Cherubim
If you believe in the low light of Babylon,
the cherubim wisp-colored, like milkweed,
the final phase of the moon that brings you nearer to God,
then you will be nearer to God.
If you believe in the clouded sky
cataract and malnourished in its light,
you will know the many assembled angels holding on,
their mouths mouthing paradise.
If you believe in the woman who wanted to live
in color on this earth, you will believe the faces
sketched to keep them all alive,
how she bought time shading the folds of their flesh,
blending salt and spit with black to bring out the red
like the scarlet blooded calf,
as in the way we used to pray, holding on
to sacrifice, indistinguishable from prayer.
Where was the azure, the celestial blue,
to make the simple sky? The light seemed spun from shadow.
In all this shadow where would she put the sky?
Along the contours of the subjects’ tiny feet?
Among the golden fruits, the brown bark of a tree,
a plume of dust — the still life she was advised to paint.
Off in the corner, an assemblage of cherubim,
a tableau of god and his winged intimates
holding on to their own thin bones.
Somewhere she will find the blue for heaven.
She will find the light that’s left.
Breath taking, how like birds they flinched when caught.
Had they wings, would they have flown?
For Annemarie Dinah Gottliebova
If you believe in the low light of Babylon,
the cherubim wisp-colored, like milkweed,
the final phase of the moon that brings you nearer to God,
then you will be nearer to God.
If you believe in the clouded sky
cataract and malnourished in its light,
you will know the many assembled angels holding on,
their mouths mouthing paradise.
If you believe in the woman who wanted to live
in color on this earth, you will believe the faces
sketched to keep them all alive,
how she bought time shading the folds of their flesh,
blending salt and spit with black to bring out the red
like the scarlet blooded calf,
as in the way we used to pray, holding on
to sacrifice, indistinguishable from prayer.
Where was the azure, the celestial blue,
to make the simple sky? The light seemed spun from shadow.
In all this shadow where would she put the sky?
Along the contours of the subjects’ tiny feet?
Among the golden fruits, the brown bark of a tree,
a plume of dust — the still life she was advised to paint.
Off in the corner, an assemblage of cherubim,
a tableau of god and his winged intimates
holding on to their own thin bones.
Somewhere she will find the blue for heaven.
She will find the light that’s left.
Breath taking, how like birds they flinched when caught.
Had they wings, would they have flown?
For Annemarie Dinah Gottliebova
Carine Topal is a transplanted New Yorker living in the southern California desert. Her work has appeared in The Best of the Prose Poem, Greensboro Review, Spoon River Poetry Anthology, Water~Stone, and many other journals and anthologies. Her second collection of poetry, Bed of Want, won the 2007 Robert G. Cohen Prose Poetry Award . In 2005 she was the recipient of a scholarship to Hedgebrook, and to the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia. Topal’s third collection, In the Heaven of Never Before, was published in 2008 by Moon Tide Press. That same year she was a Pushcart Prize nominee. Topal was awarded the 2015 Briar Cliff Review Award for Poetry. That same week she was the winner of the 4th Biennial Chapbook Contest from Palettes and Quills, for her book Tattooed, released in July, 2015.