dr. faustus was an angel | Anna Keeler

(Where and how did she find eyes that made sound
And carried color at the end of her lashes?)

Those sockets held the gasps of the angels
that chucked themselves into hell
because the upper hand that held them close
was reinforced with barbed wire.

The cherubs were born with screaming abdomens
and books with gold pages stitched to their kidneys.
No thought or action could pass through their organs
Without filtering out the oxygen from their perfumed blood
And replacing them with the entrails of delusion.

They drag their arms on the ground like lepers
And tell passersby that the contused arteries
Are tattoos:

				The stems of a lotus
				(or) the tales of mermaids
			(Or) 
		little lines meant to intersect and their hearts. 

The world slows down to admire the mark
Negligent of the rotting skin falling
so those veins have the room
(and)
the girth to breathe.
They search for those understanding mouths
they’ve heard so much about;
The kind that attach themselves to cheeks
the color of ballet slippers
with lips that have only shared their drinks with innocence.

But those people never come
And all they ever see are the
Holes functioning as faces
White washed with the promise of a poetic aesthetic,
Beating the white spirits’ backside and legs
With

Your veins are so beautiful!!!!
                                  (And)

                                         I’m sooo jealous of their color
                                                        (And)
                                        You’re lucky your arms are so broken love!

(Her biceps curl around her little soul
And she gives its pieces out to clawed hands
Until she is too broken to give anything else
and all she has left is her body).

Those angels grab their arms by their fingernails
And wrap them around their skulls
Until their sockets bleed drops of jasper
Into their smile.

The last fuck they give for their grace
Is peeled off along with their concept of sin
And fall to the ground below them.

(They tear)

 						Arm, marrow, muscle fibers
					(They tear)
				Clavicle, spinal disks, cartilage 
				(there there)
			spleen, liver, pancreas, 
			lung

   Rib	 	 rib
     Rib	rib
        rib rib 
          rib 

Spills into the pockets of kidney
That stay attached and their hip.

They slaughter the creativity
Their bones were built on top of
To sell their organs for elegiac knowledge.

They wait for someone to stop them,
Then they realize, nobody will
Because this slaughter is too lyrical to end.

When the spectators go,
The angels are nothing but ash
                                                         (and) blood
                                                                    (and) guts
                                                                                     (and veins).

They’re told they’re lucky
for the gift of destruction
because appreciation
doesn’t have to clean up the mess.

When the last of their skin sack is emptied
(for art)
There is no room left to conceive a future.

(Lucky angel;
she has no future to give.
She’s sold out her stomach,
Rented out her mortality –
But even if she hadn’t
She was born without her ovaries).

Indian Literature Review | Read the works of author Anna Keeler on Indian Review. Literature and poetry from around the world.