Joshua Gage
Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. His newest chapbook, Origami Lilies, is available on Poet’s Haven Press. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, Ethiopian coffee, and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs.
Angel de la Muerte
Now the angel of death has visited Texas
six times with his long white hair
like a winter sky, plucking his guitar
to call the children to come and dance.
Without parents, without families, the children
are just names, pilgrims lost without a guide
on the desert roads of the underworld.
Even the drunken guard cannot find the graves anymore.
It is up to the angel of death, who dips his finger
into the bloody wounds between his own ribs
to point the way in neat, wet letters
on the rocks beneath a nightfall of singing frogs.
Pisa aqui, aqui, aqui. Ahora duerme.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 