The Angel of Winter Won’t Remember Your Name

Oh, angels. The best of them petulant,
grousing about having to watch over
His new inferior, ungainly pets

prone to so much human error.
The worst, we know: Lucifer
& his failed fallen followers, tumbling

nine days from the cliffs of heaven
to the steaming shores of hell. God
always seems to have a plan. A hell

for demons, Eden to be lost, resurrection
waiting. Forgiveness. Oh forgiveness.

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Rick Campbell is a poet, essayist, and editor living on Alligator Point, Florida. His collection of essays, Sometimes the Light is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Press in the spring of 2022. His most recent collection of poems is Provenance (Blue Horse Press.) He’s published six other poetry books as well as poems and essays in journals including The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Gargoyle, Fourth River, Kestrel, and the Alabama Literary Review. He teaches in the Sierra Nevada University MFA Program and at Florida A&M University.

The Art of Poetry

—at the Nuremberg Museum

I took Creative Writing/Poetry with Snodgrass at Syracuse—

   loved his Heart’s Needle, parts of The Führer Bunker—

the museum video was about the “good Nazi” who killed Jews.

Albert Speer was handsome, dapper, and escaped the noose,

   saying all of the right things he never said to his Führer—

one night, Snodgrass wept during our poetry class at Syracuse.

He read Randall Jarrell’s “Protocols,” a child’s point-of-view

   aboard a death train bound for Birkenau from Odessa—

the “good Nazi” made sure transport had priority to kill Jews.

Snodgrass began bawling like a baby—I thought it was booze—

   trying to explain how phosgene had a mown hay odor—

W.D. was somewhere else—he wasn’t in our class in Syracuse.

Speer’s magic trick was how he was able to disappear from view

   for two decades (prison), then reappear as best-selling author—

the American public loved the “good Nazi” who didn’t kill Jews.

I’d forgotten about that—about Snodgrass crying—and his muse

   being Speer, in a suit, he interviewed, who was truly a monster.

I’d forgotten almost everything about CRW/Poetry at Syracuse—

a video about Speer reminded me, the good Nazi who killed Jews.

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Stephen Gibson is the author of eight poetry collections: Frida Kahlo in Fort Lauderdale (2020 finalist, Able Muse Press book prize, forthcoming), Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror (2017 Miller Williams Prize winner, University of Arkansas Press, selected by Billy Collins), The Garden of Earthly Delights Book of Ghazals  (Texas Review Press), Rorschach Art Too (2014 Donald Justice Prize Winner, Story Line Press; 2021 Legacy Title, Red Hen Press), Paradise (Miller Williams finalist, University of Arkansas Press), Frescoes (Idaho Book Prize, Lost Horse Press), Masaccio’s Expulsion (MARGIE/Intuit House Book Prize), and Rorschach Art (Red Hen).

# # #

Mercedes Lawry is the author of three chapbooks, the latest, In the Early Garden with Reason, was selected by Molly Peacock for the 2018 WaterSedge Chapbook Contest. Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Poetry, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner and has been nominated seven times for a Pushcart Prize.

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Emily Townsend's works have appeared in Cream City Review, Superstition Review, The Account, Pacifica Literary Review, South 85 Journal, carte blanche and others. She is currently tinkering with essays and poems in the Pacific Northwest.