Synkroniciti is excited to welcome back west coast poet and writer Peter Cashorali with a four-part poem, “Angels,” one of our “Identity” poetry contest finalists. Peter explores the disruptive nature of these numinous beings. “While we might dream of guardians/ like crossing guards with well-groomed wings/ angels when they intervene/ aren’t the friends of earthly life.” He recalls the stories of Jacob, who became Israel after wrestling with an angel, and Mary, who was told by an angel she would bear the son of God. Jacob and Mary have acquired mythology but Peter reminds us of their humanity, removed from our awareness by time and tradition. Angels change not only the identity of those to whom they appear, but the identity of their descendants. “Always angels are the sight/ of what we haven’t seen before/ so what we know obliterates/ in what has been here all along/ and who we’ve been up till this point/ resolves in nobody we know.” The shift of identity is the central event and mystery of the poem, and Peter presents it with imagery that is both dramatic and thoughtful. The third section, about Mary, draws on Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting Annunciation for illumination. Peter hints at subconscious iconography: Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition often uses angels as code for traumatic processes that have been overcome, things that are too painful to be unpacked. Human beings often want enlightenment, but we are seldom willing to take on the sorts of experience that will bring us knowledge of ourselves and the world. Be careful what you wish for.
Read “Angels” in Synkroniciti’s “Identity” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Peter Cashorali is a queer psychotherapist, previously working in community mental health and HIV/AIDS, now in private practice in Portland and Los Angeles. Recent work appears or will appear in Dog Throat Journal, Synkroniciti, Katabatic Circus, Ekphrastic Review, 1870 Journal, Gas and Red Fern Review. Older work includes Gay Fairy Tales (Harper San Francisco, 1995) and Gay Folk and Fairy Tales (Faber and Faber, 1997).