{"id":256931,"date":"2023-11-24T22:36:23","date_gmt":"2023-11-25T03:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=256931"},"modified":"2023-12-31T19:23:12","modified_gmt":"2023-12-31T19:23:12","slug":"angel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2023\/11\/24\/angel\/","title":{"rendered":"Angel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A poem by Leila Chatti, which I found via Matt Bogle’s excellent newsletter Pome<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a month of asking, suddenly, a voice. It says\u00a0You deserve that which has happened to you.<\/em>\u00a0It says\u00a0I see what you do with your long, terrene hands.<\/em>\u00a0Maundering through the banalities of my life, it follows, speaking, as if from a frosty bag of peas in the freezer aisle, speaking, while I am on my knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor, trying to love a man. Its speech is disquieting company, but company nonetheless\u2014a TV left on and turned low. It desperately wants my attention but is polite, which is its defining weakness. Sometimes I catch it stirring out of the corner of my eye\u2014a glint at the end of my cat\u2019s whiskers, a spangle on the ceiling of indiscernible source. More often, though, it looks like me, only a little off, like my reflection in the pregnant belly of a spoon. In fact, when I speak to it, I use my own name. I\u2019m not sure if it minds. It repeats instead its refrain. It says\u00a0God has plans for you.<\/em>\u00a0It says\u00a0I didn\u2019t say they were good.<\/em>After a month of asking, suddenly, a voice. It says You deserve that which has happened to you. It says I see what you do with your long, terrene hands. Maundering through the banalities of my life, it follows, speaking, as if from a frosty bag of peas in the freezer aisle, speaking, while I am on my knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor, trying to love a man. Its speech is disquieting company, but company nonetheless\u2014a TV left on and turned low. It desperately wants my attention but is polite, which is its defining weakness. Sometimes I catch it stirring out of the corner of my eye\u2014a glint at the end of my cat\u2019s whiskers, a spangle on the ceiling of indiscernible source. More often, though, it looks like me, only a little off, like my reflection in the pregnant belly of a spoon. In fact, when I speak to it, I use my own name. I\u2019m not sure if it minds. It repeats instead its refrain. It says God has plans for you. It says I didn\u2019t say they were good.<\/p>\n

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A poem by Leila Chatti, which I found via Matt Bogle’s excellent newsletter Pome: After a month of asking, suddenly, a voice. It says\u00a0You deserve that which has happened to you.\u00a0It says\u00a0I see what you do with your long, terrene hands.\u00a0Maundering through the banalities of my life, it follows, speaking, as if from a frosty … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Angel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":true,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257508,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256931\/revisions\/257508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}