O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Jeanne Obbard
Things to know about angels
Their black eyes look right through you.
They have porcelain faces.
Angel-watching is like having an aura migraine –
zig-zags and sparkles, half
your field of vision undependable.
If you go fuzzily blank on the left side,
be assured, it’s full of angels.
To listen to angels is like the crash
of a Jan Hammer soundtrack
into your unaltered mind
or one hundred gilded verses
of Handel or the house sparrow
arrowing her song over and over
from the downspout.
I don’t have time to open pomegranates;
but an angel
will peel the whole fruit for one seed. An angel
has time. Has nothing but time.
An angel is a gold chain made of birds, it is
a black-sand beach,
a retro wave landscape.
When will that pulse in my heart stop looping
When will I be that pure
When will I look through everything and dissolve
I can’t be an angel yet;
I am still obsessed with the body as a site.
About the writer:
Jeanne Obbard holds a BA in feminist and gender studies from Bryn Mawr College, and works in clinical trial management in the greater Philadelphia area. Her poetry and essays can be found in Cleaver, Drunk Monkeys, The Moth, and Poetry Daily. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Awards and is a former Leeway Seedling Award winner.
Image: Exeunt: Sergeant of the Fall (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2025. Public domain via MidJourney AI.
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