When Angels Were Devoured

by Roberta Tabanelli

A silk kiss was circumcised, with surgical precision,
when I offered my head on what I believed was a silver plate

- rust, instead.

Sandpaper, I invoke, to peel the ghost
that’s hunting my lips - diverted
licking the pungency of a rotten apple
mistaken for a ripe orange.

Squeezing the juice - not from a woman’s pleasure:
grounded limbs of amputated desires
in a tangled web of wet kindling
- use for no fire.

* * * * *

Roberta Tabanelli teaches film and contemporary Italian literature at the University of Missouri. She grows native flowers and Mediterranean herbs, bakes sourdough bread, and travels as much as she can. Her poetic focuses on the power of language to convey meaning through wordplay, sounds, and fragments. She writes in both English and Italian.