Maria Hummel's poetry and prose appear in Poetry, Narrative, The New York Times, and The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine. She is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University and lives in San Francisco with her husband and son.
THE ANGELS by Maria Hummel
Sunday, 30 September 2012
They have not come for you. They will not blister
the day with light and swords. The room remains
a room, and not a portal. The syringes
hold no messages, not even plain
emptiness. The food trays, when you eat food,
rattle if I move them, and, if left alone,
sink beneath the ice of grease. The good
doctor is pregnant, and strokes her own
belly when she speaks. In a thousand years
no one will remember any of this.
The hospital will be a ruin. Your
tubes twisted in a dump, or burned. But if wrists
are stumps, hands are trees; I lift yours to learn
how the wind moves. Hold them to know where it turns.
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