The 2River View 20.2 (Winter 2016)
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Lenny DellaRocca

The Angel’s Song

She calls to you from across the twilight of long ago and not yet. Each morning, light makes air a tuning fork of color. She plucks a feather from her wing. You float above a town made of short stories. This is where you belong, floating like a sigh above the trees. When your feet touch ground you wake to footprints leading to a crib where an infant sleeps beneath a blanket of murmurs. Open your eyes. This is the day you were born.

There is a song in your head.

Saints of Electrocution

I read a short story about a woman who was hit by lightning and for the rest of
her life she was able to perform small miracles. Her hands were always hot. She
met a man who had also been struck and when they made love smoke rose from
their glistening bodies. Afterward her house smelled of charcoal and lavender,
green and violet blooms crisscrossed their flesh in a factual network of
iridescent trees.

I worked in a factory assembling transformers, testing them with bursts of
voltage. I’d dial the juice up or down based on the number of red wires. Some
were a few inches long, others a couple of feet. Sometimes one of them touched
my lap or wrist. The jolt threw me off of the bench. If you saw me naked, you’d
see tattoos that look like angry angels where I was kissed and burned.

Lenny DellaRocca has previously appeared here at 2River, and other recent poems have appeared in Albatross, Chiron Review, Mad Hatters Review, and The Potomac. His chapbook The Sleep Talker has recently been published by Nightballet Press. contact

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