They sit sallow in dourness,
barely a ghostfire
stays illumed in the depthless
height of jealous Seraphim.
They are grooming nits and nymphs,
picking bits of louse
from their graygolden wings,
as caged silverbacks in common
zoos do.
Their eye sockets slackened
at adoring souls—
flashing Caucasoid mudras,
tongue-lashing heedless light,
into sindark night.
They come on cue, to the keepers
in a mephitic stench of obsequity.
Poised maliciously,
compliant of prayers and complacent of praise
meditated under wrong moons,
proofing a point of poor position.
They, having visited
and wrung and swung
heavy thuribles, for Her projects
of hoi polloi
too long,
longer than time,
their lice-picked wings were
weighted with the vocation.
These exuviated saints, famished,
playing stingy genie to the unwashed
and overproud Atoms. Now,
their pinions point abyssward,
in rebellion,
they believe
the fetid, olivaceous waves
of stygian river's passing
are more verdurous a pasture,
for the sincere and unfettered theurgic exploration,
of angels pursuing self-
sanctioned passions.
Jaymee Thomas is a writer, poet, and programmer from Columbus, Ohio. She writes poetry, literary nonfiction, and popular fiction with several publications including Spectrum magazine and the Wittenberg Review of Art & Literature. She is most interested in how language plays at the intersection of reality, imagination, and mythmaking.