emily wall

Emily Wall is a poet and Professor of English at the University of Alaska. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Arizona. Her poems have been published in journals across the US and Canada and she has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes.  She has six books of poetry published, including her most recent books Breaking Into Air and Fig.  She has won two Rasmuson Individual Artist awards, two Juneau Arts & Humanities Council Artist Grants, and an Alaska Literary Award.  Emily lives and writes in Douglas, Alaska, and she can be found online at www.emily-wall.com.

letter from an angel (1)

Some days, you will feel like crushed glass

   on a rocky beach.  All around you, barnacles

      are growing, having chosen a smooth

black rock, or a palm-shaped clamshell

   as their homes.  The tide lifts some of them, washes

      over others, and either way, their bellies get filled.

But you are a shard of blue—

   the neck, maybe, of an old blue bottle—

       some kind of medicine, or liquor.

In another lifetime you brought comfort to someone

   who raised you to their lips.  In another lifetime you

      were filled to the brim.

I see you now, wedged between two rocks.  I lift you

   into my palm.  Of course we angels are treasure-seekers

      just like you.  We open the wings of our hands

and pick up you, wherever we find you, broken,

   caught between two rocks, trying to catch your

      breathe each time the tide floods in. I will place you

in a jam jar filled with other jewels in a hundred shattered

   shapes.  Together, you begin to transform.  Together, you

      begin to sing.  Soon, I’ll lift you and string you

into a windchime that I’ll hang in the trees.  To breathe light.

   To swallow every breath of wind.  To amaze everyone

      who passes, with your beautiful, broken body. 

Read Emily’s work and more in Solum Journal Volume V: Legacy.