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Elizabeth Austen

How to Interrogate an Archangel

Offer firewood, strike up a flame. You won’t 
get anything out of him while he’s 
shivering. What you want is the statuesque 
gesture of confidence, the clarity 
derived from a place at the deity’s 
right hand. Keep the coercion to a minimum 
when wrestling with a spiritually
disheveled higher being. Your position
can sour, leaving you with nothing but
pine needles in your hands. Ask 
the most urgent questions first: why
are armies, and is it malignant, and who
keeps tabs on the status of the platypus?
Remember information is secondary
to your purpose. The voice matters most:
that melody can repair all the torn pages
but first you have to recognize what you’ve caught
in your own human hands, on an ordinary
city street, in the middle of March. 

poetry from NER 40.4 (2019)
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Cover art by Ralph Lazar

Volume 41, Number 4

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Writer’s Notebook

Writer’s Notebook—Field Dress Portal

Sarah Audsley

Writer’s Notebook—Field Dress Portal

Writing this poem was not a commentary on a rivalry between the sister arts—poetry and painting—but more an experiment in the ekphrastic poetic mode.

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