Excerpt from Brave Disguises
Angel Sex
“The sexual intercourse of the angels
is a conflagration of the whole being.”
Emanuel Swedenborg
And what voyeur
could look into that fire? And how
do they wrap their wings around,
feathers overlapping feathers,
in what white dance of down?
Are they in flight
from heaven’s compound eye,
disappearing through a sieve of light
as adolescents do who find a car or wood,
or pair behind the mall?
A blaze like a cymbal clash
when one angel penetrates another—in flight?
Or do they couple on the grass
or in the branches of a tree,
two ethereals ashimmer in the deliciousness
of touch, two brilliant holograms of heaven?
Does holy edict
restrict them, as the Queen of Aragon’s rule
limited her married subjects to a modest,
lawful six times a day?
Lawrence saw them
transporting sperm across the phallus
of a he-whale to the womb of a she-whale,
so perhaps God’s given them a role
in all coitions
and they’re with us in our graceful—or awkward—
copulations, plying their luminous counterparts
as we ply fingers and tongues,
exploring, with us, sensation and response.
We climax and
for some seconds—minutes?—drift
in soft radiance. Then, as if summoned,
they withdraw, and we fall back—too quickly!–
to await once more whatever dolings-out
of transport, whatever fiery raptures
Divinity allows.