some lay, heavywith reasons, on our lawns,
some washed up on our shoreslike sad sea cows.
Maybe they'd traced perfectionto its edge
and jumped, hopingto trade
the Church of the Everlastingfor the Church of the Fleeting
and Plain.In time, and as if stoned
on gravity, they rose,smelling like burnt perfume,
all bright like soil after rain,all darkly bruised.
Assure us, we said, othersremained happy
to mourn you;that those you left do not miss
temporal form,or that perfection too
has its material.Tell us such bliss, for most, [End Page 64]
is bearable,that we can hoist the burden
of a happinesswithout variety or end.
But they had not come backto comfort us.
They simply moanedlike struck bells
when we shook them,and then walked away, leaving
their greasy prints like thieveson everything—the skylights
and the pears, the mirrorsand the decorative spoons. [End Page 65]
Michael Lavers is the most recent winner of the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2015, Crazyhorse, 32 Poems, The Hudson Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. He is the winner of the 2016 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize. He teaches poetry at Brigham Young University.
