E.E. Cummings Prize Finalist, selected by Chard deNiord
Bryan Marshall trained as a musician (including writing a PhD thesis on New England’s own Danbury-boy-done-good, Charles Ives), and has worked as a pianist, lecturer, award-winning sommelier, country pub owner and pie shop manager. His poetry has been published in Lumin, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Mugwort Magazine, Stray Words, Black Nore Review and Wales Arts Review. His short stories and flash fiction pieces have also been published in print and online. He enjoys walking among trees, performing at open mic poetry events, drinking tea and running a free weekly writing group, called (thoroughly against his wishes) Bryan’s Angels.
not next now next
like a bird flown wing-snap
into a window dazed
my angel sits in plastic accident
and emergency hands in toga-flow lap
one holds a burnished tarnished halo
the other a can of coke and sips
and waits not next not
next not next now
next can they fix him
my broken angel send him
home in a heaven-ambulance
all the way to heaven
in an ambulance
with a drip and little bottle
of pills broken
angel-wing his flight still true
but now with heavenward wing-limp
twist heavenward still
still all the way
to heaven